Brushes with the surreal

In Arequipa, as the garbage trucks move through the streets each night, they play instrumental music at high volume from a speaker mounted on the truck roof. It’s not exactly the type of music you would expect from a garbage truck, if you would expect music at all. We were serenaded late one night with classical music. The next night featured a jazzy Caribbean version of Under the Sea from the Little Mermaid, followed by El Condor Pasa (Simon & Garfunkel’s song that starts out “I’d rather be a hammer than a nail...” The melody that they sing to is El Condor Pasa, a traditional Quechuan song). The music is a good reminder to get your trash outside if you haven’t done it yet, I suppose.

During our tour of the gorgeous Santa Catalina Monastery in Arequipa, we learned that the nuns chopped off their often-very-long-hair upon taking their vows. Their hair was then used to adorn religious statues big and small. I think those statues are pretty creepy to begin with, but seeing them with various shades of brown and black hair, curly or wavy, braided or straight, gave it a whole new level of creepiness.

Even the public bathrooms in Arequipa were interesting, featuring art and old skylights.

Our time in Colca Canyon inadvertently coincided with the biggest local celebration of the year, that of their patron saint, the Virgen del Carmen. While my nerves were a little shot since firecrackers were omnipresent and Simon was pretty scared every time they went off, it was also really cool to stumble upon various scenes amidst this celebration. In Yanque, we saw a small group of people getting their statue ready to be paraded around the tiny square, after affixing flowers and offerings of food to her sides. Later we saw around 20 people singing and dancing as the Virgen was held aloft and carried through town. 

Carrying a giant handmade candle to the church in Yanque to put alongside the statue of the Virgen

Getting the statue ready inside the church

Parading the Virgen around the square

In Cabanaconde, the brass band started marching around the square at 6 a.m., this after only stopping the music several hours before! It was definitely wild to see all the festively dressed women, especially drinking beers.

As previously mentioned, Simon was scared during these celebrations because of the loud and constant fireworks. Luckily, while we were walking around a local museum, he found a friend, Miski, who was also a little scared. They took their own tour while staying very close to each other, which was sweet to witness.

As the sun set in the middle of nowhere in Colca Canyon, we left the hot springs where Simon and Sam had enjoyed the warm water while I shivered on the side in the 40 degree temperature. We walked the 30-40 minutes back to our hotel, quickly winded by the high altitude. I had thought we were making good time until we were passed by slowly moving cows, burros, dogs, and the cowboys bringing them in for the night.

That wasn’t the only place where we were left in the dust. While we walked up a long hill in Cochas Chico, outside of Huancayo, I struggled to maintain a conversation with Sam while holding Simon and walking at the same time. I was panting in between words, such was the altitude effect. Then an older woman, maybe 60 years old, wearing a large load on her back, ran by us, uphill, pausing briefly to say hi. I was so tired just thinking about her running uphill that I had to stop to rest.

Once Simon and I stopped by Wong to buy coffee and were surprised by a parade of three beautiful Chinese dragons, complete with a gong section, dancing through the deli area. Later they blocked the exit, so we continued watching. It was apparently a promotion for a Fiestas Patrias parade, sponsored by Wong, through Miraflores the next day.

We went and it was pretty interesting. Thousands of people lined the streets, enormous screens were set up to broadcast parts of the show, the crowd began to get belligerent, and several times I got crowd-phobia before we retreated off the main drag. 

Having a huge supermarket chain sponsor the biggest non-military Fiestas Patrias parade made for some interesting sightings. Such as: a dozen Chinese dragons kicked off the parade, honoring Wong’s Chinese roots, Miss Wong waved, beauty-pageant style, to the crowd. The prepared foods section sponsored a float of mostly naked women dancing on a giant Inca head, flanked by a pastel butterfly. But my favorite was a giant puffy sugar bowl, pulled by a horse drawn carriage. 

I have learned to expect the unexpected in Peru, but it still doesn’t take away my fascination or surprise.

Arequipa and Colca Canyon

Our last Peruvian trip was far to the south: Arequipa, near the borders of Chile and Bolivia, was a feast for the eyes. Blue skies, brightly colored walls, and buildings made out of white volcanic rock meant we were constantly reaching for the camera to try to capture the play of light, color, and shadow.

Nuns at Santa Catalina Monastery began their vow of silence after passing under this arch. 

This peek into the blue room in the back made me think of James Turrell. 

Simon's favorite parts of our trip included limonada whenever possible, watching tv (rare!) in one hotel room, trying to crack the code on the safe in another, and checking out the cows just outside our room window in Yanque.

