also, talking about facebook, i loved 30 rock's gentle mocking last week. "on u-face, her relationship status, from "working on it" to "weirdsies."
ha ha. so good.

It poured rain in Philly and NJ today and it was surreal. Aside from a brief thunderstorm in Ayacucho, I haven't seen real rain since February. I took the bus from philly to nj after crashing with greg, diana, melissa and jorik for several days and crashing several parties. Not in a wild way, in more of a sit around and eat crackers and kick the dog when he comes over and force people to come over to me and talk. and they did. and it was nice.
It's kind of funny seeing acquaintances after a long absence. I have a huge circle of acquaintances from circle of hope. ha ha. circle of acquaintances. that was sort of my experience with circle anyway. ok, now i am getting too personal i think. i never know when i'm being too personal. i'll talk about almost anything with almost anyone. i make fun of people for putting very personal things on their facebook updates when they know that they count casual acquaintances among their facebook "friends." I suppose this isn't much different. Except it is slightly more difficult to get to than simply signing into facebook and being bombarded by status updates like "getting ready to cuddle and watch a movie and lick chocolate syrup off my boyfriend's face" and "i cried myself to sleep last night because my girlfriend dumped me" from people whom I've never been more than acquaintances with. Anyway. Running into casual acquaintances from circle with other circle people after 10 months or so is funny because i remember every face so I'm always like "hey how are you?" and kind of smile at them. And so after that no one wants to ask me who the heck I am, so they just kind of smile back and we chitchat but it's impossible for them to ask my name or where they know me from. I take no pleasure from this. I just observe it. I don't forget faces. I don't know how people can forget FACES. And I may be going way out on a limb here but are you aware of maybe not wanting to be the person who remembers someone if they forget you? Either their name or their face, or anything. It's like if you remember someone but they don't remember you than it's like they are more important or interesting than you? I don't really feel like that, and it doesn't describe the encounters I'm thinking of. (I've heard that I am now able to end my sentences with prepositions but I still feel guilty.) But I am vaguely aware of that sentiment in the back of my mind when someone doesn't recognize me. But I'm not complaining. It actually doesn't bother me. I don't even know why I'm writing about. I just enjoy overanalyzing things.

well, i'm back. and it is weird. My family was so cute to me and made me food and took good care of me and bought me slippers and pajamas for the wretched winter weather. I went grocery shopping with my mom and it was bizarre to hear people speaking so loudly in english. there are tons of latino people in my town and i just wanted to try to speak spanish with them. i am pretty tired but i did sleep on the plane. after a bus ride of 18 hours from arequipa to lima, no heat or airconditioning and i'm pretty sure no bathrooms, 7 1/2 hours on a plane with food and drinks and movies and fresh air circulating and people there to help me was lovely. we took off two hours late because of snow in newark the previous night and then customs and immigration and luggage pickup took forever. but none of my bags got searched for customs, either to or from peru, so that was awesome.
Jorge and I had such a nice last few days together. We ate enchiladas and ceviche and laid around and watched movies and went shopping and then he packed my suitcase for me and we took a cab to the airport and took pictures together and he bought me chocolate. so romantic. and the night before that i got to say goodbye to most of friends over over icecream.

last weekend we hiked down into colca canyon, some say the deepest canyon in the world. the mountains were amazing.

this is what we hiked down into. it took us four hours to hike down and five to hike back up. but at the bottom they had this lush valley with gorgeous pools and thatched-roof huts to sleep in.


here we are the next morning. we are exhausted after two hours, but still have 3 hours left to climb up to make an 11:00 bus. only to discover that the bus company has sold our tickets to another bus company whose bus didn't leave for three more hours. jorge missed his bus back to lima so we got another day together in arequipa :)




























I spent two weeks in arequipa teaching english and playing with these kids after school. they were really great.

















this is the apartment and the room where I lived for the last eight months.
and this is my room.

It´s funny- I imagined my whole time in Peru being lived in hostels, and this is actually the first time I´ve actually stayed in a hostel. It´s really a great one. It was recommended to me by this girl volunteering with the same place I am. The owner is this awesome lady, or girl really, maybe younger than me I can´t tell. She is so helpful with everything, and $5 gets you a comfy bed and breakfast with fresh orange juice.
Occasionally I feel lonely when a huge group of polish or french friends come through and they´re a party until themselves. But I chat with everyone. Breakfast is always a good time to chat with people. Yesterday I met this british woman and we went to the Catalina Monastery together. It is this huge, gated mini-city. It was founded by a wealthy Spanish widow and only accepted women from upper-class families. Each woman needed the equivilant of $50,000 for a dowry to enter the convent. After an earthquake destroyed much of the original monastery, the rich families of the women rebuilt it even more lavishly. Most nuns had their own rooms, even their own houses inside the gated community, and up to four slaves or servants. I asked our guide if these nuns took the traditional vows which include the vows of poverty and sacrifice, and she said yes they did. But I guess there is always room for hypocrisy. Something the nuns did sacrifice was medical care, however. In the early years of the monastery, absolute no men were allowed inside, which meant no doctors. In later years, doctors were allowed only if they were old men, and very well-known by the families of the girls.

