Update on the U/Alianza game.
Apparently after we left the game, in the last few minutes, a couple of Universitario fans pushed an Alianza fan out of one of the boxes at the stadium. They had videos of the guys who did it and the guy that got pushed, before it happened, but not of the actual event (or at least not released).
The guy fell 10 meters, landed on the cement and died on his way to the hospital. Then the guys that did it fled the country and went to the U.S. But I saw in the paper today that one of them (at least) is back in Peru. Here's a link I just found from the NY Daily News.
Crazy stuff.
http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/the_beautiful_blog/2011/09/fan-thrown-to-his-death-during-universitario-alianza-lima-derby-in-peru
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
A week off school? Gracias!
Good News!
I got my paper done. It was shit, but at least it was 4 pages of it. (double spaced of course, and in Cambria font, which adds about 1/2 a page to essays without looking much different from Times).
Yesterday I had another paper due, but it was much shorter. I also had all of yesterday afternoon off, which I should've spent studying for my Quechua midterm today, but I did no such thing.
First I baked cookies. I found a recipe for hershey's kisses cookies on the internet, where you put the kisses in the middle and put a ball of dough around them. I didn't feel like walking all the way to the real grocery store, so I just went around the bodega's until I found a big box of Nestle Princesas. They're little chocolate squares with peanut butter in the middle.
I'll explain the bodega situation of Lima a little bit. They're everywhere. If you stand on any corner in Lima and turn 360 degrees, you'll probably see at least 3 bodegas. They usually have a yellow sign that says D'Onofrio (a brand of ice cream bars) or Inka Cola (Peruvian pop) or a red sign that says Claro (a brand of cell phone, meaning you can buy minutes for your Claro there). They sell drinks, snacks, and some basic grocery items. Some have fruit. Some are bakeries as well. There's also a lot of portable stands set up in the street. Some sell magazines and newspapers, some sell toilet paper, some sell drinks like emoliente, maca, or chicha morada, some sell food like picarones (fried dough with a sweet syrup) or sandwiches. So basically, wherever you are, if you're hungry or thirsty you don't have to look far. Which is really nice, and they're cheap too. So a bottle of water only costs a sol or S./ 1.50 (which is about 50 cents).
So I got all my ingredients and made some cookies.
Then, it turns out it was Olga and Juan Luis's tutor's birthday, and since he's in the university now and away from his family, they bought a cake for him, and we celebrated at the house a little.
With my blood sugar at dangerously high levels, I tried to study a little bit for Quechua. Which consisted of me sitting in my room counting to myself. I think it took me about 5 minutes to go from 1 to 20.
At 10, Dawn, Jorge, and Zach came over for movie night. We ordered some pizza, Raquel opened her pisco wine, and Jorge brought a bottle of wine. All 3 dozen of my cookies were already gone by the time Zach showed up. I guess that means the family liked them!
We watched "La Fiesta del Chivo." Zach had to watch it for one of his classes. It was about Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. So it was pretty intense.
After that we needed something a little lighter, so we watched the new episode of Two and a Half Men with Ashton Kutcher in it. It reminded me of being home for the holidays with dad. :)
Today I stayed in school in between the breaks in my classes so that I could study for Quechua with my friend Carly. We got some lunch in the dining hall then went outside on the grass because it was sunny and gorgeous. I studied for a little bit, but it was just too tempting to take an afternoon nap in the sun, so I did that for a little bit, too.
The midterm didn't go great. The problem is, they didn't really tell us what was going to be on it. And we have a lot of random info on our notes and worksheets, so it was a little hard to know exactly what to study. For example, chicken. That was on the test. I don't remember ever learning how to say chicken in Quechua nor do I know why it would be more important than a word like water. Which I did study, and which wasn't on the test. We also had to do some sentences and translate some things, that I'm pretty sure I messed up. Good news is, I think there were quite a few people who studied even less than me, so maybe he'll go easy on the grading, since it's like 20% of our course grade.
But, that was my last class this week and next week is "Midterms Week" which apparently means the teachers aren't allowed to have classes. All I have is one midterm next week in Linguistics, on Wednesday and have the rest of the week off. So I'm trying to find someone else who has free time too, so I can do my volunteer Mon and Tues and have a 4 day travel weekend somewhere. Crossing my fingers!
I got my paper done. It was shit, but at least it was 4 pages of it. (double spaced of course, and in Cambria font, which adds about 1/2 a page to essays without looking much different from Times).
Yesterday I had another paper due, but it was much shorter. I also had all of yesterday afternoon off, which I should've spent studying for my Quechua midterm today, but I did no such thing.
First I baked cookies. I found a recipe for hershey's kisses cookies on the internet, where you put the kisses in the middle and put a ball of dough around them. I didn't feel like walking all the way to the real grocery store, so I just went around the bodega's until I found a big box of Nestle Princesas. They're little chocolate squares with peanut butter in the middle.
I'll explain the bodega situation of Lima a little bit. They're everywhere. If you stand on any corner in Lima and turn 360 degrees, you'll probably see at least 3 bodegas. They usually have a yellow sign that says D'Onofrio (a brand of ice cream bars) or Inka Cola (Peruvian pop) or a red sign that says Claro (a brand of cell phone, meaning you can buy minutes for your Claro there). They sell drinks, snacks, and some basic grocery items. Some have fruit. Some are bakeries as well. There's also a lot of portable stands set up in the street. Some sell magazines and newspapers, some sell toilet paper, some sell drinks like emoliente, maca, or chicha morada, some sell food like picarones (fried dough with a sweet syrup) or sandwiches. So basically, wherever you are, if you're hungry or thirsty you don't have to look far. Which is really nice, and they're cheap too. So a bottle of water only costs a sol or S./ 1.50 (which is about 50 cents).
So I got all my ingredients and made some cookies.
Then, it turns out it was Olga and Juan Luis's tutor's birthday, and since he's in the university now and away from his family, they bought a cake for him, and we celebrated at the house a little.
With my blood sugar at dangerously high levels, I tried to study a little bit for Quechua. Which consisted of me sitting in my room counting to myself. I think it took me about 5 minutes to go from 1 to 20.
At 10, Dawn, Jorge, and Zach came over for movie night. We ordered some pizza, Raquel opened her pisco wine, and Jorge brought a bottle of wine. All 3 dozen of my cookies were already gone by the time Zach showed up. I guess that means the family liked them!
We watched "La Fiesta del Chivo." Zach had to watch it for one of his classes. It was about Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. So it was pretty intense.
After that we needed something a little lighter, so we watched the new episode of Two and a Half Men with Ashton Kutcher in it. It reminded me of being home for the holidays with dad. :)
Today I stayed in school in between the breaks in my classes so that I could study for Quechua with my friend Carly. We got some lunch in the dining hall then went outside on the grass because it was sunny and gorgeous. I studied for a little bit, but it was just too tempting to take an afternoon nap in the sun, so I did that for a little bit, too.
The midterm didn't go great. The problem is, they didn't really tell us what was going to be on it. And we have a lot of random info on our notes and worksheets, so it was a little hard to know exactly what to study. For example, chicken. That was on the test. I don't remember ever learning how to say chicken in Quechua nor do I know why it would be more important than a word like water. Which I did study, and which wasn't on the test. We also had to do some sentences and translate some things, that I'm pretty sure I messed up. Good news is, I think there were quite a few people who studied even less than me, so maybe he'll go easy on the grading, since it's like 20% of our course grade.
But, that was my last class this week and next week is "Midterms Week" which apparently means the teachers aren't allowed to have classes. All I have is one midterm next week in Linguistics, on Wednesday and have the rest of the week off. So I'm trying to find someone else who has free time too, so I can do my volunteer Mon and Tues and have a 4 day travel weekend somewhere. Crossing my fingers!
Sunday, September 25, 2011
I'd like a Study Abroad, hold the 'study' please
Friday was the "Dia de la Primavera" and "Dia de la Amistad," (Day of Spring/ Friendship) so the elementary school had a spring celebration. The first hour, the kids had P.E. while the teacher had a meeting with parents, so I went out and watched the P.E. class. They were playing a 4th grade version of handball, and it was getting pretty intense. I think the competitive spirit is valued here, and the fistfights that broke out just reaffirmed that for me. Some of the girls didn't want to play, so they sat with me on the sidelines and complemented each other's clothes (since it was a fun day they got to wear street clothes instead of their usual uniforms), made fun of each other for being short/having small feet, argued about who was the bigger gossip, etc. Fourth grade girls are the same everywhere I suppose.
The meeting with the parents was still going on after P.E. got over, so I sat in on the last part of it. It was fun seeing some of the parents. There was one mother who's child is the bane of my existence, but she actually looked really mean and strict, so I'm guessing he doesn't try to pull the kind of stuff with her that he pulls with me.
I'd been practicing a song w/ my kids in English to sing for the spring celebration called "It's Springtime."It's pretty long, and they didn't quite get it down, but when we were doing the last minute rehearsals, and they were all actually trying, it sounded a lot better than I expected.
After recess, the celebration began. First, the preschoolers did their presentation. They had a little girl dressed in a pretty white dress with flowers and ringlets in her hair come to the front and recite a poem into the microphone, while her classmates, dressed as the sun, bumblebees, birds and flowers, danced around her. It was one of the most adorable things I've ever seen.
Then the 4th grade-A class (the one Nichole teaches) sang their spring song, "Mr. Sun." We were up next. They kind of butchered the lyrics, but I don't think a lot of people there speak English, so I don't think they could really tell.
Afterwards, a clown came out and did a little routine for the kids. Then it was time for the Hora Loca. The Hora Loca (crazy hour) is a thing they do here at the discotecas where they bring out crazy jester hats and balloons and stuff like that and you dance.
For the Hora Loca at the elementary school, they brought out a bunch of balloons, a guy dressed in a giant dog costume and a guy in stilts who danced around and sprayed a type of silly string stuff that looked like artificial snow onto everyone's heads. It was pretty cool. All the kids were dancing around the guy in stilts and having a blast. Then they had a dance contest between the 4th-A class and the preschoolers. There was a girl and a boy from 4th-A dancing together and it was clear that she has seen a few Shakira videos because she was movin' her hips and shakin' her booty. It was hilarious. Then they put a reggaeton song on and the preschoolers started busting some serious moves. It was hilarious.
The celebration got over around noon so we got to leave a little bit early.
Nichole went back to my house with me so that we could go to Metro and get some tickets for the soccer game.