We traveled through Colca Canyon, twice as deep as the Grand Canyon, in an attempt to see condors. The scenery en route was as spectacular as waiting for the condors to rise, majestically, from the canyon floor, riding the morning thermals.

It was also beautiful to see the canyon’s residents dressed up in their traditional clothing for a local celebration. 

The constant juxtaposition of gringos like us with the native residents was jarring but beautiful in its own way. I wonder what the canyon’s residents think of us weird travelers, all of us dressed alike in our similar traveling clothes. I wonder if they get tired of having their picture taken. At least in the Sacred Valley, people expect tips in exchange for these constant pictures.

Invisible on the bus while I held a sleeping Simon, I watched as a Colca Canyon family, dressed in their celebration finery, tried to flag down a passing combi, only to be ignored. They wearily sat down, resigned to wait for the next one. Their combi stop was smack in the middle of a tiny town, which happened to be a rest stop for all the tour buses too. This meant that there were perhaps 100 tourists wandering around, getting their pictures taken with llamas, trained falcons, peeking inside a church partially destroyed by an earthquake. 

Note the falcon perched on the man's head.

A woman walked up to the family, stopped perhaps four feet away and started focusing her enormous camera lens on them. She fiddled with it for what seemed like an eternity as she tried to get a good shot. The mother and father looked away. The toddler stared at the camera. I felt uncomfortable and embarrassed for everyone. Perhaps they are accustomed to it. Perhaps they are annoyed by it. Perhaps they are both.

Once, I felt perhaps a fraction of what they might be feeling, when Simon was crying and upset over something while I was trying to manage luggage and Spanish and hurt feelings at the same time. A mom ran up, posed her young child with Simon, and took a picture. I was annoyed, thinking, “my son is obviously upset, give it a rest with the pictures already!” But I didn’t want to be rude and give a negative impression of the United States, so we stood there for the picture. However, I wasn’t going to ask Simon to stand there by himself or smile.

Sam decided to take the picture too.

Who knows when we have been the ones to inadvertently make someone uncomfortable. Our aim is true but it might not always be correct.

It’s been amazing to see these different parts of Peru. And there is so much that we didn’t have time to see! Peru feels like several different countries crammed into one. As lucky as we are to be able to take these trips, the constant travel and adjustment is helping us to become ready to come home and just be for awhile.

Jungle lite

Ever since Simon and I read a library book called Home for a Tiger, Home for a Bear last summer, I had been dreading seeing spiders in Peru. Wouldn’t you, after reading this description: Goliath bird-eating spiders are the largest spiders in the world - about the size of a small pizza! A type of tarantula, they live in the rainforests of South America.

I quietly decided I would avoid any trip to the rainforests in Peru. Any spider whose size is compared to a meal that would feed an entire family is about a thousand times too big, in my book.

Sam, unfortunately, had no similar reservations. So when he said he really, really wanted to go to the jungle, I resigned myself to scary sightings and sleepless nights. We planned to go to La Merced, the closest jungle to Lima.

I am happy to report that I had zero goliath bird-eating spider sightings. In fact, I had no fear-inducing spider sightings at all. We only really saw one live giant spider during our Peruvian adventures: at our hotel in Aguas Calientes, at the base of Machu Picchu, I found this in our bathroom... 

Check out those pincers!

… and requested that Sam deal with it. He carefully maneuvered it into the trash can, walked it over to the open window, and threw it out onto the sidewalk below. While I was grateful to have the spider out of our room, it made me cringe to walk down streets after that, wondering if I’d have a giant spider with pincers flung onto me as I walked beneath open windows. “I made sure there weren’t any pedestrians before I threw it out!” Sam said. Not everyone would be so careful!

The spider escapade left a big impression on Simon. He started requesting edits when we’d sing “The Itsy Bitsy Spider”: he wanted us to sing “The Very Giant Spider” and recount the story of Sam flinging it out the window.

And the other "spider" we encountered was on a creatively designed playground - I heartily approve of these spiders!

So, no spiders in our jungle, thankfully. What we did find was beautiful green jungle that didn’t appear to be much different from other green, wooded areas we’ve been in before. There was wonderfully warm, occasionally hot sun, in contrast to chilly Lima, and gorgeous night skies. And there were strange conversations.