The night before last, I hung out with the volunteers. Many of them live at a house together, which is kind of the Real World Volunteers. We had drinks and then went out. When I got back to the hostel, not much past 2am, everyone was sleeping. It´s definitely not a party hostel, which I appreciate. The only people I found awake was a couple waiting to get picked up for an early-morning tour of Colca Canyon, which condors fly across. I couldn´t sleep in the next morning, though, so I went to bed at like 9:00 last night and woke up feeling so good. The beds are so comfortable and all the guests are so considerate and try not to wake each other up.
I was thinking of moving into the real world house, but it is more expensive, doesn´t include breakfast, is a 5 min taxi ride outside of town, and is basically the real world house. So I don´t think I will.
The volunteering is less intensive than I thought. It is really only two hours. An hour of teaching english to different levels, then an hour of playing with them at the park. But it takes almost an hour to get out there, so it takes up a bit of the day still.

I think this experience has helped me get over comparing myself to others. After the first ten or twenty tall gorgeous european girls who speak 5 languages and are in the middle of well-planned, well-funded 6-month treks around the world, I kind of got over it. Ok, I get it. There´s always someone smarter, cooler, prettier, richer, more creative, more popular, more .. . linguistically gifted, with more friends available for travel, etc. Who cares. Of course it´s always stupid to compare, but I think I needed something like this to shock me into reality. It´s just who you are and what you do that matters.

more on the jungle:
I am learning more how to prepare trips and tours myself, saving money and making sure to get exactly what you want. I would do things differently now. But with mike, we took a package tour. It was pretty awesome, we stayed at this really nice hotel with a pool and awesome breakfast buffet. It was so luxurious, not like anything I´ve done in the longest time. We woke up so early to get our bus to Iquitos, then we were supposed to get a city tour after checking into our hotel. Our guide is really just someone who trys to sell people tour packages. After waiting an hour in the lobby (don´t ask me why we waited that long. sometimes mike and i together are too easy-going for our own good), he took us for our "city tour." He spoke english decently, but didn´t know the english words for anything on our "tour," which was only like 20 min? 30 min? and at one point actually included the description " now over here is . . . an old building." Then we ate this really delicious pork with some kind of awesome barbeque sauce and fried plaintains. Then ice cream, then back to the hotel and passed out and had the best nap ever. We went swimming, went in the sauna, then came back. I love showering in hotels. That´s almost the best part of the experience. My shower in Lima is heated electrically, I think I´ve mentioned. Water is heated as it passes through a coil, and the water temperature is really uneven and could go cold for minutes at a time and the water pressure is terrible. This shower at this hostel is amazing as well. I took the best shower- hot and great water pressure. So relaxing.
ok, back to iquitos. Then we went to this restaurant that is floating on the amazing river. Maybe not the amazon. A tributary. We went at night, and it´s so beautiful. This is the dry season, so all the water levels are down like 15 feet from where they are during the other half of the year. So a lot of the banks are muddy and slimey and gross. So at night you can´t see anything, just the water and lights. You take this thatched-roof long-canoe-gondola type boat with lanterns out to the restaurant. There were only a few other people there. It´s so beautiful, this fancy floating restaurant. We got really good, tiny food that once we got it, we were like "what is this?" "what did we order?" and to me, that is the mark of a fancy restaurant. They also had a swimming pool attached to the whole floating platform, swimming pool and bar on the first floor, restaurant on the second. You could see all the lights of the shore and areas of darkness over the water. It was so cool.
The next morning we took an hour motorboat ride to our first lodge in the jungle. We took a hike through the jungle, met a group that lives there. Now, they wear modern clothes, but for groups of tourists they dress in their tradition dress and give them an idea of what their life used to include. It sounded strange or demeaning or something when I heard about it, but the experience seemed more like them sharing something, teaching something. They use paprika to color their grass skirts and also to make a paste that they use to mark everyone´s face before their dance. Three different symbols they painted on both cheeks- one for married, one for single, one for . . . widowed maybe? I have to ask mike. They painted that on our cheeks, then they showed us this dance and we danced with them. Then we all got to try blowing darts at a dummy. They make a rod out of the center of a palm tree, whittling out the soft core until it is hollow, then they can blow poisoned darts for hunting animals or people. After they would hit an animal, a bunch of people would chase the animal until it bled out, cleansing its body of all the poison. We tried blowing this 15 ft blowdart, I got a perfect shot in the dummy´s neck.
Ok, more later.

I have so much to write, I don´t know where to start. But I only have ten minutes left at this cafe so that´s how much I will write. I have to go back and write all about going to the amazon jungle of iquitos with Mike. That was awesome. He is one of my favorite people and one of my top favorite people to travel with. We had such an amazing time, I will write about it later.

Last night and this morning I traveled from Lima to Arequipa. SEVENTEEN. hours. on.the.bus. My ipod broke hours before leaving. The only time it´s failed me the whole time I´ve been in Peru. I felt pretty alone after arriving. All the other little groups the hostel were cooking dinner together and planning their trips. I talked to some people, but was too tired to make as big of an effort as seemed to be required. I went to bed at 8:30 and woke up 6 feeling awesome. The owner of the hostel made us breakfast. She is awesome. Now I am waiting for the volunteer office to open. Supposedly they opened ten minutes ago but there was no one there. It´s $60 to volunteer, which is actually one of the cheapest I´ve found. I´m going to see if there is a way around it, though, so I will have more money to tour around. It´s not too late for people to come visit me! Once you get here it is very cheap, like $5 a night in a hostel, free breakfast and like $1 for dinner. And awesome places to visit. The deepest canyon in the world, although there is some debate on this, is here. and a museum with a perfectly preserved 13 year-old girl incan sacrifice. You know you want to . . . Ok. Now I go.