Along with Raquel and Dawn, we decided that it would be a nice afternoon to go to a little wine bar that Joel told us about that was close to our house. It's the oldest bar in Jesus Maria (that's my district in case you haven't been paying attention). We planned to go there around 5:30 so I could get back at a decent time to start my mountain of homework. But you know how things go. We ended up getting there around 6:30, and it was packed. So instead we went to a restaurant around the block owned by the same people. It was Raquel, Dawn, Nichole, Hannah, Ren, Ren's host brother Oscar, and me. We shared a couple pitchers of sangria, and ordered some food. I ordered the palta rellena, an avocado, peeled and sliced in half and stuffed with chicken salad. It was probably the most delicious thing I've had since I got here. After another cocktail, we walked back and ended up getting home around 9:45.
My homework for this weekend consisted of me reading 150 pages in Spanish, 30 pages in English, watching a 2 1/2 hour movie, (all of these are about the Amazonian rubber boom) and then writing a 5-pg paper about all that. For my other class I also have to read a chapter in English about the Tupi-Guarani language family. All this is due Monday.
It's also really difficult to get anything done when you're busy drinking sangria and going to soccer games.
So last night I read about 10 pages of the English article and then couldn't keep my eyes open any longer and fell asleep.
Today I got up around 8:30 and sat in my room all morning reading. Well, at least until about 1, when the internet stopped working and the pages of the article stopped loading.
At 3:30 Hannah, Nichole, and Carlin came over and a little later all of us, along with Raquel, grabbed a taxi and headed to the Estadio Monumental to watch the soccer game between Universitario and Alianza, 2 rival teams in Lima.
The cab got as close as he could, but they had closed off the streets around the stadium so we had to walk a ways to get there. There were police everywhere, on foot with riot shields and clubs, on horseback, on motorcycle...
We were in the section for Oriente and kept having to ask where to go to get into the stadium because it was kind of confusing and chaotic. One of the police pointed to the line and so we started walking towards the end of it. The problem was, it didn't end. The other problem was, we were pretty much the only gringas there, and Hannah is like 6 ft tall and blonde, so we stood out. So all the guys in this incredibly long line that we had to walk past, were whistling and catcalling us. That's a normal thing in Peru anyways. When you're walking down the street it's typical for a guy (no matter how old he is) to say something like "hello, beautiful lady" or, in my case something about my eyes (blue eyes are out of the ordinary here). But the level of catcalling we experienced walking through this line was ridiculous. And it's really funny, some of the things they shout at you in English, so you had to laugh, but it only encouraged them. Finally, after about 5 minutes of walking, we found the end of the line. But when we got there, a cop asked us what section we were in and told us that we were at the wrong line. Ummmm.....are you serious? So we had to turn around and walk back. Like a bunch of gringa idiots with no clue what's going on. But maybe this time it wouldn't be so bad, because they had their backs to us. Wrong. It was still pretty bad.
After speedwalking back through that line, we found the right line. Which was right where we had come in in the first place. We made it through the security and the 5 different gates. (Sidenote: they made people take off their belts and leave them in a pile when they were doing the security check, and later when we were leaving the game, some guys were stealing all the nice belts to sell on the street.)
We got to the stadium and found some good seats right in time for the game to start.
Earlier, we had asked Manuel who to cheer for and he said Universitario, so we sat on their side. It was so much fun. People were going crazy and doing cheers, they were setting off smoke bombs and flares (in the audience, right by other people waving gigantic flags, which I would think to be a fire hazard) and there was confetti raining down on us. There was some crazy fights that broke out over in the Alianza section, which was pretty crazy to watch. Universitario scored the first goal, but Alianza got one not too long after. It was tied for quite a while, and at 7, 1/2 hour before the game would finish, Hannah, Nichole, and Carlin decided to go. Raquel and I stuck around a little longer, but at 7:15 it looked like a pretty big crowd was leaving so we decided we better head out to beat the rush. We got some jerseys for souvenirs on the way out. As we were walking we heard cheering and someone said la U had scored another goal, so yay! We won!
We knew that catching a cab would be difficult, but we saw a bus that said it was going to Arequipa, which is a street we know, so we decided to hop on. If it took us to the wrong spot, at least we would be away from the stadium and would have a better chance of catching a cab.
The stadium was in La Molina, which is a district I'd never been to before, so the bus ride was pretty interesting. La Molina is probably the most upscale district, followed by San Isidro and Miraflores. There were some really nice looking car dealerships, and shopping centers. Along with a lot of American fast food and restaurants like Chili's and Starbucks. We recognized some stuff from the cab ride there, so we knew we were on the right track. After a while the guy who collects fares walked back and asked us where we were going. We said Arequipa and he said we'd passed it already. He asked where we needed to go and we said Jesus Maria, and he told us to get off at 28 de Julio. Luckily I go past that on my way to the elementary school so I knew there would be a combi that would take us home.
When we got home I continued my reading. It basically seemed impossible for me to read 100 pgs in Spanish and write 5 pgs before Monday, but when I got online to look at the syllabus to figure out how much this would hurt my grade, I also saw that he had posted an extended bibliography of sources we could use for our paper. Among them was a 30 pg article in English that I'm able to access full-text through the UNL library website. So I think I'll trade that in for the 100 page Spanish one. Thank you Jesus!! That's a huge relief. So now I feel a little less guilty for ditching homework in favor of wine and futbol.
The meeting with the parents was still going on after P.E. got over, so I sat in on the last part of it. It was fun seeing some of the parents. There was one mother who's child is the bane of my existence, but she actually looked really mean and strict, so I'm guessing he doesn't try to pull the kind of stuff with her that he pulls with me.
I'd been practicing a song w/ my kids in English to sing for the spring celebration called "It's Springtime."It's pretty long, and they didn't quite get it down, but when we were doing the last minute rehearsals, and they were all actually trying, it sounded a lot better than I expected.
After recess, the celebration began. First, the preschoolers did their presentation. They had a little girl dressed in a pretty white dress with flowers and ringlets in her hair come to the front and recite a poem into the microphone, while her classmates, dressed as the sun, bumblebees, birds and flowers, danced around her. It was one of the most adorable things I've ever seen.
Then the 4th grade-A class (the one Nichole teaches) sang their spring song, "Mr. Sun." We were up next. They kind of butchered the lyrics, but I don't think a lot of people there speak English, so I don't think they could really tell.
Afterwards, a clown came out and did a little routine for the kids. Then it was time for the Hora Loca. The Hora Loca (crazy hour) is a thing they do here at the discotecas where they bring out crazy jester hats and balloons and stuff like that and you dance.
For the Hora Loca at the elementary school, they brought out a bunch of balloons, a guy dressed in a giant dog costume and a guy in stilts who danced around and sprayed a type of silly string stuff that looked like artificial snow onto everyone's heads. It was pretty cool. All the kids were dancing around the guy in stilts and having a blast. Then they had a dance contest between the 4th-A class and the preschoolers. There was a girl and a boy from 4th-A dancing together and it was clear that she has seen a few Shakira videos because she was movin' her hips and shakin' her booty. It was hilarious. Then they put a reggaeton song on and the preschoolers started busting some serious moves. It was hilarious.
The celebration got over around noon so we got to leave a little bit early.
Nichole went back to my house with me so that we could go to Metro and get some tickets for the soccer game.
Along with Raquel and Dawn, we decided that it would be a nice afternoon to go to a little wine bar that Joel told us about that was close to our house. It's the oldest bar in Jesus Maria (that's my district in case you haven't been paying attention). We planned to go there around 5:30 so I could get back at a decent time to start my mountain of homework. But you know how things go. We ended up getting there around 6:30, and it was packed. So instead we went to a restaurant around the block owned by the same people. It was Raquel, Dawn, Nichole, Hannah, Ren, Ren's host brother Oscar, and me. We shared a couple pitchers of sangria, and ordered some food. I ordered the palta rellena, an avocado, peeled and sliced in half and stuffed with chicken salad. It was probably the most delicious thing I've had since I got here. After another cocktail, we walked back and ended up getting home around 9:45.
My homework for this weekend consisted of me reading 150 pages in Spanish, 30 pages in English, watching a 2 1/2 hour movie, (all of these are about the Amazonian rubber boom) and then writing a 5-pg paper about all that. For my other class I also have to read a chapter in English about the Tupi-Guarani language family. All this is due Monday.
It's also really difficult to get anything done when you're busy drinking sangria and going to soccer games.
So last night I read about 10 pages of the English article and then couldn't keep my eyes open any longer and fell asleep.
Today I got up around 8:30 and sat in my room all morning reading. Well, at least until about 1, when the internet stopped working and the pages of the article stopped loading.
At 3:30 Hannah, Nichole, and Carlin came over and a little later all of us, along with Raquel, grabbed a taxi and headed to the Estadio Monumental to watch the soccer game between Universitario and Alianza, 2 rival teams in Lima.
The cab got as close as he could, but they had closed off the streets around the stadium so we had to walk a ways to get there. There were police everywhere, on foot with riot shields and clubs, on horseback, on motorcycle...
We were in the section for Oriente and kept having to ask where to go to get into the stadium because it was kind of confusing and chaotic. One of the police pointed to the line and so we started walking towards the end of it. The problem was, it didn't end. The other problem was, we were pretty much the only gringas there, and Hannah is like 6 ft tall and blonde, so we stood out. So all the guys in this incredibly long line that we had to walk past, were whistling and catcalling us. That's a normal thing in Peru anyways. When you're walking down the street it's typical for a guy (no matter how old he is) to say something like "hello, beautiful lady" or, in my case something about my eyes (blue eyes are out of the ordinary here). But the level of catcalling we experienced walking through this line was ridiculous. And it's really funny, some of the things they shout at you in English, so you had to laugh, but it only encouraged them. Finally, after about 5 minutes of walking, we found the end of the line. But when we got there, a cop asked us what section we were in and told us that we were at the wrong line. Ummmm.....are you serious? So we had to turn around and walk back. Like a bunch of gringa idiots with no clue what's going on. But maybe this time it wouldn't be so bad, because they had their backs to us. Wrong. It was still pretty bad.
After speedwalking back through that line, we found the right line. Which was right where we had come in in the first place. We made it through the security and the 5 different gates. (Sidenote: they made people take off their belts and leave them in a pile when they were doing the security check, and later when we were leaving the game, some guys were stealing all the nice belts to sell on the street.)
We got to the stadium and found some good seats right in time for the game to start.
Earlier, we had asked Manuel who to cheer for and he said Universitario, so we sat on their side. It was so much fun. People were going crazy and doing cheers, they were setting off smoke bombs and flares (in the audience, right by other people waving gigantic flags, which I would think to be a fire hazard) and there was confetti raining down on us. There was some crazy fights that broke out over in the Alianza section, which was pretty crazy to watch. Universitario scored the first goal, but Alianza got one not too long after. It was tied for quite a while, and at 7, 1/2 hour before the game would finish, Hannah, Nichole, and Carlin decided to go. Raquel and I stuck around a little longer, but at 7:15 it looked like a pretty big crowd was leaving so we decided we better head out to beat the rush. We got some jerseys for souvenirs on the way out. As we were walking we heard cheering and someone said la U had scored another goal, so yay! We won!