We hadn’t seen stars since staying at a beach near the Ecuatorian border in October. One night we were stargazing when Gloria, on an extended vacation from the US, walked by. “This is a great place to see UFOs!” she said. “You mean shooting stars?” asked Sam. “No, UFOs,” she corrected him. “They go like this,” she drew a zigzag pattern across the sky. “It’s really easy to see them. We see them all the time. It’s a little too overcast to see them tonight, but look tomorrow.” “Okay,” Sam said. I am sorry to report that we saw no UFOs, but we did see lots of activity nearby at the air force base. Connection, anyone?

On our coffee tour day, Simon fell asleep as we were en route to lunch. When we arrived, our tour guide/driver told me to just let Simon sleep in the backseat of the taxi while we all left and ate in the restaurant. Hmmm.... no. When he later saw Sam holding Simon, still sleeping, at the table, he asked me why I didn’t leave him in the car. I said, “He’d wake up in a strange place and not know where we were. It would scare him.” He nodded. “You need to get him cured of that. Kids shouldn’t be scared of things like that. You could just take him to the curandera, the healer, and she would get rid of it.” 

While I had zero intention of taking Simon to the curandera, I was intrigued. He told me that the woman who ran our guesthouse had taken her 6-year-old daughter to the curandera for her fear of large dogs. “The curandera passes metal all over your body, then puts it into water, where it assumes the shape of your fear. Then based on what the fear is, different things like eggs and leaves are applied to your body.” He said his fear of snakes was cured that way when he was a little boy. Somehow I think Simon would be more fearful of the cure than the original issue.

We’ve been calling this trip “jungle lite” since, given that it was the entrance to the jungle region, we didn’t see the type of animals or arachnids we’d see deeper in. This means that Sam’s desire to see the jungle was not quenched by this trip, unfortunately. He says, “Next time, we are going deep, deep into the jungle.” I will figure out how to avoid that trip when it becomes a reality. For me, though, this trip was one time when I was thoroughly satisfied with the lite version.

Adventures in Huancayo

Although we are now back in the States, I haven’t finished posting all of my drafts yet! I’ll wrap up the blog before Sam returns to work full-time in September.

As we mapped out our final months in Peru and figured out what travel destinations would make the cut, Sam came across an old email from a fair trade colleague. “It’s really cool to see the artisans in Huancayo creating the carved gourds, the mates burilados. If you get a chance, go.”

Huancayo was an 8 hour overnight bus trip from Lima, and about four hours from the jungle we planned to visit. Deciding to combine the trips was easy.

Huancayo was pretty interesting to visit, period, and not just for their funny crosswalk signs. As usual, any place we visit outside of Lima is shocking in its contrast to the dusty, polluted, giant city (written with great affection for Lima). Here we were, high in the Andes, enjoying the cold and sunshine but wishing our hotel room had heat. There was a far more indigenous presence than anywhere we had traveled to at that point. Homeless people were more visible, especially in the streets in and around the main plaza, than we have seen anywhere in Lima. And did I mention it was cold? They were huddled under cardboard and plastic in an attempt to keep warm. 

We had met various members of the Hurtado family at the capacitación training in December, and they urged us to visit their workshops. Sam has described the fascinating process of carving and burning the gourds, so I won’t go into those details here.

At Alejandro and Victoria’s workshop, we first heard of their family’s difficult start. Alejandro’s father died when he was just 3 years old. His mother remarried and left shortly thereafter, leaving Alejandro and his three siblings to raise themselves. His oldest brother Emilio quit school and started working in a mate burilado workshop full time when he was just 12 years old, to support himself and his siblings. As Emilio learned to excel with mates, he taught his brothers. Each has been able to support himself and his family on this artistry since.

Victoria, on the other hand, learned from her neighbors. One in particular saw that she had talent and provided encouragement. “He would give me a mate and tell me to do whatever I wanted with it, to see if I could make something marketable. I played around with it. After I’d made a few, he told me to try to sell them in the Sunday fair. I sold five in a week. I was able to buy myself a few things that I needed. I was 8 or 9 years old.”

Victoria had to leave school after 1st grade to help her family earn money by weaving sweaters and scarves. She has never been able to go back to school. “My parents were very poor. Some of their kids didn’t live because there wasn’t enough food to go around. Our neighbors would help us out with little purchases, some food here, a pair of shoes there. That is how I survived.”

Victoria

Victoria starts to carve owls on a gourd...

Once the carving is completed, Alejandro begins to burn the gourds with a tiny, precise flame. The three owls visible in this picture are all different shades of brown, based on the distance of the flame. He's started to burn the lines as well. 

Farther along in the burning process on the same gourd.