I´m still feeling blah after getting what I assumed was food poisoning earlier this week. I´ve been eating crackers and ginger ale all day. Ginger ale is the sh--. Can I just say. I always forget how good it is, then I want it when I´m sick, then I forget how good it is. But it´s just as well here, it´s more expensive than other sodas here.

Mike is coming to visit me and we are going to the jungle. We are all so casual in my family, it´s hilarious. My mom emailed saying Mike´s flight got off. He asked if I would pick him up and she said "I assume so." I cracked up. We´re all like that, I think. Just get on a plane and assume everything will work out. Ha ha.

The Peep Show is probably the funniest show I have ever seen. One character to another:
-You stepped on his foot!
-That was an accident!
-No it wasn´t!
-Well it could have been! I made sure that it could have been.


-Why do you like that guy? Is it because he´s black?
-No! I hadn´t even noticed that he´s black!
-Well, you´re making a huge mistake because he´s terrible at being black! I´m a better black man than he is.

And so many others, some slightly inappropriate . . .

If she sees me all the time, eventually she´ll start liking me, the way people start having sex with each other in prison.

Sick in bed, flipping channels between the phils in spanish and "the other sister," mostly because they are close to each other and my remote broke so I have to stand up to change the channel. Ten minutes later: ok, that ended. Now the end of Haarper´s Island. Now, some other things. Now, this reality tv show called I´m a celebrity, get me out of here. With hiedi and spencer from the hills reality show. but after looking at heidi for more than 20 seconds, i think she looks like the french girl in inglorious bastards, which was really pretty great. this show, on the other hand, is of course terrible, but i can´t look away. also, i don´t want to get up to change the channel. also, i don´t feel like using caps. i´m sick.

in better news, i have started playing chess. i never wanted to learn before, it seemed so boring. but i actually love it. tomorrow jorge and i are going on a picnic. it will be so romantic.
today was not romantic. i was alone and sick and trying to make travel plans for mike and i to go to the jungle. but the airline i was trying to buy tickets through LAN charges non-peruvians a way higher price than peruvians because they hate me. but i love them so i am still looking.

Friday night going to bed early because of work tomorrow. Bottle Rocket is on! I take back every bad thing I ever said about peruvian television programming choices. Owen Wilson at his finest, Luke Wilson at his best. I forgive them for every wretched film they went on to make without wes anderson. Eating these chocolate-covered coconut cookies called picaras. It´s scary how much fun I can have by myself.

I´ve never been much of a "friends" fan, but here I usually wind up watching it while I eat lunch. Last night I had these dream that I was with the whole cast and we were on one of these huge, red, double-decker bus that they have here. And they were talking about how they throw birthday parties for each other. And I was like "hey, joey, you guys never throw me birthday parties." And he was like "you need to be more assertive and demand that we throw you a birthday party." And I was all like aw, man, maybe he´s right. I need to be more assertive. I was also having trouble making all my luggage fit together. I kept reorganizing it and trying to make smaller bags fit into bigger bags, so I was the last person to get off the bus when we stopped. What does it mean? I don´t know. Linda?
Tomorrow, I am here for 6 more weeks. I´m thinking about what I want to make of this time. My brother and I are going to the jungle in a few weeks. And I´m thinking of working in an orphanage in Arequipa, a province like ten hours away, for two weeks.
It´s still freezing cold here at night, but usually hot and sunny in the middle of the day.
I´ve been taking taxis recently, because I need to get from one job to another in thirty minutes during rush hour. Every taxi driver has a different route to get to the same place. Peru: just because you´re making a right-hand turn doesn´t mean you need to get in the right lane. No, you can be in the left lane and just turn right in front of the lane on your right. Very interesting.

ayacucho

On Friday Jorge and I got on a bus for Ayacucho. We were in the front seats on the second story of a double-decker bus. So nice, they gave us pillows, blankets, cookies, sandwhiches, tea, and Les Mis in spanish. TEN HOURS LATER we arrived. I am not a morning person. Sometimes I even want to kill people when I wake up too early. Also, traveling makes me irritable. But we took a taxi to his friend´s house and they gave us food. Then we went around to see the town square, cathedrals and stuff and got lucama ice cream with chocolate chips. Lucuma is this really awesome fruit used in desserts. It was so hot and sunny- awesome because up until last week it´s been freezing in Lima. Then we went to this cultural museum. I have a picture with scene-in-a-box thing they have here. They´re so gorgeous. Usually there are nativity scenes inside, but it can be anything- any kind of religious or secular scenes, from an inch tall to one of this size.The coolest one I saw was in a market, a scene of a shop with people making all these crazy masks.

Then we took a nap and woke up to lunch waiting for us. They made pachamanca, which I think I wrote about before. They take all kinds of things, chicken, pork, sweet potatoes, corn, sometimes fish, sometimes platains, these big green beans like soy beans that are really good, then cook them in banana leaves or a big pot, and cook them in steam in a hole in the ground with rocks on top. So delicious.

Then we checked out more of the area. It´s the dry season so a lot of it looks desert-y. It´s a really rural area. You can see mountains all around you, and also big piles of dirt. Then we went back to the town square and got juice. The center looks like the town square in Cusco. I´m going to miss all the juice places here, of every imaginable combination. We got peach and pineapple juice and it was so romantic. Then it got dark and we went outside to the park and it was a holy day for a virgin and they had all these amazing fireworks. We took a video, I´ll put it up later.