We knew that catching a cab would be difficult, but we saw a bus that said it was going to Arequipa, which is a street we know, so we decided to hop on. If it took us to the wrong spot, at least we would be away from the stadium and would have a better chance of catching a cab.
The stadium was in La Molina, which is a district I'd never been to before, so the bus ride was pretty interesting. La Molina is probably the most upscale district, followed by San Isidro and Miraflores. There were some really nice looking car dealerships, and shopping centers. Along with a lot of American fast food and restaurants like Chili's and Starbucks. We recognized some stuff from the cab ride there, so we knew we were on the right track. After a while the guy who collects fares walked back and asked us where we were going. We said Arequipa and he said we'd passed it already. He asked where we needed to go and we said Jesus Maria, and he told us to get off at 28 de Julio. Luckily I go past that on my way to the elementary school so I knew there would be a combi that would take us home.
When we got home I continued my reading. It basically seemed impossible for me to read 100 pgs in Spanish and write 5 pgs before Monday, but when I got online to look at the syllabus to figure out how much this would hurt my grade, I also saw that he had posted an extended bibliography of sources we could use for our paper. Among them was a 30 pg article in English that I'm able to access full-text through the UNL library website. So I think I'll trade that in for the 100 page Spanish one. Thank you Jesus!! That's a huge relief. So now I feel a little less guilty for ditching homework in favor of wine and futbol.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Gringo Fiesta at the English Pub - now I feel integrated
Here's the highlights of my past couple days.
I got my first manicure Tuesday night! Raquel and I went to the salon across the street and I got a mani and she got a mani-pedi. Total cost? 50 soles. Or 20 dollars. That's what I'm talkin' bout girrrfriend!
Yesterday I had to give my presentation for Linguistica Amazonica. It first he told me to do it in English, but then when I double checked with him last week, he decided maybe it would be better for me to do my powerpoint in English and talk in Spanish. The class is 2 hours long, and my powerpoint presentation over the Tupi language family was the only topic we were discussing. So I was hoping it would involve a lot of him interrupting and adding stuff, to fill up the time and luckily it did. So it wasn't too bad at all. The text that it was over was in English, so I basically just had to pick out the main points and put them in a powerpoint and then translate it into Spanish. I was kind of nervous because I'm the only gringa in the class and I was the first one to do the presentation, but at least I got it over with!
During last night's Quechua class I learned that we have a midterm next week. How do you say "Oh, shit!" in Quechua?
I also have a 5-pg paper due Monday, a 1-2 pg paper due Tuesday. This is definitely making up for the previous slacker weeks.
Last night, about 4 different universities in Lima hosted an international student party at the English Pub in Miraflores. They had special invitations printed and everything. Raquel's university, Universidad del Pacifico was doing it too, so we decided to go. We went with a couple other exchange students, Dawn, Susannah, and Mary as well.
The whole idea was a little entertaining. Apparently it was an "integration" activity, but only integration with other Europeans and Americans, and what's more, in an English Pub. It was really fun, though. And we were able to trade our invitations for a pitcher of beer! (The pitchers here are smaller than in America, but it was still a pretty good deal!) By the end of the night, they were giving us free pitchers. I'm not really sure why. Apparently they thought it was a good idea to give a bunch of German, Dutch and American college boys free beer. Why not?
We ended up getting home around 2:45, so I got a good 4 hours of sleep before having to go volunteer today. I actually felt better than I expected though, and today was a pretty easy day. After recess, they had part of their spring celebration, so we just went out to the basketball court and watched the different classes have bicycle races.
Then Nichole and I went to la Catolica for the weekly ISA meeting. That took awhile, and finally at 3 we got some lunch on campus. After that we headed to Polvos Azules because I needed to get Fitzcarraldo, a movie that I'm supposed to write my paper about the rubber boom for my Amazonian Ethnography class. I got it! Along with season 2 of Modern Family and Hip Hop Abs (pretty excited about that one). I was smarter this time though, and had him test Fitzcarraldo out on the TV to make sure it worked, and grabbed the cards for the other guys in case some of the discs didn't work. Fool me once!
I got my first manicure Tuesday night! Raquel and I went to the salon across the street and I got a mani and she got a mani-pedi. Total cost? 50 soles. Or 20 dollars. That's what I'm talkin' bout girrrfriend!
Yesterday I had to give my presentation for Linguistica Amazonica. It first he told me to do it in English, but then when I double checked with him last week, he decided maybe it would be better for me to do my powerpoint in English and talk in Spanish. The class is 2 hours long, and my powerpoint presentation over the Tupi language family was the only topic we were discussing. So I was hoping it would involve a lot of him interrupting and adding stuff, to fill up the time and luckily it did. So it wasn't too bad at all. The text that it was over was in English, so I basically just had to pick out the main points and put them in a powerpoint and then translate it into Spanish. I was kind of nervous because I'm the only gringa in the class and I was the first one to do the presentation, but at least I got it over with!
During last night's Quechua class I learned that we have a midterm next week. How do you say "Oh, shit!" in Quechua?
I also have a 5-pg paper due Monday, a 1-2 pg paper due Tuesday. This is definitely making up for the previous slacker weeks.
Last night, about 4 different universities in Lima hosted an international student party at the English Pub in Miraflores. They had special invitations printed and everything. Raquel's university, Universidad del Pacifico was doing it too, so we decided to go. We went with a couple other exchange students, Dawn, Susannah, and Mary as well.
The whole idea was a little entertaining. Apparently it was an "integration" activity, but only integration with other Europeans and Americans, and what's more, in an English Pub. It was really fun, though. And we were able to trade our invitations for a pitcher of beer! (The pitchers here are smaller than in America, but it was still a pretty good deal!) By the end of the night, they were giving us free pitchers. I'm not really sure why. Apparently they thought it was a good idea to give a bunch of German, Dutch and American college boys free beer. Why not?
We ended up getting home around 2:45, so I got a good 4 hours of sleep before having to go volunteer today. I actually felt better than I expected though, and today was a pretty easy day. After recess, they had part of their spring celebration, so we just went out to the basketball court and watched the different classes have bicycle races.
Then Nichole and I went to la Catolica for the weekly ISA meeting. That took awhile, and finally at 3 we got some lunch on campus. After that we headed to Polvos Azules because I needed to get Fitzcarraldo, a movie that I'm supposed to write my paper about the rubber boom for my Amazonian Ethnography class. I got it! Along with season 2 of Modern Family and Hip Hop Abs (pretty excited about that one). I was smarter this time though, and had him test Fitzcarraldo out on the TV to make sure it worked, and grabbed the cards for the other guys in case some of the discs didn't work. Fool me once!
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Ica and Paracas
This weekend was our second to last group excursion. We travelled southward down the coast to the desert.
We left at 7 on Saturday morning and took spent about 4 hours in the bus until we got to the lagoon "La Huacachina." They piled us into dune buggies and we were off. The dune buggies were so much fun. It was like riding a rollercoaster. The sand dunes were much higher than I had imagined and we were going pretty fast, up, down and around them. We stopped at the top of a dune, and got out the sandboards. We laid down on our stomaches, put our feet up in the air, and held on. The boards went down pretty fast and the hills were really high, so it was like ultimate sledding. On the third one I tried going down on my butt, which ended in my rolling over a few times.
The desert was gorgeous, and it was a perfect day with clear blue skies.
After we were done sandboarding, they took us back to the lagoon in the dunebuggies, and we stopped to eat the restaurant across the street.
I went on the bus to grab my purse to take in the restaurant. I was in a pretty great mood after all that, and wasn't really being as cautious as I should, so I hung my purse over my chair. There were about 40 of us ISA students at the table, and there was a girl sitting beside me on the side my purse was on, and people looking at me from across the table. Plus, the restaurant wasn't too busy, there were just a couple other families of tourists in there, and our ISA guides were sitting at a table where they could see me, so I didn't feel like there was too much risk of my stuff getting stolen.
Unfortunately I was very wrong.
Towards the end of dinner, the waitress came up to me and said "Ma'am, your purse is on the floor." I picked it up and put it on my lap. The outer pouch was open, but I didn't think anything of it, because all I keep in there is chapstick, and I figured I had just left the button undone.
Then, when we got in the bus and were ready to drive away, I went to take my camera out of my purse to take a picture. It wasn't there, so I looked in my backpack. It wasn't there either, and I thought, "Did someone steal it?" Then I thought I was just being paranoid, but I looked in my purse and realized all my money was gone. I had had about 250 soles (~$100). I went up to Andy and Jose Luis, the ISA guys, and told them all my stuff was gone. Andy went with me back into the restaurant and we told the owner. At first they didn't believe me, because it obviously doesn't seem likely that someone would have been able to get in my zipped up purse, then get to the zipped up inner pouch where all my money was, without anyone aware of what was going on. They thought I had just "misplaced" S./ 250 or that I had let my stuff fall out of my purse, yet somehow, my kleenexes and pen and stuff magically stayed in. Finally I convinced them that my purse did not magically unzip itself (twice), cough up all my valuables, and then zip itself back up. Someone definitely stole it.
The restaurant owner said he didn't know how this could have possibly happened because he had had a perfect view of where I was sitting and would have seen it, and "this sort of thing just doesn't happen in his restaurant." Well, sir, it did. And I'm pretty sure one of his employees did it, because they could have easily grabbed it without us noticing while they were serving our food, then threw it back on the floor by my feet when they came back.
But there was nothing we could do, and the owner said he would call if he heard or found anything.
So I got back on the bus, thanking god that at least they didn't jack my passport (we have to bring our original passports on every trip to check into the hotel). In the end, a camera and $100 bucks isn't that bad. It could have been a lot worse. I'll just take pics of the trip with my ipod like I did in Machu Picchu.
Oh wait.
My ipod was also in my purse. Along with my cell phone.
It just got a lot worse.
Luckily, I was on an amazing vacation, so after my initial breakdown, it was easy enough to put it out of my mind for the rest of the weekend.
We checked into an amazing hotel called the Hotel Las Dunas. They changed up the rooms this time, so I roomed with Raquel instead of Leah. The hotel had everything you could imagine. A giant chess set, horses, chickens, a llama, a castle, a pool with a waterslide, a rock climbing wall and a sand dune with sandboards. I decided that I could use a drink, so Dawn, Raquel, and I walked to the bodega to get some cartons of sangria (because we're classy) and a box of chocolate. With this in hand, we climbed to the top of the dune to watch the sunset. It was gorgeous. You could see the whole city of Ica.