Later we visited Emilio’s workshop and were surprised to see the workshop empty, even though it was a business day. We learned that his workshop keeps a slightly unusual schedule: it is open Wednesday through Saturday. On the other three days, many of his seven workers volunteer in a community church program for children living in extreme poverty. Participating in this church project is not a requirement to work in his workshop, but rather is a project that many in his community are committed to.

As Emilio is committed to hiring people who otherwise would not have a job, he hires workers who do not have a trade. He hires them expressly to be able to teach them a skill with which they can support themselves. Generally his workers haven’t held a job before, and keeping a rigid, regular schedule is something new for them.

At the beginning, his workers agree that they will initially work for a month. If, after that month, they want to continue in his workshop, they sign a contract for one to three years. Not all of the people he hires are interested in continuing in his workshop after the initial trial period. During their period of employment, they gradually learn all the various skills that go into creating mates burilados. If and when they are ready to set out on their own, they give notice up to two weeks prior to their contract ending.

After they open up their own workshop, Emilio continues to give them work, passing on parts of his orders and giving them projects to complete for several years while they build their own client base. When they no longer need work from him, he gradually stops sharing it with them.

I never thought of myself as super tall in Peru until I saw photos like these. Here, Emilio and I are holding some of his enormous gourds, intricately carved with scenes which tell a story as you slowly rotate the gourd.

After he went to work full-time at age 12, he worked for an additional twelve years with just clothing and food for himself and his siblings as payment. Once he married, though, he had two families to support. Eventually he opened up his own workshop with his wife, Ana.

Ana died in 2010 after a long, expensive battle with cancer, fighting through 33 radiation treatments and three operations. It put him deeply into debt - one of her operations cost $25,000 - but he was ready to sacrifice everything so Ana could be cured. During a four year period they lived in Lima, not working, so she could be close to the hospital for chemo treatments. Their youngest, Joel, quit college to run their workshop for them.

He shared how much he has grieved and still grieves Ana’s death. His sadness was palpable. Yet he knows he has to move on. In May of this year, Emilio paid off his last loan. Joel has started studying again, and has a particularly grueling schedule as he juggles responsibilities in the workshop, church program, and college. He attends classes from 6:30-10:30 in the morning and again from 5-10:30 at night. From 12-4 he is either at the church program or at the workshop.

We stopped by Pablo’s workshop but weren’t able to see him, since he was at a now-annual event for him, giving daily demonstrations at the San Diego Zoo for a couple of months each summer.

In an earlier interview, Pablo shared that his work has opened many doors for him: “My art has made it possible for me to see many places within my country and around the world. I have been able to meet many people who appreciate and value the art that we practice as a tradition that our parents left for us. I have been able to achieve my dreams. Now I try to help unemployed and poor young people and women, by giving them work and teaching them the art of mate burilado.” 

Two of Pablo's workers, carving gourds

These four all work in quemado, or burning, of the gourds. They use a foot pedal to control the amount of gas in their flame. Note the giant bags of mates behind them, ready for a future order.

The exterior of Pablo's workshop and home.

Our last visit was to Eulogio Medina and his wife Geralmina Salomé.

Each of the Hurtado brothers worked for Eulogio at some point as they grew up. In contrast to the tiny gas flame “paintbrush” we’d seen at each of the other workshops, Eulogio showed us how he used the traditional thick, pencil-like piece of wood to burn the gourds. Such artistry each person displayed.

In addition to the mates burilados workshops, I have two memories that I associate most with Huancayo. The first is about casual conversation and tourists. Simon and I were playing in the main plaza one morning when he noticed a little kid with a battery-operated car driving around. It was love at first sight, although I’m not sure which Simon was more taken by, the little boy, Adrian, or his car! Adrian and Simon played happily together for an hour while I chatted with his parents, Gladys and Angel. 

In between giving taped interviews to several different groups of students working on some sort of interview-the-gringa project, Gladys and Angel gave me food tips for our trip. When I expressed surprise at how many interviews I was giving and the far-more-than-normal pictures being taken of Simon with random kids and their parents, Angel said, “We get tourists here but they are always very heavily guarded. Everyone wants to talk to them but no one knows how. They always are in a big group or stay close together.” That made me wonder how “guarded” I would be if I wasn’t super approachable on account of having a playful child. Simon has certainly opened up a lot of doors for us this year.