The next morning we woke up early and took an hour and a half taxi ride to somewhere else in Ayacucho where the Spanish army surrendered to the Peruvian independence army. It was a group taxi, and we sat with a Canadian nun who has lived here for four years. She went with us to the site of the monument to the generals in the war. A ton of other countries helped peru defeat Spain.


Then some kids who were hanging around asked us if we wanted to take a horseback ride to see waterfalls nearby.
It was fun. I haven´t ridden a horse in so long. We only walked, but it was still fun. Jorge´s horse was way too small for him, which was pretty entertaining.


It was so beautiful! We got off our horses and walked down this steep trail down to the stream, freezing cold from the andes mountains. They had a few mini huts with benches to relax, so we sat down and looked at the mountains and waterfalls.

Then we walked around different artisinal markets and food markets. We ate ceviche and caldo gallina, hen soup. So good. We wanted to try cuy (guinea pig) but it seemed too hot to eat weird fried pets for the first time. Oh yeah, also, this whole time I´m getting sunburned. I haven´t worn sunscreen in like 4 months, and I didn´t think it would be that hot in Ayacucho. I brought face sunscreen, but it wasn´t enough.

Then we went to the house where the Spanish signed surrender papers. This is one of the cannons from the war.

And this is a doorway of a really old church.

Then we rode the bus home and took another nap. We woke up a little irritable-my shoulders were burnt to a crisp and Jorge was coming down with the flu. But we agreed that we had a wonderful trip. Then there was a thunder and lightning storm! I didn´t realize how much I´ve missed those. It never even rains in Lima. This one was awesome, and felt so good on my sunburn. Then we packed our stuff, and went back to the juice place. Then took the bus back to the Lima. There was a crying baby on the bus. But he wasn´t too bad. He only cried for like half an hour of the ten hour ride, so we counted our blessings. That´s all I can think of for now. One last picture:

It feels like summer today! I´m wearing a t-shirt. I feel like a completely different person when it´s warm. Is that extremely shallow? My afternoon english classes were cancelled, so I am at Jorge´s university where he is finishing his thesis. We had this awesome fruit salad-icecream sunday awesomeness and I reviewed my lesson plan while he read something for his class. He´s getting a masters in philosophy. I´m kind of jealous. I miss being in school, even it makes me unbelievably stressed. I´m excited about traveling outside Lima this weekend. It almost doesn´t matter where I go. It´s so sunny right now, I love it!

I have the house to myself today, and I´m eating leftover cheese and crackers from a party my roommate had last night. Yesterday I taught two english classes, both individual classes. The first guy has a regular class and we´re supposed to go through this book, but we mostly just talked. I think that after you reach a certain point in learning a language, the best way to improve is just through conversation. I told him I studied philosophy and we talked about Camus and the connection between literature and philosophy. It was so nice! I can´t believe I get paid the same for that class as for babysitting all those bad kids last week. Then I had another similar class in the afternoon. Suddenly, I´m getting offered classes left and right!

I had a three-hour break between the classes, so I went to the mall across the street. I ran into a bunch of friends from church. We went to KFC (people here LOVE kfc. they call it "Kentucky" as in I ´m hungry for Kentucky!) and one of the girls used to work there so they gave us a free huge meal.

I´ve been watching CNN. I started watching this sunday afternoon segment focus on the middle east with this middle east expert. It´s really good. Sometimes the guy just editorializes. Today he had on middle east scholars and journalists. (that is, they study the middle east. they aren´t middle eastern) I like watching interviews where the interviewer knows what she´s talking about and has an opinion. And this guy totally does.
Also, I was watching the news before it. They were talking about Somalia, and how the options people have are living in the city and being bombed and attacked, or going to refugee camps where there is almost no food and terrible disease. Things are so bad there but they´re getting even worse. Half the population is dependent on foreign assistance for food. I don´t think foreign aid workers are allowed in, so the US isn´t sure where their money is going, maybe to the militant group al-shabaab, so they´re suspending millions of dollars of aid until they figure it out. Somalia has had five droughtst in a row, one in five children is severely malnurished, and a million people have been displaced because of their civil war. So, it´s lame that I need to see something on TV to care about it, but now I want to go to Somalia.

Jorge and I are going to Ayacucho this weekend. It´s a province like ten hours away. One of his classmates has a house there. I think it will be warmer there, or at least sunny.