After the sun started going down, we got a little chilly so we hopped down the dune, probably one of my favorite things to do, and went to our hotel room, where we warmed up and watched some Project Runway until it was time to meet up for dinner.
They took us to a mall for dinner, so we got some Pizza Hut. Then we headed back to the hotel, and after watching some more reality TV, we decided we were tired, and we went to bed.
This morning, we went to breakfast at the hotel, out by the pool. They had a delicious breakfast spread, so we filled up, stealthily stole some bread, then boarded the bus. We drove about an hour and a half to Paracas. From there we got on a boat, and it took us to the Ballestas Islands.
On the way, we got to see the "candelabro" geoglyph on the side of one of the hills.
They're not sure about it's origins, but it is really cool.
Then we went to the Ballestas Islands. They're small islands filled with wildlife. Tourists aren't allowed to go on the islands, but we rode the boat around them.
They are filled with birds, and as soon as we started getting close, the smell became overwhelming. Anyone who's every had a parakeet knows that one bird smells bad, so imagine and island full of seagulls, pelicans, boobies, and all of their shit. It was not pleasant, but it was definitely worth it. Besides the birds, you could also see sea lions and penguins. The penguins were tiny and adorable and the sea lions were even adorable-er. They were all laying on the rocks, basking in the sun, and we even saw a baby seal nursing. It was pretty cool to see sea lions and penguins in their natural habitat instead of in a zoo. The sea lions are pretty hilarious, too, itching their neck with their fins like a dog, scooting up the rocks, and barking at each other.
The islands themselves were gorgeous, too. They were rocky with lots of arcs and cliffs.
One thing that worried me about the boat ride was the amount of birds flying above us and my lack of head protection. Luckily, I was not one of the unfortunate two to get pooped on.
Luckily for Peru, that poop is valuable stuff. It's called guano, and it's excellent fertilizer. During the 19th century, they exported it to England and France, and after the war with Chile, it helped Peru pay off it's national debt. Unfortunately, they made the Chinese immigrants do all the dirty work of packing and working with the Guano, paying them next to nothing, because it was a job that no one else was willing to do.
Just as I thought I wouldn't be able to handle the smell anymore, we headed back to shore.
We stopped for lunch at a little restaurant on the beach, and they served us family style, bringing out pitchers of chicha morada, and platters of different kinds of food, so we got to try a little of it all. It included the dish we had had at the first restaurant, which was potatoes and meat in a red sauce that tasted kind of chili-like, with spaghetti. They also brought out chicharrones (battered and fried fish), fried yucca (my fave), ceviche, seafood rice, beans, salad, and seco (beef in a cilantro sauce).
After that we had time to shop around in the markets. I had like 10 people offering to lend me money, but luckily there wasn't much I wanted to buy.
At 2:30 we got back into the bus to head home. I slept most of the way back, and we got home around 6:30. I had thought I had left my credit card and debit card at home, after a mental debate about whether or not I would need them, but when I looked in my room I couldn't find them anywhere so they must have been in my purse.
This just keeps getting better and better.
So I called Wells Fargo and Capital One on skype to cancel my cards, and luckily I have backups, so they don't need to worry about sending me new ones in Peru.
I guess I learned my lesson. I'll definitely keep an eye on my stuff at all times no matter where I'm at.
We left at 7 on Saturday morning and took spent about 4 hours in the bus until we got to the lagoon "La Huacachina." They piled us into dune buggies and we were off. The dune buggies were so much fun. It was like riding a rollercoaster. The sand dunes were much higher than I had imagined and we were going pretty fast, up, down and around them. We stopped at the top of a dune, and got out the sandboards. We laid down on our stomaches, put our feet up in the air, and held on. The boards went down pretty fast and the hills were really high, so it was like ultimate sledding. On the third one I tried going down on my butt, which ended in my rolling over a few times.
The desert was gorgeous, and it was a perfect day with clear blue skies.
After we were done sandboarding, they took us back to the lagoon in the dunebuggies, and we stopped to eat the restaurant across the street.
I went on the bus to grab my purse to take in the restaurant. I was in a pretty great mood after all that, and wasn't really being as cautious as I should, so I hung my purse over my chair. There were about 40 of us ISA students at the table, and there was a girl sitting beside me on the side my purse was on, and people looking at me from across the table. Plus, the restaurant wasn't too busy, there were just a couple other families of tourists in there, and our ISA guides were sitting at a table where they could see me, so I didn't feel like there was too much risk of my stuff getting stolen.
Unfortunately I was very wrong.
Towards the end of dinner, the waitress came up to me and said "Ma'am, your purse is on the floor." I picked it up and put it on my lap. The outer pouch was open, but I didn't think anything of it, because all I keep in there is chapstick, and I figured I had just left the button undone.
Then, when we got in the bus and were ready to drive away, I went to take my camera out of my purse to take a picture. It wasn't there, so I looked in my backpack. It wasn't there either, and I thought, "Did someone steal it?" Then I thought I was just being paranoid, but I looked in my purse and realized all my money was gone. I had had about 250 soles (~$100). I went up to Andy and Jose Luis, the ISA guys, and told them all my stuff was gone. Andy went with me back into the restaurant and we told the owner. At first they didn't believe me, because it obviously doesn't seem likely that someone would have been able to get in my zipped up purse, then get to the zipped up inner pouch where all my money was, without anyone aware of what was going on. They thought I had just "misplaced" S./ 250 or that I had let my stuff fall out of my purse, yet somehow, my kleenexes and pen and stuff magically stayed in. Finally I convinced them that my purse did not magically unzip itself (twice), cough up all my valuables, and then zip itself back up. Someone definitely stole it.
The restaurant owner said he didn't know how this could have possibly happened because he had had a perfect view of where I was sitting and would have seen it, and "this sort of thing just doesn't happen in his restaurant." Well, sir, it did. And I'm pretty sure one of his employees did it, because they could have easily grabbed it without us noticing while they were serving our food, then threw it back on the floor by my feet when they came back.
But there was nothing we could do, and the owner said he would call if he heard or found anything.
So I got back on the bus, thanking god that at least they didn't jack my passport (we have to bring our original passports on every trip to check into the hotel). In the end, a camera and $100 bucks isn't that bad. It could have been a lot worse. I'll just take pics of the trip with my ipod like I did in Machu Picchu.
Oh wait.
My ipod was also in my purse. Along with my cell phone.
It just got a lot worse.
Luckily, I was on an amazing vacation, so after my initial breakdown, it was easy enough to put it out of my mind for the rest of the weekend.
We checked into an amazing hotel called the Hotel Las Dunas. They changed up the rooms this time, so I roomed with Raquel instead of Leah. The hotel had everything you could imagine. A giant chess set, horses, chickens, a llama, a castle, a pool with a waterslide, a rock climbing wall and a sand dune with sandboards. I decided that I could use a drink, so Dawn, Raquel, and I walked to the bodega to get some cartons of sangria (because we're classy) and a box of chocolate. With this in hand, we climbed to the top of the dune to watch the sunset. It was gorgeous. You could see the whole city of Ica.
After the sun started going down, we got a little chilly so we hopped down the dune, probably one of my favorite things to do, and went to our hotel room, where we warmed up and watched some Project Runway until it was time to meet up for dinner.
They took us to a mall for dinner, so we got some Pizza Hut. Then we headed back to the hotel, and after watching some more reality TV, we decided we were tired, and we went to bed.
This morning, we went to breakfast at the hotel, out by the pool. They had a delicious breakfast spread, so we filled up, stealthily stole some bread, then boarded the bus. We drove about an hour and a half to Paracas. From there we got on a boat, and it took us to the Ballestas Islands.
On the way, we got to see the "candelabro" geoglyph on the side of one of the hills.
Then we went to the Ballestas Islands. They're small islands filled with wildlife. Tourists aren't allowed to go on the islands, but we rode the boat around them.
They are filled with birds, and as soon as we started getting close, the smell became overwhelming. Anyone who's every had a parakeet knows that one bird smells bad, so imagine and island full of seagulls, pelicans, boobies, and all of their shit. It was not pleasant, but it was definitely worth it. Besides the birds, you could also see sea lions and penguins. The penguins were tiny and adorable and the sea lions were even adorable-er. They were all laying on the rocks, basking in the sun, and we even saw a baby seal nursing. It was pretty cool to see sea lions and penguins in their natural habitat instead of in a zoo. The sea lions are pretty hilarious, too, itching their neck with their fins like a dog, scooting up the rocks, and barking at each other.
The islands themselves were gorgeous, too. They were rocky with lots of arcs and cliffs.
One thing that worried me about the boat ride was the amount of birds flying above us and my lack of head protection. Luckily, I was not one of the unfortunate two to get pooped on.
Luckily for Peru, that poop is valuable stuff. It's called guano, and it's excellent fertilizer. During the 19th century, they exported it to England and France, and after the war with Chile, it helped Peru pay off it's national debt. Unfortunately, they made the Chinese immigrants do all the dirty work of packing and working with the Guano, paying them next to nothing, because it was a job that no one else was willing to do.
Just as I thought I wouldn't be able to handle the smell anymore, we headed back to shore.
We stopped for lunch at a little restaurant on the beach, and they served us family style, bringing out pitchers of chicha morada, and platters of different kinds of food, so we got to try a little of it all. It included the dish we had had at the first restaurant, which was potatoes and meat in a red sauce that tasted kind of chili-like, with spaghetti. They also brought out chicharrones (battered and fried fish), fried yucca (my fave), ceviche, seafood rice, beans, salad, and seco (beef in a cilantro sauce).
After that we had time to shop around in the markets. I had like 10 people offering to lend me money, but luckily there wasn't much I wanted to buy.
At 2:30 we got back into the bus to head home. I slept most of the way back, and we got home around 6:30. I had thought I had left my credit card and debit card at home, after a mental debate about whether or not I would need them, but when I looked in my room I couldn't find them anywhere so they must have been in my purse.
This just keeps getting better and better.
So I called Wells Fargo and Capital One on skype to cancel my cards, and luckily I have backups, so they don't need to worry about sending me new ones in Peru.
I guess I learned my lesson. I'll definitely keep an eye on my stuff at all times no matter where I'm at.
Friday, September 16, 2011
Revenge of Mistura
I woke up this morning and my stomach was not happy with me. I felt pretty nauseous and gross, but I had a class at 9 where we were going out into the city and touring the public spaces of Lima, so I couldn't exactly miss it. So I showered and then laid in my bed as long as possible before I had to catch the bus.