The second one relates to music. On the four-hour drive from Huancayo to the jungle, our bus driver loudly played a single cd on repeat. Every single song featured a screeching phrase which the singer would shriek out four times: OSS! OSS! OSS! OSS! Sometimes she would add a dying-away shriek at the end of the song: OSSSSSSSSS. Our napping little boy didn’t stay that way for long. “I think they play this music just to make the trip more miserable,” Sam said. As we have joked about OSS approximately a million times by now, Simon now thinks of Huancayo too. If he hears us say “Huancayo”, he starts chanting “OSS”. Somehow I find that extremely endearing instead of extremely annoying. Maybe I should send a cd of Simon chanting OSS to the bus driver for his next trips!

Next stop: the jungle.

Mountains of Spanish

I have been writing this post in my head all year long, at parks, in class, while visiting artisans, at work, everywhere. And it is not finished now and never will be finished, so I finally decided just to write it as it was in my head and post it. Punto.

My goal in life is to be fluent in Spanish. I find it absolutely exciting and thrilling to speak Spanish. I also find myself capable of utter depression when I cannot seem to make words exit my mouth correctly. More than once I’ve been struck completely mute because I’m not sure how to say something really simple. After nearly a year of living in Peru, my default for how to say “what?” is still Mexican Spanish: “¿mande?” Say that here, and people look at you strangely since you have essentially just said to them, “send?”

People always say, “You speak Spanish really well!” after we’ve been conversing for 45 seconds and have covered the really easy stuff – what is your name, where are you from, how long are you here for, where do you live. And then you get into how you make a recipe or politics or phrases that involve the subjunctive and I am a little lost.

Sometimes I’ve been lucky enough to listen, distractedly, to something and later I’ve wondered whether it was in Spanish or English. I know I’ve come so, so far with Spanish this year. But how far yet do I need to go to have a job where I need to speak Spanish? That is another goal, to have to speak Spanish every day for a meaningful job or volunteer position, not just the same four sentences repeatedly, but interesting, complicated conversations in Spanish.

I used to think fluency was something you attained. It was a destination. It was the top of the mountain and I was climbing up. But the more I flirt around with Spanish, the more I study and get better and then leave off and forget it and then pick it up again several years later, the more I learn nuances and still struggle with basics, fluency looks more like a giant mountain range.

You are close to the top of the mountain now and while you realize that now you can get by with everyday interactions just fine - on the bus, at the mercado, traveling - you have so much more to learn. You still need to figure out verb tenses and subjunctive and not think so much about pronouns. You still need to be able to understand people the first time they say something, not the 3rd or 4th or never. You get to the summit and before you can congratulate yourself on how far you’ve come, you see the mountain range stretching out, infinitely, in front of you. You are exhausted and overwhelmed. There are mountains beyond mountains that you still need to climb and descend and climb again before you are fluent. Really, truly fluent.

What is fluency, really? There are so many layers and levels. I often think about other people who are speaking a foreign language fluently on one level (i.e. they get their point across just fine) but not on another (i.e. they use awkward wording or word order). Think David Sedaris’ Me Talk Pretty One Day. I am at the awkward-wording and awkward-word-order stage and I wonder if I’ll ever be as fluent as I want to be, which is native-speaker-fluent, which means probably never.

Simon is another story completely. He has been fascinating to observe and talk with as he has picked up Spanish so quickly. He understands most of what anyone says to him in Spanish, and usually answers appropriately. He has been slower to use words and phrases than what I understand most toddlers do, but of the words he uses, the most important ones are in Spanish: sí and agua. He is a Spanish sponge. He breathes Spanish in like air. He has just started to say his own name, and he says it in Spanish: Simón. That has made many a Peruvian proud, let me tell you. I wonder how long he will refer to himself with Spanish pronunciation. I hope he keeps it up for a good long while.

A quote that has been omnipresent in my mind this year is something I read in college: “You who read me, are you sure you understand my language?” Jorge Luis Borges rocked my world with that one. Here I am, thinking I am communicating just fine with someone and then sometimes I realize that they haven’t understood a word I said. I think I’m saying something like, “the sky is blue” and they hear something like, “a stamp costs too much.” And we smile at each other, nod, agree, and go our separate ways. How many times do I have this conversation and think it’s gone well, only to wonder later whether we understood what the other one meant to say at all?

As much as I want to be fluent, and fluent NOW, I’m finally starting to accept that Spanish is my life-long quest, instead of something I get to cross off of my list and say that I've accomplished. So I’m trying to tackle smaller mountains and enjoy a little more of the climb. I have been reading more books and novels in Spanish, knowing that reading in English has been invaluable for building my vocabulary, understanding nuances, etc. I celebrate when I can only come up with the Spanish words for something.

