Advertisement
The clerk and the cook
These two ladies greet us every day and the one of the right cooks our fabulous meals! In many ways, moving to Lima for the summer hasn't been all that different from moving to Atlanta a year ago. Sure, I won't be here nearly as long as I've already been in Atlanta, but a few similarities come to mind.... First, both cities have streets that wind and end and start and stop and change names. Or have the same name. (Does "Peachtree" ring a bell to anyone?) Second, as bad of a reputation as Atlanta drivers have, I can assure you that Lima drivers have a worse one. As I ride to/from work each day, I wonder how anyone really gets anywhere when the drivers spend half of the time in a standstill, honking and yelling angrily at one another. I haven't learned the Peruvian word for "road rage" yet, but I'm sure it exists. Third, in order to be able to communicate with others, I had to get a cell phone. Setting out on day #2 in Lima without the address of my home or a phone number for the office or my home is something that probably shouldn't be repeated again. I made it to and from work just fine, but cell phones exist for a
good reason. And now I own one. Fourth, much like when I moved to Georgia, I spend part of my time here learning new words and phrases...and part of the time defending my Spanish AND English to the other gringo volunteers. Basically, coming to Peru with Mexican Spanish is like moving to Georgia with Kansan English. We all understand what the other is saying, but it's too easy not to make fun of the words that are "incorrect." : )
It's fall here in Lima, which means winter is quickly approaching. As Jed instructed me in an email before my arrival here (which led to my depression while I packed), "come mid-June the sun will go away for good." Que bueno. So far the sun has popped out a time or two (and let me tell you, people celebrate that!), but I'm starting to get used to the gray. Also, I'm not entirely sure just how sunny it can really get here in Lima because there's mucho pollution in the air. There seems to be a heavy layer of smog hovering over the city much like in Mexico City. I've just briefly toyed with the idea of running a
Almuerzo
My lunch for the day was the "chicken in the fun sauce" (which is a way of saying I'm not sure what it was....)with rice, yucca, and an avocado salad. Yummy! And it's always SO much food! 5k race while I'm here, but then I bury that idea when I step out to the street corner to hail a bus and I find myself a little short of breath as cars and busses whiz by me. A friend at school trained for a race in Kenya by running along Freedom Parkway in Atlanta beforehand. While he primarily did it so he could deal with the high altitude in Kenya, I think it could've been useful for preparing me for Lima.
In just a few short days I've come to love the lunch routine at the office. Around 1pm or so everyone stops what they're doing and sets out to get lunch from the little restaurant on the corner down the block. We all take our tupperware dishes and order something from the chalkboard menu. For 5 soles (just a little under $2), you can choose an entrada, which is usually either a soup or a potato something-or-other, and then a meat dish. Usually there's a chicken option and a pork or beef option, and then more of a wildcard option like liver. The women fill our tupperware with our selections, we cart them back to the
Dancing in the kitchen/bathroom
The lunch routine ends with everyone washing their dishes in the makeshift kitchen/bathroom. Yesterday one of the local artesan's sons Victor interrupted our dish washing time to ask us girls to dance! office, and then we sit around the large table in the main room. Oddly enough, even when as many as 10 people are gathered around the table, the first 10 minutes can be awkwardly silent as we dig and chew and survey one another's selections. But as our tummies become full, the conversation and laughter begin to flow. Everyone has a great sense of humor, which means every cultural miscommunication is not only hilarious to all, but usually ends up being a running joke for a few days.
My trip to the office takes around 45 min. or an hour. I hop on one bus just a few blocks from my house and ride that until I get to La Plaza de Bolognesi. From there I can either hop on another bus or walk 20 min. to the office. So far I've chosen to walk every day, as it's much more fun than hopping on another crowded bus where personal space is not an option. Besides, I don't get to see nearly as many interesting things when I'm in a crowded bus. For example, when I walk down the street I get to pass women selling boiling quail eggs.
People always love to play with pigeons
We visited the Monastery of San Francisco in downtown Lima which attracts people because of the architecture, the lingering pigeons, and the piles of bones in the catacombs down below. I am pretty sure that I will never crave one of those on my way to work, but I get a kick out of seeing them and the other interesting foods that are sold on carts.
Jed and I met on Thursday to talk about how my time here will be spent. I'll primarily be based out of the Joining Hands office, but will be helping to create educational materials about the environment and the church's role in such issues, both for the congregations here as well as in the U.S. Until next week when I can meet with various church leaders, I am just reading a lot of material about the area and the issues. Next weekend I will be accompanying a delegation from the Hudson River Presbytery as they travel from Lima down the coast and then up into the Andes to learn about the different partner organizations of the Joining Hands network. I'm really excited for this trip as it will bring to life much of the material I am reading and will give me a context to help me in my work. In the meantime, Jed has told me to continue getting to know the city, which I'm doing slowly.
My housemate Ginna's family came to visit on Wednesday, so yesterday I spent the day being a tourist with them. They're fabulous and we laughed all day! We picked up more people throughout the day, mainly the other Young Adult Volunteers (YAVs) who are serving here in Peru. There are six of them, 5 female and 1 male. Also very fun people. They and many of their visiting family members all left this morning to fly to Cusco to set out to Machu Picchu via the Inca Trail. Today I'm going to continue my weekend as a tourist with one of the other JH volunteers Eva, who is from Germany. Then tomorrow my friend Jason (who was a YAV here in 2006-7) arrives, so we're going to have a week to hang out when I'm not at the office. It's been good to learn the city both from people who have lived here for awhile...and from studying my maps and then just going.
I have lots more to say about life in Lima, but for now I'll end with an update from my last entry.... So y'all remember the icky coffee, right? Well, that same night I was eating dinner and one of my host moms (there are four sisters who live here) asked me, "¿Liz, te gusta el sal en tu café? (Liz, do you like salt in your coffee?) After a split second of confusion, I burst out laughing because I realized what I had done. In an attempt to make the incredibly strong coffee better that morning, I poured a bunch of salt in instead of sugar. And while I was doing it, part of me thought that the sugar looked a lot different, more fine than usual, but I guess it didn't bother me enough to really stop and consider what I was doing. Plus, the sugar wasn't close to the other condiments, so....yeah. Stupid act #1 in Lima. Ooops. : )
Advertisement
Tot: 0.07s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 6; qc: 43; dbt: 0.0379s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
CJ
non-member comment
Love your stories and esp the one about Victor asking yall to dance in the kitchen. Sounds soo fun!