First, our teacher took us in taxis to the Plaza de Bolivar, which is in front of the Congress and has a statue of Simon Bolivar. Apparently, the plaza just opened to the public 2 weeks ago, because it had been closed off for years for security of the congress.
Then we walked to the Plaza de Armas, which I've been to before. However, I did learn that even though the whole plaza looks like colonial architecture, it's all from the 19th century, and the only thing that's old in the plaza is the fountain in the middle, from the 17th century. (The church is older too, but it's been rebuilt a bunch of times after earthquakes.)
Our teacher pointed out how strange Lima is, because on the same block you can see colonial architecture, neo-classical, baroque, and modern structures with no aesthetic value whatsoever. It feels like there's no rhyme or reason to the city at all.
We walked to Chinatown (el Barrio Chino) next. He told us how the racism towards the Chinese is probably the worst out of any minority in Lima, at least historically.
Then we walked along a street that he said used to be really elegant and high class, and when he was a boy he used to wear his Sunday best whenever he went to that neighborhood, but now it's really decadent and he can't walk down the street at night without having like 3 hookers come up to him.
We ended the tour at the Plaza Dos de Mayo. A lot of the plazas are very similar to French architecture, with the round shape connecting important avenues, and the monument in the middle. I think it's cool that all the plazas seem to have their own color scheme as well. For example, all the buildings around the Plaza Dos de Mayo are blue, all the buildings around Plaza Bolognesi are orange, and all the buildings around the Plaza de Armas are yellow.
I was pretty excited to be done with the tour around 12:30 and to get in a taxi back to the university.
I had to go to the ISA office to pick my schedule up for Ica this weekend, so I hung out there for awhile and ate some saltines, and talked about Hoarders with the people hanging out there. (They get Hoarders and I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant in Peru!)
Then I headed home, had some tea, and took a much needed nap. When I woke up, Grandma had made me some soup and I felt good enough to eat it.
It's almost 11 and I pretty much feel back to my normal self, my muscles are just a little achy.
But I'll be ready to go to Ica tomorrow! It's in the desert and we're taking a 2-day excursion to go sandboarding and go to the Islas Ballestas where we can see some penguins and sea lions!
Then we walked to the Plaza de Armas, which I've been to before. However, I did learn that even though the whole plaza looks like colonial architecture, it's all from the 19th century, and the only thing that's old in the plaza is the fountain in the middle, from the 17th century. (The church is older too, but it's been rebuilt a bunch of times after earthquakes.)
Our teacher pointed out how strange Lima is, because on the same block you can see colonial architecture, neo-classical, baroque, and modern structures with no aesthetic value whatsoever. It feels like there's no rhyme or reason to the city at all.
We walked to Chinatown (el Barrio Chino) next. He told us how the racism towards the Chinese is probably the worst out of any minority in Lima, at least historically.
Then we walked along a street that he said used to be really elegant and high class, and when he was a boy he used to wear his Sunday best whenever he went to that neighborhood, but now it's really decadent and he can't walk down the street at night without having like 3 hookers come up to him.
We ended the tour at the Plaza Dos de Mayo. A lot of the plazas are very similar to French architecture, with the round shape connecting important avenues, and the monument in the middle. I think it's cool that all the plazas seem to have their own color scheme as well. For example, all the buildings around the Plaza Dos de Mayo are blue, all the buildings around Plaza Bolognesi are orange, and all the buildings around the Plaza de Armas are yellow.
I was pretty excited to be done with the tour around 12:30 and to get in a taxi back to the university.
I had to go to the ISA office to pick my schedule up for Ica this weekend, so I hung out there for awhile and ate some saltines, and talked about Hoarders with the people hanging out there. (They get Hoarders and I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant in Peru!)
Then I headed home, had some tea, and took a much needed nap. When I woke up, Grandma had made me some soup and I felt good enough to eat it.
It's almost 11 and I pretty much feel back to my normal self, my muscles are just a little achy.
But I'll be ready to go to Ica tomorrow! It's in the desert and we're taking a 2-day excursion to go sandboarding and go to the Islas Ballestas where we can see some penguins and sea lions!
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Yo amo RHCP y Mistura!
I should really be doing homework right now but I have so much to blog about!!
Wednesday:
Went to class from 11-1, then waited for Hannah and took the bus with her to my house at 2. My host mom's mom is in town visiting and she made a yummy lunch for us. Then we went to the bakery down the block for some dessert. While we were in there, 3 7-ft tall black guys walked in. I looked at them and thought "If they start speaking Spanish to each other, this will blow my mind." They started speaking English and heard us speaking English and we started talking. It turns out they play on a basketball team here and live in our neighborhood.
The hilarious thing is, everyone in Peru is about 5 feet tall. And there's not a lot of black people. So as we were standing outside the bakery, cars would drive by and just stare at them. Old women walking in to buy bread would look up at them, then turn around and look at us with expressions of astonishment on their faces. Everyone that walked down the streets would shamelessly stare. I thought I got stared at a lot because I'm pale, blue eyed and tall (compared to everyone else) but these guys must feel like they're in a zoo. They didn't speak much Spanish, and seemed pretty excited to have finally found some more Americans, so they're gonna facebook us and maybe we'll hang out.
Hannah, Raquel and I were going to be in the same section for the Red Hot Chili Peppers concert, so we were going to go together, but Hannah ordered her ticket over the internet so she had to go to Metro to pick up the real one. Raquel was going to sell the extra ticket to her friend from school, Jorge, so she was gonna meet up with him at UP (Universidad del Pacifico) while we went to Metro. However, when we got to Teleticket, they told Hannah she needed to have her credit card with her for verification before they would give her the ticket, so then we took the bus to her house to get it, took it back to Metro and got the ticket. Meanwhile, Raquel and Jorge went to the stadium to hold us a place in line because people had been camping out there since the day before and everyone was telling us we should at least get there by 4:30, and it was like 6:30.
So Hannah and I got on the bus to go to the stadium but the traffic was super slow because about 5 blocks from the stadium was the culinary fair Mistura. Finally we got there and found the gate that Raquel was at, but then we had to wait for Jose Luis because he was buying the other extra ticket from Raquel.
So while she waited, Hannah, Jorge and I went to grab a beer at a little bar. It was pretty fun. There was a TV in the bar playing back-to-back RHCP videos.
We came back and went in the gate. We saw a huuuge line, but luckily that was for a different section and our section had no line at all! The concert was in their giant soccer stadium and we had gotten tickets for the chairs instead of the floor. Good choice. At first we had to sit in chairs that were kind of spread apart, but then the guy in front of me turned around and said that we could have the chairs he was saving for his friends because they weren't coming so Hannah and I sat together and Raquel was right in front of us. That guy turned out being pretty cool. He spoke really good English and was there with his son, who was about our age. He even went and got our beers for us because he knew which stand to get them at where they were cheaper.
We ended up getting there after the opening band, The Foals, played. But I was alright with that because I youtube'd them and they were kind of lame.
Surprisingly, the concert was the one thing in this country that started on time. The band came out at 9:00 and played for about 2 hours. It was awesome! They were pretty far away, but it was still great.
They played some stuff from their new album, but also some classics, like Californication, Under the Bridge, Around the World...and they ended their encore with Give It Away.
It was great!!! So worth it. Afterwards, I got a 15 sole t-shirt from the people selling them on the street and then we tried to find a way home. Getting a taxi was not going to be an easy feat. The streets were crowded with people trying to flag taxis down and all of them were full. We started walking towards our house to see if a bus or an open taxi would come. It was like the twilight zone. It was the first time in Lima where I didn't have to just lift my arm and have a taxi parked in front of me within 10 seconds. Finally we hopped on a bus that took us about 8 blocks closer to our house, and then we walked some more until we got a taxi to take us home.
Wednesday:
Went to class from 11-1, then waited for Hannah and took the bus with her to my house at 2. My host mom's mom is in town visiting and she made a yummy lunch for us. Then we went to the bakery down the block for some dessert. While we were in there, 3 7-ft tall black guys walked in. I looked at them and thought "If they start speaking Spanish to each other, this will blow my mind." They started speaking English and heard us speaking English and we started talking. It turns out they play on a basketball team here and live in our neighborhood.
The hilarious thing is, everyone in Peru is about 5 feet tall. And there's not a lot of black people. So as we were standing outside the bakery, cars would drive by and just stare at them. Old women walking in to buy bread would look up at them, then turn around and look at us with expressions of astonishment on their faces. Everyone that walked down the streets would shamelessly stare. I thought I got stared at a lot because I'm pale, blue eyed and tall (compared to everyone else) but these guys must feel like they're in a zoo. They didn't speak much Spanish, and seemed pretty excited to have finally found some more Americans, so they're gonna facebook us and maybe we'll hang out.
Hannah, Raquel and I were going to be in the same section for the Red Hot Chili Peppers concert, so we were going to go together, but Hannah ordered her ticket over the internet so she had to go to Metro to pick up the real one. Raquel was going to sell the extra ticket to her friend from school, Jorge, so she was gonna meet up with him at UP (Universidad del Pacifico) while we went to Metro. However, when we got to Teleticket, they told Hannah she needed to have her credit card with her for verification before they would give her the ticket, so then we took the bus to her house to get it, took it back to Metro and got the ticket. Meanwhile, Raquel and Jorge went to the stadium to hold us a place in line because people had been camping out there since the day before and everyone was telling us we should at least get there by 4:30, and it was like 6:30.
So Hannah and I got on the bus to go to the stadium but the traffic was super slow because about 5 blocks from the stadium was the culinary fair Mistura. Finally we got there and found the gate that Raquel was at, but then we had to wait for Jose Luis because he was buying the other extra ticket from Raquel.
So while she waited, Hannah, Jorge and I went to grab a beer at a little bar. It was pretty fun. There was a TV in the bar playing back-to-back RHCP videos.
We ended up getting there after the opening band, The Foals, played. But I was alright with that because I youtube'd them and they were kind of lame.
Surprisingly, the concert was the one thing in this country that started on time. The band came out at 9:00 and played for about 2 hours. It was awesome! They were pretty far away, but it was still great.
 |
| Flea in his chullo. He even busted out some Spanish! |
Thursday (today)
Woke up at 6:45. Was not happy about that.
Went to the elem school. The kids were actually really well behaved during my class but they made up for that in the 20 minutes after recess when the teacher was late coming back in the room and I was stuck with the little hellians by myself. All I could think about was getting done and going to Mistura!
Mistura is a huge 10-day culinary festival in Lima featuring all the greatest restaurants and foods of Peru.