Yesterday I substitute-taught a children´s english class. My boss asked me to do a favor and fill in. I´m spoiled at my other job, I only have one child at a time. More than that sounded scary, but I´m not really in a position to turn down work. So I arrived at 8:30 Saturday morning after maybe two hours of sleep to find find my curriculum supremely unhelpful, requiring props, preparation and a lot of interpretation. I tried not to fall asleep waiting for my kids. At 9:00 parents started arriving with their children. The children couldn´t really speak english, and their parents even less so. I spoke with the parents a little but I couldn´t concentrate because of all the kids arriving. I could tell they were kind of freaked out leaving their children with someone who spoke so little spanish, but it´s a 3 hour break from their child, and there´s a mall and theatre right across the street. So they left anyway. After about five minutes, I realized what this job was going to be. Here are some numbers: 10 (quantity of children), 5 (age of the children) 3 (hours I have them), 1 (teacher), 0 (kids that understand english). I have no clue how the class is supposed to be run. They´re all screaming and dumping out the contents of their backpacks on the table. One kid runs out of the room to go to the bathroom and I freak out- how can I take him to the bathroom when I have a million other kids? Agghhh . . . then I realize there are sort of "hall monitors" outside to help with them. But only two, for like 100 kids. So it´s very possible that a kid could run out and they would both be occupied with other kids. So I realize in five minutes that this is basically a babysitting job, but one where I can´t really communicate with the kids. Some of them kind of understand english, but they´re not used to being spoken to in english. I´m supposed to be teaching them english, so I´m trying to figure out how much I should speak to them in english anyway. Also, I don´t know how to give commands, which is different than just saying something. Except for siéntate! Sit down. So I shouted that a lot. Siéntate! Siéntate muy bien. No tocas! When I wanted them to stop touching each other. At the end of the class this little girl asked me in spanish what "no tocas" means. I was supposed to say no toques. Close enough right? But no. Actually, a lot of the kids understood some english. But if they´re all fighting I had to yell at them in spanish. Parts of the class were great. I taught them stuff, we had little segments of learning. But 3 hours? Come on. Once I realized they liked singing, we did that. We sang the eensy weensy spider like 100 times. They loved it. We sang everything I could think of, including jingle bells and happy birthday. Then I made them one by one stand on a chair in the front of the room so we could practice colors. (What color is his sweater?) Halfway through the class, the hall monitor came in to tell me it was break time. I was like "I´m supposed to supervise 10 kids who don´t listen out of the classroom to the cafeteria?!" I tried to get them to line up, but they´re used to just running out like crazy people. Their parents brought them snacks, which they grabbed and then ran to the tables. The hall monitor people helped the kids open their snacks, so that was nice. After that, I had them play games outside, where they ran around and screamed and the oldest kid there got so wound up that he grabbed this other kid´s head and bit him on the forehead. There was no blood fortunately. I was counting down the minutes til the class was over. It was almost so bad it was good, though. The situation was totally ridiculous.
I´m kind of sick today. My throat hurts and I feel sort of fevery. I just watched Garden State while playing scrabble online and writing this, and I hated it way less than the first time I saw it. I even kind of liked it. I´m softening up in my old age.

I didn´t realize how accustomed I had grown to using my roommate´s laptop. I have it during the day when she´s at work, she has it when she´s home at night. But these past few weeks she´s been taking it to work with her. Who does she think she is? But today I have it. And Jorge reminded me that my last blog was bitter and negative. Which doesn´t even sound like me. But I am happier with the world today so I will write something. Jorge and I are back together, but casually. Not casual because we´re seeing other people or anything, but because I´m leaving in two months and even if I was staying it probably wouldn´t work out long term. I told him he has to be on the look-out for a girlfriend to replace me in December, and he said that I occupied such a big space in his heart that he´d have to find two girlfriends to replace me. Sweet, right? Maybe you had to be there.

I´ve been teaching this english conversation class on tuesday and thursday nights. I don´t really love teaching english, but this class is really cool. I don´t need to teach grammar, or push them through boring textbooks. I can do whatever I want. Last night we played scrabble. I might have had more fun than they did, but that´s what I get paid for. It´s actually really fun. They speak english extremely well- they´ve graduated from all the classes at euroidiomas (the institute) and this is just practice for them. There´s so much material on-line to teach classes like this that I usually don´t even prepare, just print out lessons that come with interesting, recent articles and practice exercises. There´s only 5 people in the class and sometimes only 4. I give them exercises where they have to work in pairs, so if only 4 people come then I don´t have to participate. But I also really enjoy talking to them. Two people are I think early thirties, professionals, really nice, smart, good-looking. A girl and a guy, I think they should get together. And a 21 yr old guy and a 13 yr old girl. But they are pretty mature and we have interesting discussions. And there´s one other young professional guy. It should be a class where I tell them about the US, but more often the conversation turns to Peru and I´m learning a lot from them. I think they´re learning things from each other as well, because of the big age gap- for instance, the 13 yr old tells them what school is like now, and they tell her what to expect from university and adult life. We had one discussion about the prevalence of nicknames here, like chino for someone who looks chinese, or gordito for someone who is fat or something. The 13 yr old said the nicknames are so common that even teachers use them to refer to their students, which surprised the adults in the class. I would be so thrilled to be able to speak spanish as well as they speak english. If I could speak spanish that well, I sure wouldn´t be taking a class.
I am still planning on traveling, but I think on the weekends. I have three day weekends so that is enough time to go to most places in Peru.
A few people have asked me to give them english classes, which would be cool. It´s still chilly here. I made maracuya juice, which is the best juice ever. It kind of reminds me of the fruit we had in our back yard in grenada, but the fruit is bigger. It´s so easy to make, I don´t know why I didn´t make it before. Inside are these seeds and pulp and you just put it in the blender, add water and sugar. I also bought fig jam yesterday and finished it today. So good.
I´ve been reading Tolstoy´s short stories, The death of Ivan Ilvych and three others. I haven´t read Anna Karenina in maybe five years, and I don´t remember it that well. But I think I prefer these stories. They´re all pretty depressing, as you must expect when reading a russian author. Even the "positive" story, Master and Man, ends with the main character´s death. Even translated, though, the way he expresses the human experience is so apt, his characters so bizarre and yet recognizable.
On a completely different note, I saw The Hangover, which for some reason they decided to translate for spanish distribution as ¿Qué Pasó Ayer? (What happened yesterday?) I didn´t appreciate some of it, for example the conventional premise that people (especially men) should celebrate finding a life partner by having sex with or at least seeing other naked women before they get married (hence, going to vegas). But that was an extremely small part of the movie, only hinted at through a photo reel at the end of the film. And there was an antagonist introduced halfway through the film that was not funny at all. He was the the way I feared the entire movie would be, a cardboard character comprised of cheap laughs and juvenile sensibility. But the movie as a whole was actually really funny, with compelling characters and plot.

