Adios mis amigos

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April 30,2006


This will probably be it for travrl blogs, as I am heading back to the states on Friday. I had to cut my work here a little short, for various reasons. It is a bit of a disappointment, as I was hoping to teach another term and learn more Spanish. I am just beginning to get the hang of the language, after living for two months in my English “bubble”

Yesterday I went to the artisans’ market to get a few things to bring home. It’s tempting to buy a lot, as everything is so inexpensive. When I think what you’d pay for an Alpaca sweater at home and what I paid here….but lots of inexpensive things add up in a hurry, so, I had to exercise some restraint. I went with three of my students-I am still not very good at finding my away around the city- and when we were done, we stopped at a little sidewalk place (consisting of one table and a big soup pot!- and had a bowl of mondago, a dish typical of this area. It is a soup, with boiled maize, bits of meat, mostly chicken, and some other green vegetable. I said,” Yo busce las cosas muy interesente en la sopa”. There are some interesting things in this soup. I picked out this one piece of meat, which looked like fish with the skin still on, like trout, and said, “oh there’s fish in this soup.” And my companion said,”Oh, that’s not fish that’s pork”, and what I think it was, was either the skin boiled, w some of the fat still on it, or some unidentifiable organ. After that, when I scooped up a big hunk of ‘pork’, I had a little trouble choking it down. It really looked like a fatty hunk of skin. It’s probably why it was so tasty, but….

Last weekend we went to the zoo, so I could see a llama (I TOLD them the zoos at home have llamas, too). It was a small zoo, a little pathetic with most of the animals cooped up in tiny cages. There were no large animals, mostly birds and small mammals. The zoo was trying to give the overall impression of a tropical area, which meant lots of irrigation and sprinklers everywhere; Ayacucho is essentially a desert, so it takes a lot of water to pull that off, especially outdoors where it evaporates so quickly. There were some tropical trees and lots of flowers, but most of the flowers were common summer annuals at home. The most interesting things were the birds-lots of tropical birds, ( you wouldn’t have to go very far from here to get them!!) large colorful parrots, toucans, all kinds and sizes of different kinds of parakeets. Plus the Andean Condors, though I would have liked to have seen one of them in flight. It was an interesting couple of hours.

I finished teaching Wed, and there was an exam Thurs. Friday, after class, my students threw a surprise party for me - a big sign saying, “We love you Kathy “and they gave me a lovely gift of a woven Peruvian jacket. I was pretty surprised, they hadn’t even seen their grades yet! I will miss them, but as I said to Mom, they’ll all be moving on, too. Things never stay the same, and especially with the young, who knows where they’ll all be in 3 months.

Thijs is going back to Holland tonight, pretty much leaving the place in chaos. The book for the next level of English won’t be finished, even though I have been working on it constantly for 2 or 3 weeks. It’ll be mostly done, but the class is supposed to start next week, and I won’t be around to finish it!! It still has to be proofed, formatted, and bound……how all of that is going to be done, I have no idea. It has to be sent to Holland for proofing and editing.

There was quite a party here in the school for Thijs last night. There were maybe 30 or so people, most of them I didn’t know. I was a little worried, because we hadn’t had any water all day, and a party that size w no water, especially with a fair amount of drinking doesn’t bear thinking about…but it finally came on about 5PM. We didn’t have any water Thursday either, and Wed night there wasn’t any electricity. The electricity went out in the middle of the evening class -and of course it gets dark relatively early, around 6. I was surprised at the number of women with flashlights in their purses, but I guess I shouldn’t have been!!

So, Monday, I have one last Spanish lesson, and then I am going to walk back to the market to get something I forgot. Wednesday I am going to lunch at the home of one of my students, So I will be packing and cleaning Tuesday. The time is growing short!

I am NOT looking forward to the trip- first drag my luggage down the street a block to get a taxi to the airport, check in. and fly to Lima. Then in Lima, I have to wait from 9AM to midnight…yyyccchhhh…….lots of books and crossword puzzles I guess. That’s the worst of it. Then an all night flight to Atlanta, four more hours of waiting, and finally the last leg to Rochester.

So, thanks for reading, and all the responses, and especially for all the encouraging email. This hasn’t been an easy thing to do. I some ways I feel badly about leaving, but I did what I could, and it’s all that’s all I can do. (sounds like one of my grammar lessons…what’s wrong with this sentence?) I found out from one of my students that it is extremely difficult to get a passport unless you have a large bank balance- I was told the reason is, the government is afraid no one will return. I bet there’s a bit of truth to that. I met a lot of college students, none of whom have the possibility of studying, or even visiting abroad. So, change will be very slow here, I think.

The one thing I am disappointed about is not being able to see much of the country. Traveling is very slow and difficult-many of the roads are not paved and the only way to get around is by bus- VERY slow. I know some people who got to Cusco by flying to Lima, and then to Cusco. There are a few places you can fly out of Lima, but air travel is very limited. For example, even though there is an airport here and one in Cusco, you can’t get from here to there, unless you travel 22 or 24 hrs by bus! I also discovered Cusco, and visiting Macchu Pichu is very expensive. So I guess I’ll have to do that in another lifetime. I also wanted to see the jungle, but perhaps someday in the not to distant future I’ll be able to visit Central America.

I know this was a bit long winded, but it is my last entry, so I kind of wanted to stick a few extra thoughts in there. I know if an opportunity like this ever arises again, I’ll be a lot more confident, and have a better idea of what I am getting into.

See some of you soon-
Much love, Kathy

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