Raquel and Jorge had gone there earlier, so I met up with them. We started out at the Pisco tent. We had some "milkshake piscos." I'm not sure that's what they were really called but that's what Jorge called them and they were delicious. Tasted just like milkshakes! Then we went to the Chocolate tent. The chocolate tent!! They had chocolate sushi. They had cacao/jungle fruit truffles (I had one). They had 2 chocolate fountains (We got chocolate covered strawberries there). Then we went to the dessert suburbs of chocolate land and had queso helado, which is just condensed milk that they put in a big metal bowl and stir it around over a tub of ice until it freezes on the side, and they scrape it off and serve it with cinnamon.
Then we went to get some soup, which turned out to be more like saucy potatoes with spaghetti, but really delicious. Then a chicken dish with rice and beans. Also delicious. Then some juice. After that Raquel and Jorge had to leave, so I stayed with Nicole and Carlin who had just arrived. We walked around the "market tent" for a little bit. It was filled with all kinds of crazy fruits and drinks and breads and sausages, and pretty much everything you could imagine. We got to try a lot of samples.
And then I saw it. Cuy! aka Guinea Pig! I had to try it, since I didn't have a chance to in Cusco. I shared it with Nicole. It was pretty interesting. You could still see the head and one of the paws. There was a really thick layer of skin, and the hair was still on in a few places. But once you pealed back the skin, the meat (what little there was) was really good! I didn't have my camera, but luckily Carlin was able to photo document it all :)
After that our friend Mary met up with us and we walked around the tent a little more and then went to get some picarones (a Peruvian street food of fried dough with a sweet sauce on it) and then back to chocolate land, so Mary could see it. I had a bunch of Mistura tickets left (you can trade your money for tickets, but then it turned out you couldn't use them at the really good places like chocolate land and pisco land) so I bought some chocolate alfajores (delicious Peruvian cookies) with them. Then we walked toward pisco land and bought some pachamanca along the way. Pachamanca is when they take beans, potatoes, corn, and meat, and dig a hole in the ground and fill it with coals and cook the food in that for a long time. Sound delicous? It was.
By this time my stomach was uncomfortable stuffed. So we went and got pisco sours. I couldn't finish my strawberry one, but I sure tried! We ended up with about 5 Mistura tix left, so we split a manjar blanco filled churro and called it a day around 8:00.
Mistura was huge, so it's definitely hard to see it all in one day, especially since the lines were crazy long for most of the food. But I got to try lots of stuff and it was really cool to see. And now I don't need to eat for like a week with the amount of food I ate today!
Monday, September 12, 2011
Cutting Class
Technically I should be dancing my pretty little feet off right now, but I was practically falling asleep in my Amazon Ethnography class today and really didn't feel like sticking around on campus for an hour just to go to salsa class and be frustrated for an hour and a half.
Soooo.......I didn't.
I also skipped the makeup hour of my ethnography class, because I wasn't paying attention anyways, so I figured I could just as easily not pay attention from my house.
That's one of the things that's different about the university here. When the professor is sick and cancels class, it's great for the moment, but you do have to make it up later. Unfortunately our prof cancelled 2 2-hr classes, so we have to make up those 4 hours later. We're doing that by having class from 4-7 instead of 4-6 for the next few Mondays. Which wouldn't be that bad if it were any other class, but for some reason, this class seems to drag on forever as it is. Probably because the professor just rambles on about random stuff the whole time.
There's a few other things that are different about the university here.
One of the things I love, is that the teachers don't assign books that you have to buy. They find readings from books and then leave them with the photocopier of that department (or as a pdf on "virtual campus" sometimes). So they tell you what readings you'll need to get, you go to the 'fotocopiadora' and tell them what class and reading you want, and they make a copy for you. So far mine have been about 1.50 soles a piece. I think altogether up to this point I've paid about 3 dollars for all my reading materials, and I doubt if I'll have to pay more than $20 this entire semester. Which is great compared to the $300-$400 that I usually shell out per semester at UNL.
This system is necessary, because, as my host mom was just telling me, scholarships are pretty rare here, especially at La Catolica (PUCP). Therefore, they can't ask students to cough up hundreds of soles for books, because they can't afford it.
One of the things I miss about UNL is that it's practically a small city. According to everyone I've talked to, La Catolica is the closest thing to that kind of campus in Peru. It has dining halls, a bookstore, some little outdoor cafes,a bank, libraries, a rec center (I'll get to that in a minute) and lots of grass and open spaces. However, it doesn't have a union with places to sit and hang out. It doesn't have a post office (that I've found) and the library lacks the comfy couches that I so love at UNL's library. So when I have a big break between classes (usually I go home, but for example today I grabbed lunch with a friend so I just stayed on campus afterwards until my class started) there's nowhere for me to curl up in a comfy chair and do my homework. Even the benches outside are ridiculously uncomfortable. Instead, I go into the study room in the library, trade my student ID for a number, go find the desk with the matching number and sit and read. It's not quite as relaxing.
Another thing that's different is the security. The campus is completely walled off and there are 2 entrances with 2 security guards at each one. You have to show your student ID, and if you're a visitor you have to trade your ID or passport for a 'visitor' ID card and then trade it back to get back out. There are security guards randomly walking around campus, and even to get into the library you have to have your student ID scanned, you can't just walk in.
The rec center looked pretty big at first, until I realized all that was inside was courts and special rooms for martial arts classes, chess club, yoga, etc. The actual gym area is a tiny building off to the side that's about the size of half a basketball court. It's got a few exercise machines that look like they're from the 80s and some weights and that's about it. And the use of that is not even included in your student fees. You have to buy a membership.
Also, there are no dorms. All students commute to campus. Which explains why they don't need to have things like post offices on campus. People can just go to the one by their house. Most students live with their parents during college. They go to one less year of high school here and one more year of college, so the kids might be 16 or 17 when they start studying.
In conclusion, there are a lot of amenities that UNL offers that I miss, but at the end of the day, I can't see this on campus in Nebraska
So it all evens out :)
Soooo.......I didn't.
I also skipped the makeup hour of my ethnography class, because I wasn't paying attention anyways, so I figured I could just as easily not pay attention from my house.
That's one of the things that's different about the university here. When the professor is sick and cancels class, it's great for the moment, but you do have to make it up later. Unfortunately our prof cancelled 2 2-hr classes, so we have to make up those 4 hours later. We're doing that by having class from 4-7 instead of 4-6 for the next few Mondays. Which wouldn't be that bad if it were any other class, but for some reason, this class seems to drag on forever as it is. Probably because the professor just rambles on about random stuff the whole time.
There's a few other things that are different about the university here.
One of the things I love, is that the teachers don't assign books that you have to buy. They find readings from books and then leave them with the photocopier of that department (or as a pdf on "virtual campus" sometimes). So they tell you what readings you'll need to get, you go to the 'fotocopiadora' and tell them what class and reading you want, and they make a copy for you. So far mine have been about 1.50 soles a piece. I think altogether up to this point I've paid about 3 dollars for all my reading materials, and I doubt if I'll have to pay more than $20 this entire semester. Which is great compared to the $300-$400 that I usually shell out per semester at UNL.
This system is necessary, because, as my host mom was just telling me, scholarships are pretty rare here, especially at La Catolica (PUCP). Therefore, they can't ask students to cough up hundreds of soles for books, because they can't afford it.
One of the things I miss about UNL is that it's practically a small city. According to everyone I've talked to, La Catolica is the closest thing to that kind of campus in Peru. It has dining halls, a bookstore, some little outdoor cafes,a bank, libraries, a rec center (I'll get to that in a minute) and lots of grass and open spaces. However, it doesn't have a union with places to sit and hang out. It doesn't have a post office (that I've found) and the library lacks the comfy couches that I so love at UNL's library. So when I have a big break between classes (usually I go home, but for example today I grabbed lunch with a friend so I just stayed on campus afterwards until my class started) there's nowhere for me to curl up in a comfy chair and do my homework. Even the benches outside are ridiculously uncomfortable. Instead, I go into the study room in the library, trade my student ID for a number, go find the desk with the matching number and sit and read. It's not quite as relaxing.
Another thing that's different is the security. The campus is completely walled off and there are 2 entrances with 2 security guards at each one. You have to show your student ID, and if you're a visitor you have to trade your ID or passport for a 'visitor' ID card and then trade it back to get back out. There are security guards randomly walking around campus, and even to get into the library you have to have your student ID scanned, you can't just walk in.
The rec center looked pretty big at first, until I realized all that was inside was courts and special rooms for martial arts classes, chess club, yoga, etc. The actual gym area is a tiny building off to the side that's about the size of half a basketball court. It's got a few exercise machines that look like they're from the 80s and some weights and that's about it. And the use of that is not even included in your student fees. You have to buy a membership.
Also, there are no dorms. All students commute to campus. Which explains why they don't need to have things like post offices on campus. People can just go to the one by their house. Most students live with their parents during college. They go to one less year of high school here and one more year of college, so the kids might be 16 or 17 when they start studying.
In conclusion, there are a lot of amenities that UNL offers that I miss, but at the end of the day, I can't see this on campus in Nebraska
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Karaoke and Piercings
The last post was getting kind of long, so I will continue the narration here.
Last night some people were planning on going to a disco called "Gotica." It's really popular here and sounded like a lot of fun, but my throat felt like sandpaper and I was pretty tired because I'm getting sick (somehow despite my daily intake of orange juice). So I wasn't really in the mood to go rage at the club til 3 a.m.
Instead, some people from PUCP were planning on going to a karaoke bar nearby, so Raquel and I decided that sounded like fun. We met up with them there. It was a pretty cool place. Luckily, the drinks were expensive so I couldn't drink enough for me to think singing was a good idea. But apparently it only takes me one drink to think rapping is a good idea. The rap choices were limited so I ended up doing "The Real Slim Shady" by Eminem. It's been awhile since I've listened to that one, but it all came back to me.
Today, I had plans to go get piercings w/ a couple other girls from ISA. One of their host bro's told them of a good shop to go to, so I met up with them in Miraflores and we went in. They wanted to do their noses, and I wanted to get an industrial, until I saw how thick the bars were. I got second thoughts, but I'm easily swayed by peer pressure :) , so I did it anyways. And the guy told me it wouldn't hurt. Liar.
Kristen did her nose first, then it was my turn. It hurt. very bad. And it continued hurting. Then Mary did her nose, and looked like she was in a lot of pain as well.
Meanwhile, there was a guy by us getting a tattoo. He started getting pale and felt like he was going to pass out. Then the same thing happened to Mary. And me. And Kristen.
After the nausea started to pass, we got up and walked to the park and bought some water and juice boxes. Then we caught the bus back home.
The pain and throbbing is finally gone, so that's good. The piercing and the jewelry only cost 30 soles all together ($11) so I'm a little nervous that my ear is going to turn green, but he cleaned everything, so hopefully it'll turn out fine!