Another thing about peruvian guys. All this stuff, meanwhile, has always been the case but I´m just now getting sick of it. I have a German friend who married a peruvian and lives here now and she talks about the six-month honeymoon with a new country. I can´t remember if I already talked about that. But I´m approaching the end of my honeymoon with this country, I think. The stupid, not hot, low water-pressure showers, the ridiculously crowded buses, and not being able to wear a skirt without some idiot whistling at you or saying something to you or grabbing you. Ok, the last thing only happened once. Except, I forgot to write about last night. I was visiting my German friend Jessica (not the american one) and she lives in a kind of bad area. There´s a nice bus I can get two blocks from her house, but it was after ten pm and I ran to catch my bus but saw it pulling away. Buses here gradually stop running after 10:30 or 11, sometimes earlier maybe, I can´t really tell. But I feel insecure if I´m waiting too late. So I walked down to the main street but I wasn´t sure what bus I had to take. I have to take two buses to get to her house anyway. So I´m looking at buses and it´s kind of a dark area and I´m thinking I should just get on any bus and figure out later where it goes. Then this bus stops for me, and I go to ask the cobrador (the door guy and money collector) where they go, but the bus is in the second lane over from me so I have to walk into the street and in between my bus and another bus. I´m talking to the guy when this other guy comes up behind me. There´s really no room for him to get by, so I kind of move in closer to my bus and I´m just looking at the guy like what´s he doing. And he´s kind of touching me but I think he´s trying to get by. Then he starts touching my butt and I´m like what the heck! But it´s not really violent or sexy or anything and I realize he´s trying to rob me. Meanwhile the cobrador is just sitting there, totally blase. I can´t even remember what I did. I was kind of in shock because I didn´t realize what was happening until it was over, in like one minute. I think I yelled at him and pushed him away and he then he walked away. And the cobrador was like you want to get on? And I was just like you jackass. I went back to the side of the road to wait for another bus. The guy who tried to rob me walked around a little and then wandered away. I realized I should just get on a bus, so I got on some bus headed in the right direction. This guy on the bus hears me asking for directions and gets off with me at my stop, which I guess is where I said I wanted to get off. And I´m thinking why I am getting off the bus with this guy I must be a total moron. But it´s a busy, well-lit corner so it seems ok. Then he walks over with me to this other corner and I realized he doesn´t really know what bus to take either. So I just tell him I´m fine and he leaves. I wasn´t very nice, he probably thinks I´m an ungrateful tourist. Then I find a bus to take me to where I have to take my other bus. Ha ha. 3 buses, kind of stressful. But I like being at Jessica´s. My house is so empty and hers is so fuol. She has two kids and she´s younger than me! A 2 year old terror who whines nonstop and a one year old girl who is the best baby ever. She´s so smilely and sweet and comes over and hugs me and cuddles with me. I told Jessica it´s the physical contact I need since breaking up with my boyfriend, and she laughed. The first time we hung out we spoke spanish but now we just speak english. She´s one of my only english-speaking friends now. But she speaks german to her son, and spanish to everyone else in the house and then english with me so sometimes she goes crazy with switching languages.
I don´t know. Peru is so different. It´s frustrating. People are so different, they have such different expectations of you. When I first got here I thought why would you want to make an effort to be friends with other foreigners? Isn´t that why you´re here, to meet peruvians? There´s this american-canadian society which has events and stuff. And I thought it was so weird, looking for friends soley on the basis of shared nationality? But now I get it. You need connections with people from other countries so that you don´t feel insane. Everyone around you thinks something except for you. Well that makes you insane, or an idiot, right? But if you´re friends with outsiders, you realize that it´s not you. Almost without exception, everyone I´ve met here has been extremely good to me. Warmer than in most parts of the US, I think. But for all that, they can be extremely narrow-minded. Even the sweetest of them. It´s such a small country and it´s pretty insular. And traveling out of south america is too expensive for many people, and visas are prohibitively difficult to obtain. So it´s not that surprising I guess.
I just had to look up the spelling of "surprise". Even though my spanish leaves much to be desired, it´s still contributing to the demise of my english. I only have one friend who´s a native english speaker, which I realize makes a huge difference. I don´t hear language that expands my vocabulary, and using difficult vocabulary with non-native speakers doesn´t make sense. So use small words with me when I get back, por favor?