I love Spanish. We are past the flirting stage and are in a long-term relationship. There is no danger of me breaking up with Spanish, like my childhood friend Jessica so hilariously and eloquently tried to do. Hopefully Spanish won’t break up with me!

Patriotism or Pay Up

Fiestas Patrias, Peru’s Independence Day holidays, was two weekends ago, July 28-29. Being in another country for their independence day celebrations was fun and yet another cultural experience to participate in.

At the beginning of July, the city put up eight enormous Peruvian flags at the óvalo a block from our apartment.



After that, Peruvian flags popped up on buildings everywhere. The supermercado Wong wrapped up its large building in a giant red and white ribbon, and the unfortunate male baggers who work there had to wear a ridiculous straw cowboy hat/white poncho getup for the week leading up to the party.

On one of my near-daily trips to our mercado in mid-July, I checked out one of the puestos. This particular vendor changes her puesto’s look constantly, depending on what special occasion is coming up. When I bought yellow underwear from her for New Year’s, her stand was 100% yellow. For July, it was a sea of red and white.

Tacked up in the corner of her puesto was a news article announcing that any building not flying the Peruvian flag for Fiestas Patrias was subject to a fine of S/1800 (about $700). She had the sign up to encourage sales: since you have to buy one somewhere, buy it here!

That explained why Christina and Roberto had hung one on the top of our building, and why Manos Amigas had one flying too. It also explained the flags on construction sites, tiny newspaper stands, even the snack carts on wheels.

I asked Christina about it and she nodded, surprised that I was surprised. “It’s the law for the country. It used to be that you had to paint your house for Fiestas Patrias.” “You had to paint the flag on your house?” I asked, shocked. “No, no, you just had to put a fresh coat of paint on it so it would look nice for Fiestas Patrias.”

Flag waving in the US makes me uneasy, as the flag is a very loaded symbol and I have baggage accompanying it. Here in Peru, I have no similar baggage. So we showed our Peruvian spirit by wearing our Peru shirts and waving our little (free) Peruvian flag during the Fiestas Patrias parade.

I even tacked onto my backpack the Peruvian flag pin that the puesto vendor gave me when she heard we were leaving the country soon. None of those things - wearing a USA shirt, waving a US flag, or wearing a flag pin - am I prone to do at home. I suppose the more you know your country, the more you are apt to have conflicting feelings about it.

Still, I do think it’s kind of nuts to mandate the flag display. I appreciate that, back home, I have a choice whether or not I fly the flag on July 4, and that choice won’t cause me to break the law or my bank account.

A music man in the making

Like any two year old, Simon likes to say "no". A LOT. At first, I joked with him that maybe his name was really No-mon instead of Sí-mon (As in “yes”-mon, except that in Spanish, his name gets an accent later: Simón). He thought that was funny and called himself that on occasions, with a big smile.

And then we graduated to "No, Mommy! No, Mommy!" That gets tiring after awhile, so I started singing “No Mommy” back to him as the refrain of El Debarge’s 80s hit “Who’s Johnny”, with some edits to make the song relevant to our circumstances. Simon liked it and would suggest variations for me to sing: No Daddy, No Dieuwe, No Bow-Wow, etc. Watch the video for Who's Johnny on YouTube for a blast from the past; it is hilarious. And then follow that up with Rhythm of the Night; it's even better! El Debarge's hair there reminds me of a certain track coach back in high school...

While I haven’t heard “Who’s Johnny” while in Peru, I should have: 80s music is super prevalent here! I’ve heard more UB40 in the last two months than I have in the last 20 years. 80s music is on the buses, the radio, the streets. I had been hoping to learn more about Peruvian musicians just by soaking up the ambient music, but instead I’m reliving parts of my adolescence as I sing along with Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, Depeche Mode, Michael Jackson, Men at Work, The Police, a-ha, and Duran Duran, to name but a few. 

We eventually expanded our musical repertoire by singing “No Mommy” to the tune of Dona Nobis Pacem. We have since brought the tune of Frere Jacques into the fold as well. Simon’s even finally branched out to Heads Shoulders Knees and Toes and the Itsy Bitsy Spider, and really dances his heart out when Sam sings variations on "The Twist".

It’s fun seeing Simon sing his own music, dance with zero inhibitions, bang on the drum, pluck on Sam’s guitar strings, or just groove to music in his head, always with the words "No Mommy!" I can live with that.