Last night some people were planning on going to a disco called "Gotica." It's really popular here and sounded like a lot of fun, but my throat felt like sandpaper and I was pretty tired because I'm getting sick (somehow despite my daily intake of orange juice). So I wasn't really in the mood to go rage at the club til 3 a.m.
Instead, some people from PUCP were planning on going to a karaoke bar nearby, so Raquel and I decided that sounded like fun. We met up with them there. It was a pretty cool place. Luckily, the drinks were expensive so I couldn't drink enough for me to think singing was a good idea. But apparently it only takes me one drink to think rapping is a good idea. The rap choices were limited so I ended up doing "The Real Slim Shady" by Eminem. It's been awhile since I've listened to that one, but it all came back to me.
Today, I had plans to go get piercings w/ a couple other girls from ISA. One of their host bro's told them of a good shop to go to, so I met up with them in Miraflores and we went in. They wanted to do their noses, and I wanted to get an industrial, until I saw how thick the bars were. I got second thoughts, but I'm easily swayed by peer pressure :) , so I did it anyways. And the guy told me it wouldn't hurt. Liar.
Kristen did her nose first, then it was my turn. It hurt. very bad. And it continued hurting. Then Mary did her nose, and looked like she was in a lot of pain as well.
Meanwhile, there was a guy by us getting a tattoo. He started getting pale and felt like he was going to pass out. Then the same thing happened to Mary. And me. And Kristen.
After the nausea started to pass, we got up and walked to the park and bought some water and juice boxes. Then we caught the bus back home.
The pain and throbbing is finally gone, so that's good. The piercing and the jewelry only cost 30 soles all together ($11) so I'm a little nervous that my ear is going to turn green, but he cleaned everything, so hopefully it'll turn out fine!
Getting to know Lima, one district at a time
We headed out to Help! on Thursday night with a group of ISA kids. It was a great time again. At around 3, we got our chorizo's and headed out to find a taxi. It was 4 of us, and I was the only sober one. The other girls were clearly inebriated, so the driver turned to me (I was in the front) and asked how long we were staying in Lima. When I told him we'd be here for the rest of the semester, he got very father-like and started telling me about how you can't take just any taxi when you're coming home late at night, because some taxi drivers will assault you, etc. He gave me his card, so that when we're out and need a safe taxi home, we can call him. I think he was thinking "Oh jeez, these girls are just asking to get robbed and left in a ditch somewhere."
So now we have a safe ride, so I feel good about that. Raquel and I were the second people to get dropped off, and there was one girl left that would be taken alone to her house. As we were getting out, Raquel told her "Just stay in the seat behind him so that he can't pull a gun on you, and text me when you get home so we know he didn't kill you." The taxi driver laughed and said in English, "I can understand everything you're saying." :)
After 3 1/2 hours of sleep, my alarm went off. I debated hopping in the cold shower to get the smell of cigarette smoke out of my hair, but then I decided hairspray would do the trick. When I went downstairs for breakfast, grandma offered me a glass of water with my orange juice, which she usually doesn't do. :)
That morning at school was a little rough, and I was really looking forward to going home and napping. While the kids were outside at P.E., the teacher was telling me about some of their situations at home. It was pretty sad. One of them got molested by his uncle when he was 6, and his family never pressed charges. Another got molested and beaten by her father, who told her that if she said anything to anybody he would kill her and her mother, but when her mother (who he also used to beat) found out about it she pressed charges and now he's in jail. Another of the kids is basically on his own all day because his parents are separated and his mother works until late at night. It kind of breaks your heart that 10-year-olds have to deal with all that.
I went home and took a nap, then went for a run. When I got to the beach, I saw a guy in a go-cart looking thing with a parachute attached to it drive off the cliff and then parachute around the beach. It looked awesome, and I really wanna do it.
I came back and showered, then Raquel and I started getting ready for the party we were throwing. We decided it would be fun to make gluehwein (mulled wine - I'd been craving it with all the cold weather) and brownies and have some people over. We invited all the ISA kids in our area and about 6 people showed up. It was a lot of fun. The mulled wine went over well, and the brownies ended up being super mushy and delicious.
Side note: When we went to the store to get the ingredients for the mulled wine, we went into the liquor section (we were in a fancy Wong - one of the grocery chains) and immediately these really well-dressed ladies come up to you and ask you what you're looking for. When we told her we needed red wine, she took us over and asked whether we wanted Argentinian or Chilean. I tried to make up answers to her questions, while simultaneously scanning the shelves for the cheapest price. But she wouldn't go away! I kept trying to dart around the liquor store to lose her, and finally we found the boxed wine. We got 3 1-liter cartons of Chilean red wine for 11 soles each (about 13 bucks all together) and we got a few snobbish looks from the liquor ladies.
The party was really fun. We sat in the living room and talked. It was me, Raquel, Hannah, Carlin, Nichole, Mary, Zach, and Andrew (who's names mean nothing to you all, but I'm mentioning them so I'll remember when I go back and read this). We were going to watch a movie, but we were kept occupied mulling over some of life's toughest questions. Among them, what is the difference between evaporated milk and condensed milk, and why do people here drink so much evaporated milk? Also, what is the name of the guy from Forgetting Sarah Marshall and How I Met Your Mother? After about 30 minutes of frustration over this question, we finally came up with Jason Segal. Which means the conversation had to shift to a new topic, that being Harry Potter. With horcruxes and deathly hallows on our minds, the night finally came to a close.
Today, the sun came out all day. ALL DAY! We slept in, so we missed most of the morning, but in the afternoon we decided today was the day to go surfing. We invited Dawn to go with us and at 3 we headed out and took the bus to Miraflores. We hadn't had lunch, so the first stop was Parque Kennedy for our turkey sandwiches. I decided to be different this week and get pork. Deliiiicious.
Let me take a minute to explain what is so good about these turkey sandwiches. The guy has a grill and he puts the turkey on it in this special sauce and heats it up. Then he puts a piece of lettuce on top, and some really thinly sliced onions that have been marinated in lime juice. Meanwhile he's also grilling the bun. Then he throws on some mayo and mustard and takes another special sauce and throws it on the grill til it sizzles. He scoops it up with his spatula and throws that on the turkey too, then he soaks up the leftovers on the bun, and serves it. It is pure goodness, for 8 soles (3 bucks).
We broke with tradition and got churros instead of Pinkberry for dessert. Then we walked over to the beach and went to Parque del Amor. It was gorgeous. It was such a nice day, and everyone was out paragliding or surfing or just hanging out in the park.
By this time it had gotten chilly so we just skipped surfing and walked over to Larcomar, which is a shopping center, but it's outdoor and really pretty. It's got a ton of stuff, and of course, the American stuff like TGI Friday's and Starbucks. But it also has really nice restaurants on the edge that look out over the ocean.
This was the first time I'd been to Larcomar and I looved it. I'm not trying to be too "touristy" or "American" but Larcomar sparkles, and it's nice just knowing that there's a place in Lima that's not too far away that isn't dirty.
The beach was absolutely gorgeous. Gooooorgeous.
We grabbed some gelato and hung out until we were too cold to stand it anymore (it was pretty chilly by the ocean, and I of course didn't bring a jacket) and then we caught a micro back home.
So now we have a safe ride, so I feel good about that. Raquel and I were the second people to get dropped off, and there was one girl left that would be taken alone to her house. As we were getting out, Raquel told her "Just stay in the seat behind him so that he can't pull a gun on you, and text me when you get home so we know he didn't kill you." The taxi driver laughed and said in English, "I can understand everything you're saying." :)
After 3 1/2 hours of sleep, my alarm went off. I debated hopping in the cold shower to get the smell of cigarette smoke out of my hair, but then I decided hairspray would do the trick. When I went downstairs for breakfast, grandma offered me a glass of water with my orange juice, which she usually doesn't do. :)
That morning at school was a little rough, and I was really looking forward to going home and napping. While the kids were outside at P.E., the teacher was telling me about some of their situations at home. It was pretty sad. One of them got molested by his uncle when he was 6, and his family never pressed charges. Another got molested and beaten by her father, who told her that if she said anything to anybody he would kill her and her mother, but when her mother (who he also used to beat) found out about it she pressed charges and now he's in jail. Another of the kids is basically on his own all day because his parents are separated and his mother works until late at night. It kind of breaks your heart that 10-year-olds have to deal with all that.
I went home and took a nap, then went for a run. When I got to the beach, I saw a guy in a go-cart looking thing with a parachute attached to it drive off the cliff and then parachute around the beach. It looked awesome, and I really wanna do it.
I came back and showered, then Raquel and I started getting ready for the party we were throwing. We decided it would be fun to make gluehwein (mulled wine - I'd been craving it with all the cold weather) and brownies and have some people over. We invited all the ISA kids in our area and about 6 people showed up. It was a lot of fun. The mulled wine went over well, and the brownies ended up being super mushy and delicious.
Side note: When we went to the store to get the ingredients for the mulled wine, we went into the liquor section (we were in a fancy Wong - one of the grocery chains) and immediately these really well-dressed ladies come up to you and ask you what you're looking for. When we told her we needed red wine, she took us over and asked whether we wanted Argentinian or Chilean. I tried to make up answers to her questions, while simultaneously scanning the shelves for the cheapest price. But she wouldn't go away! I kept trying to dart around the liquor store to lose her, and finally we found the boxed wine. We got 3 1-liter cartons of Chilean red wine for 11 soles each (about 13 bucks all together) and we got a few snobbish looks from the liquor ladies.
The party was really fun. We sat in the living room and talked. It was me, Raquel, Hannah, Carlin, Nichole, Mary, Zach, and Andrew (who's names mean nothing to you all, but I'm mentioning them so I'll remember when I go back and read this). We were going to watch a movie, but we were kept occupied mulling over some of life's toughest questions. Among them, what is the difference between evaporated milk and condensed milk, and why do people here drink so much evaporated milk? Also, what is the name of the guy from Forgetting Sarah Marshall and How I Met Your Mother? After about 30 minutes of frustration over this question, we finally came up with Jason Segal. Which means the conversation had to shift to a new topic, that being Harry Potter. With horcruxes and deathly hallows on our minds, the night finally came to a close.
 |
| Me and Zach: "But why would you evaporate milk if you're just going to revaporate it and drink it??" |
Today, the sun came out all day. ALL DAY! We slept in, so we missed most of the morning, but in the afternoon we decided today was the day to go surfing. We invited Dawn to go with us and at 3 we headed out and took the bus to Miraflores. We hadn't had lunch, so the first stop was Parque Kennedy for our turkey sandwiches. I decided to be different this week and get pork. Deliiiicious.