Guys here aren´t worse then guys in the US, they´re just far more aggressive. Jessica and I went to this club the other night because she met this guy who said he could get us in for free. A lot of discos here are like $30 just to get in, which is comprable to paying like $100 in the US. I would never do that. You´re not paying to see a band or get a drink or anything, literally just to walk in the door. It´s mostly to weed out poor people, I think. There are tons of people who get on "the list" and don´t have to pay, maybe half the people there don´t pay. If you have a big group of people, for a birthday party or something, they can get on the list and get in for free. Anyway, so we got on the frickin list at this club in a really rich, touristy place that is basically a mall. The whole mall is kind of open-air and has at least two, I think three, discotecs, a movie theatre, karaoke, tons of restaurants. It overlooks the ocean, it´s really gorgeous. Nobody here even goes out until like midnight, because places stay open until like 6am. Jessica and I aren´t night people, so we went before they were even open. It was hilarious, we were so uncool. We were trying to open the doors and this guy walked by and was like ok they open in ten minutes. So we sat around waiting. They we finally went in, we were on the list, very exciting. We were so early, it took a while for people to start showing up. Everywhere to sit was reserved for big groups. We asked about this one section and they have a guard there keeping people out. We asked him about this other section and he said "I don´t know. Ask them." That was literally his job, to stand guard over this one little section all night. There were two tables not reserved so we sat there. Eventually we went upstairs to find another bar and more couches. We sat down near a group and wound up kind of crashing a birthday party.
Let me say that is was the first time I´ve ever gone "out" without a boy and without a Peruvian. Who was usually the same person, Jorge. So this is just two american girls going out and I don´t know why but every boy wants to talk to you.
So Jessica and I are just doing our thing, which is kind of me yawning and her telling me to wake up, but all the music they´re playing is so bad we can´t dance. Then this guy starts talking to us, he knows english really well. It´s his birthday and they´re buying bottles of scotch. He gives us drinks and introduces us to his friends, they´re all cool. They we go downstairs and start dancing. People here dance so sexy, but it´s just normal. Even friends dance like that. So I just try to leave as much space as possible when I dance with people. So I´m dancing with this guy, and it´s fun. And I´m not an idiot. I´m american, and he bought me drinks, he´s probably interested. But also, I am american. So that´s how I think. If this happened in the US, I wouldn´t feel like I was leading anyone on. It would just be what it is, meeting people, having fun. And then I danced with Jessica. At one point I felt like that part on Romy and Michelle´s Highschool Reunion where the dance floor opens up and they do this ridiculous routine. The floor was wall-to-wall with people but at one point opened up and we had this huge space to ourselves and were just going crazy with our bad dancing. I know people were looking at us, but I´m pretty sure they were just jealous. We hung out with that group of people most of the night. Then the birthday boy (we both forgot his name, or I never knew it . . . ) tells me he wants to call me the next day. I say sure, but just as friends I don´t want a boyfriend. He acted like I hurt his feelings so badly. We went back to the group, then he took their alchol and left. I thought they were coming back. After awhile (at this point we´re in one of the super cool "reserved" sections) there are people around again. We hang out, then someone asks us who we´re with. We can´t remember his name, then Jessica says "I think this is a different group of people." HAHA. But they´re like no! Stay and party with us! So we hang out with them and dance a little, but all the boys are way too aggressive. So we leave, but it has been a successful venture for Jessica´s last night out before she goes back to the US tomorrow. Outside, 5 cab drivers try to rip us off before we get our good price and go home. Ok, maybe boys are worse here. Or the ones who go to clubs and initiate conversation with american girls.

Peru is a society with such a strong class system. A caste system, even. After almost six months, it still has the capacity to shock me. My (middle-class) friends will make reference to ¨lower- class people.¨ It´s discussed as a matter of fact that there are classes, ¨A¨ people, ¨B¨ people, C people. I don´t know how many classes there are. The first person I heard talk about ¨A¨ people was this girl studying advertising, and how that class of people was who she was targeting for this ad project she was working on. I was pretty shocked but hoped it was just advertising lingo. But since then I´ve heard other people talk about the A and B classes.
People take it for granted to such a degree, both upper and lower classes. I know there are rich and poor in the US, and maybe people here are just more honest. But it´s such a different mindset. To the rich and middle-class, and even to the lower classes, their economic status is their identity. They aren´t just people who are poor right now. Their parents were poor, they are poor, they will probably always be poor. I don´t know how they would get out of their poverty. The kind of jobs they get are service jobs, providing services like cooking, cleaning, watching children and for the men, things like landscape work with the worst equipment. Like cutting a lawn with small rusty shears and then hauling away the debris on a bicycle.
Poor people here often work 10 or 12 hours days, six days a week of insanely tedious and-or backbreaking labor for a shockingly low salary. Maids often live with the family they work for. I don´t know how they could afford housing otherwise. It has to make middle-class people feel better to think of the "lower classes" as different kind of people. It´s routine to see children begging or selling candy on buses, on the side of the road. The government either doesn´t have the resources to take them off the street, or else chooses to spend it on things like planting flower beds in middle-class neighborhoods.
Despite the growing size of the middle class, Peru is still a poor country. I don´t think they should be judged by first-world standards. But it´s frustrating to see a class system so blindly accepted, further perpetrating the poverty of the lower classes. I don´t know how it can ever change.