Let me take a minute to explain what is so good about these turkey sandwiches. The guy has a grill and he puts the turkey on it in this special sauce and heats it up. Then he puts a piece of lettuce on top, and some really thinly sliced onions that have been marinated in lime juice. Meanwhile he's also grilling the bun. Then he throws on some mayo and mustard and takes another special sauce and throws it on the grill til it sizzles. He scoops it up with his spatula and throws that on the turkey too, then he soaks up the leftovers on the bun, and serves it. It is pure goodness, for 8 soles (3 bucks).
We broke with tradition and got churros instead of Pinkberry for dessert. Then we walked over to the beach and went to Parque del Amor. It was gorgeous. It was such a nice day, and everyone was out paragliding or surfing or just hanging out in the park.
 |
| Parque del Amor |
 |
| Larcomar |
This was the first time I'd been to Larcomar and I looved it. I'm not trying to be too "touristy" or "American" but Larcomar sparkles, and it's nice just knowing that there's a place in Lima that's not too far away that isn't dirty.
The beach was absolutely gorgeous. Gooooorgeous.
We grabbed some gelato and hung out until we were too cold to stand it anymore (it was pretty chilly by the ocean, and I of course didn't bring a jacket) and then we caught a micro back home.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
A few words before my siesta
I took the busses by myself to the elementary school for the first time by myself this morning and I made it alive! Class went well. The teacher came today (her 94 year old mother fell and hit her head and had to go to the hospital last Friday, so I feel kind of bad for complaining about her missing class.) I did my 2 hour English lesson in the morning, then they had recess. For the rest of the morning, a student from one of the universities in Lima came to do a lesson for her practicum.
The poor girl. About 5 minutes into it, I could read her thoughts "I just spent 4 years studying so that I could deal with this for the rest of my career?" I think something inside her died today. Just kidding, she was pretty good with them. Better than me, that's for sure! (Although, when she came in and the teacher announced why she was here, one of the kids looked at me and said "Don't worry senorita, you're still the winner because you speak English").
It's just very hard to keep the attention of the whole class, so as Nichole said today, it's surprising that they can learn as much as they do. Raising your hand to speak isn't really a thing here. They just shout at you. If you tell them to raise their hand, they shout at you with their hand in the air. It's hard to keep them all sitting down in their desk, too, and if you get more than a 10 second block of silence (by silence, I mean they're talking low enough so that I don't have to shout for them to hear me) it's a miracle.
So props to all the teachers here. I know I couldn't do it.
After school I went to the university for my meeting with Michelle, one of the ISA directors. It's just a check-in to make sure everything's going well with school and the family and everything. Of course I told her everything is going awesome because I really have nothing to complain about!
Since I got up at 6:30 this morning, have to get up at 6:30 again tomorrow morning, and am going out to Help! again tonight, I'm thinking it's time for an afternoon nap.
Monday, September 5, 2011
I would just like to point out that the sun came out for the 3rd day in a row! What is this madness? I think it must be spring!
Also, I had my 2nd salsa class today. What did I learn from that? That I am very, very bad at salsa dancing. Like ridiculously bad.
Tomorrow I am going to go running. I am writing this for all to see so that tomorrow morning I will feel shamed into going running.
That is all for now. I'm going to go read some Basic Linguistic Theory until it puts me to sleep.
Also, I had my 2nd salsa class today. What did I learn from that? That I am very, very bad at salsa dancing. Like ridiculously bad.
Tomorrow I am going to go running. I am writing this for all to see so that tomorrow morning I will feel shamed into going running.
That is all for now. I'm going to go read some Basic Linguistic Theory until it puts me to sleep.
Yemy Fling
He asked my name and I told him. I spelled out "Jamie" for him and watched as he completely ignored me and wrote down "Yemy." So I didn't even try to spell out "Flynn." Then he asked me for the rest of my name and I told him that was all. He didn't believe me, so he ignored me and asked Joel what the rest of my name was. Joel said that was it and that I only have one last name. The guy didn't believe him either, so they argued for a little bit about whether or not I had another name until Joel finally convinced him that that's the way we do it in America. (Here they take the mother's name and the father's name, so people have two.)
There are a lot of times (particularly during roll call when the teachers are calling for "Yommy" or "Hy-may") when I feel like life as a Spanish major would have been easier if my parents had just named me Anna.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Lazy Sunday
We decided to skip the party last night, considering I was tired and disgusting and didn't want to shower, and Raquel felt the same way. I would like to note that she was less disgusting than I was, though.
I slept in this morning. Even after putting some baby powder in my hair, I almost felt to greasy to even show my face downstairs for breakfast. Almost.
After we ate, I put my hat on and walked to the ATM with Raquel. It's our strategy to bundle up and walk around before showering, so that you raise your body temperature enough so that showering doesn't feel as cold. I had a quite pleasant shower and feel nice and clean again.
After that we got in a taxi and went to Parque Kennedy for some more street vendor turkey sandwiches and Pinkberry. Then off to Polvos Azules. I decided that a pair of slippers was in fact a necessary purchase, so now I have some nice fuzzy booties. I also got a knockoff Coach bag that's small and over the shoulder so I can wear it under my coat and don't have to worry about it getting stolen.
Then it was back to the house, and back in my pajama pants and alpaca sweater. This time with my new slippers.
However, the sun did come out today for a little while for the second day in a row! I can feel spring coming on! (knock on wood)
I'm currently on a homework break. I have 82 more pages of Basic Linguistic Theory to read before Wednesday. Luckily it's in English, because it's hard enough as it is. (I've read 6 pgs so far and I already have a headache)
Saturday, September 3, 2011
On Thursday I did my second day of volunteering at the school, and my first day of teaching the kids English. We worked on greetings and the alphabet. As excited as they are to learn English, it's like pulling teeth trying to get them to say stuff, because they get nervous and don't want to mess up when we're actually learning it as a class instead of them just asking me to translate random words. But it went pretty well.
Then we walked around the market a little bit while we were waiting for the bus to come take us back to the ISA office.
Raquel and I both had the afternoon off, so we decided to go to Metro, the grocery store, to get tickets to Mistura, a famous food festival that's coming in a couple weeks, and to get stuff to make cookies. We went to the Metro a few blocks away from our house, but they didn't have a TeleTicket booth, so we decided to take the bus to the Wong in the Plaza San Miguel. So we asked the cop outside which bus to take and he told us. We waited and got on, then, 2 blocks later, realized there was another giant Metro, so we got off. We were gonna go all out and get cookies, wine, and cheese, but we didn't bring enough money so we sacrificed the wine and cheese and got some Betty Crocker double chocolate chip cookie mix.
We baked cookies and hung out in the kitchen watching Keeping Up With the Kardashians. It was a good night :)
On Friday, I went to the school again. I got there around 7:45 and the teacher wasn't there, so I just hung out and talked to the kids. At 8:00 the bell rang, and Profesora Delia still wasn't there. At 8:15 I decided I'd just start teaching them English.
After awhile they started saying stuff about how they needed to go out for P.E., and I didn't know what to do, so I knocked on the other 4th grade room next door, where the other volunteer, Nichole, helps out. I told the teacher there that my teacher didn't show so she went in my room and figured out their P.E. schedule and everything, and told me where to send them.
So we learned some more English (a song about spring, and numbers) and then at 9:30 I sent them to P.E. Luckily I didn't have to teach that because they have a teacher for it. At 10:00 they had recess and from 10:30-11 they finished their hour of P.E. then we did some more English and a lady came in to teach them the right way to brush their teeth. Luckily that killed another 20 minutes.
After they'd been doing English lessons all day they were starting to get a little antsy and rowdy so I had to give them the "I'm disappointed in your behavior..." teacher lectures. So they were all being quiet, listening to me lecture them, and the principal knocked on the door. She just wanted to say that she was so happy with the way the class was working so hard. Sometimes when she walked by a classroom all she heard was yelling, but when she walked by ours she didn't, and she wanted to thank the class for being such hard workers for profesora Jamie. Haha, good timing!
Finally it was 12:30 and I had made it through the day with my sanity in tact!
I needed a new camera battery and Raquel needed new shoes, so we went with Joel, from ISA, to have him show us where to buy them. He took us to Las Malvinas, which has everything. It's a huge market and there's different "zones" selling different things, cell phones, cameras, light fixtures, power tools, gym equipment, toilets, the list goes on and on. You can get stuff really cheap, because it's usually stolen. (Joel informs me that the toilets are, in fact, new). So we shopped around for a camera battery for me, because I have a Canon, so it takes the special square Canon battery and charger. Some of the ones looked fake, but we found one that looks like the original for $45 soles (about $15-20) and a charger that was definitely original, but I held off to buy that, because I'm pretty sure I'll be able to use Raquel's charger and then get a cheaper one of ebay in the U.S. So now I can take pics again!
Then we went shoe shopping. He took us to a place a couple blocks away with 3 levels of just shoe stores. It was pretty great. And the shoes are Peruvian made knock offs of name brand designs, so they're cheap too. Raquel found a pair she liked and then we took the combi's back to our house.
Once there, we got ready to go out, and around 11:30 we called a taxi to take us to a bar in La Molina called Hensley's. Raquel's friend from school (she goes to la Universidad del Pacifico) invited us to go out. The bar was a punk bar, and was pretty empty and low key. Which was a nice change from the discotecas. We just hung out and had some beers. I listened while everyone jammed out to their punk songs that I had never heard of. The bar is pretty cool. The owner was born in Peru and moved to Boston when he was 8 so he speaks really good English. He inherited the place from his parents, and turned the downstairs into a bar. He also built a half-pipe in the backroom. It's pretty sweet. We stayed there until around 4:30 and got home around 5.
Just in time to get about 3 hours of sleep before it was time to get up for our ISA activity today. At 9 a.m. we met at the UP ISA office for our tour of the historical center of Lima. We walked from the office (a few blocks from our house) all the way to the city center (I'm not sure how long, but it's a long way). We checked out the Plaza San Martin, watched the changing of the guards at the Plaza de Armas, and then walked to China town to get some Chifa (it's like Peruvian Chinese food). We sat at one huge table and then they just kept bringing us stuff so we got a little bit of everything. After that, we walked to a churro place and got some churros, and then on to the San Francisco Catacombs. We got a little tour of the church and then they took us to the catacombs. It was pretty cool.
We got to see this
 |
| Those are bones and skulls. Unfortunately, some idiot also threw their food wrapper down there. |
Raquel had gone home to sleep after Chifa, and I crashed as soon as I got home at 5:00. It's 10:30 now and in like an hour-ish we're going to go to an exchange student's party in La Molina. So I'm gonna go make myself a nice warm cup of coffee, so that I don't fall asleep on their couch at 1:00.
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