So after having almost all of my classes cancelled, today I played about 12 games of facebook scrabble and took what began as a very lukewarm shower which proceded to become a very cold shower. And I thought "what am I doing here?" I moved here for many reasons, all of which come under the heading of "doing something different." The modern, middle-class suburban or even urban lifestyle sucks, unless you´re doing something meaningful -slash- working toward a meaningful goal, are surrounded by people you really care about or have money to distract yourself with good food, shopping, travel, etc. Ideally all of those a, or at least the first two. In a pinch, the last usually suffices.
My first few months here were awesome, and my last few haven´t been that bad really. I don´t regret any of it, definitely. But I´ve let myself get stuck in suburbia working jobs I don´t really care about, surrounded by people who are great but for the most part aren´t close friends yet, without any real goals and without money to distract myself.
I just spent the most amazing week in Cusco with my family. It was so wonderful to see them, and so wonderful to get out of Lima. I knew it would give me a much-needed perspective, like travel usually does. I came here to travel and I´ve done almost zero up until last week.
I could be in Philly, working dumb jobs to pay rent except that here I can´t afford lattes. That´s simplying too much, I know, but I guess what I´m saying is that as long as I´m "roughing it", I mind as well be traveling. I´d love to go today! right now! but there´s like 50 reasons to wait until the end of September. So maybe I can travel around Peru, there´s still tons of things I want to see, and then maybe visit Linda in Nicaragua. So that´s my plan! I got it in the shower. Maybe I should take more.

I went to this really cool place last night, with all these amazing fountains. This one had a show, with the streams of water moving and "dancing" to music and changing colored lights.

And this one you could walk under:

It was beautiful. I went with Jessica and a friend she made doing language exchange meeting. They met so Tati could practice english, which she speaks very well, and so Jessica could practice spanish, which she speaks about as well as I speak it. We went with Tati´s fourteen-year old daughter and then met up with Tati´s man friend, who is a total character and only speaks spanish. So we spoke spanish with him, to which he responded by mocking us and trying to teach us necessary phrases, which we decided to learn by repeating them loudly and at length. We looked like dim-witted americans but it was ok. Fun, even.

And then my friend Karen and her boyfriend came over and we had drinks. Karen told me to write about her in my blog. Which I probably would have anyway. Because she is so cute. She could be a little philly hipster, with bangs and big black glasses, but she is german and peruvian. And her boyfriend is really fun. He also speaks to me only in spanish and I mostly speak to him in spanish. And then Karen also translates. It´s funny. It´s really beautiful and sunny out. Maybe I can motivate myself to go out side after more coffee.

welcome back

Well, it´s been awhile. I haven´t felt like posting anything because I was kind of bored and depressed and who wants to read that? Or maybe I just want everyone to think that my life in Peru is non-stop action and adventure. heh heh.
It took me like a billion years to get a job (teaching english) and even now it´s part-time and subject to change or cancellation. I´m so so so broke and in my head it sounds romantic to be poor but it is not. I haven´t been able to afford to travel so I am stuck in Lima and it´s making me hate Lima. Even though I love Lima. But there is horrendous traffic, visible black black exhaust pollution and heinous architecture. But I know if I traveled on the weekends I would love it again. I´ve just overdosed on it.
I went to Cusco with my family this past week and it was so nice. Plenty of interesting family dynamics, like any family, but so much fun. Machu Picchu is really as cool as it´s supposed to be. The structures and architecture are really interesting, but the mountains surrounding it are breathtaking.
So now I´m back to real life. My boyfriend and I broke up and I´m sad. My other best friend Jessica is going back to the US next week. poor me, poor me, poor me. This is why I haven´t been blogging recently, I guess. ha ha.
I´ve been meaning to walk down to the beach for the past month. There´s a big shopping mall-disco-movie theater that overlooks the Pacific Ocean. You can walk along this path, through pretty parks, and then walk down like a million flights of stairs, some of which are perilous and smell like piss, cross a street, walk up and then down more stairs and get to the actual beach. It´s not really sandy, but a rocky beach. People surf there. There´s also this really gorgeous restaurant that is built on a pier over the ocean. Rich people and tourists go there, and they had a web page in english so I thought maybe I could work there. I walked in, past all these rich peruvian ladies in their big droopy alpaca scarves or pashminas or whatever.
After that I sat on this log and watched the waves for awhile until this guy carrying a bunch of surfboards came over to talk to me. He wasn´t creepy, but I also wasn´t in the mood. He started speaking to me in english, then I started answering in spanish when I realized I spoke spanish better than he spoke english. A necessary language ego boost, because I´ve had two traumatizing experiences in the last two days that have made me feel like I can´t speak at all, once at the laundromat, where I swear this woman purposely misunderstands me and another customer translated for me, then another on the bus, where I couldn´t say "paradero" right and this girl next to me corrected me. Anyway. So this guy was chatting me up and I was not really into it but I was being mostly polite. I just kept watching the ocean because that´s what I wanted to do. He left and came back but then came back to talk more told me to be careful. It is kind of sketchy down there, and I planned to leave before it got dark, but he wasted my daylight. I could have said get lost, but I just tried the "giving curt answers until they get the hint method." I declined to give him my number.
Then I took a bus at rush hour, which I haven´t done in a long time. It sucks. It takes so so long to get anywhere and you probably won´t get a seat. Then the money collector guy is trying to squeeze past people in the back to get his money. It´s jam, jam packed. So he does this thing to me where he kind of grabs me and pulls me against him and then away so we trade places and he can get to the back of the bus and I´m closer then I´ve ever wanted to be to him, or anyone else on that bus. Only in Peru.
I´m teaching a five-hour english class tomorrow morning. ha ha.

bus strike

I taught my first advanced english class this morning. Many of my students were late or didn´t come at all because almost all of the bus drivers are on strike today. As best I understand it, they´re upset because the police raised fines on bus drivers, my boss said from 100 soles to 200 soles. I asked if it was for things like speeding and he said yes and also for things like drunk driving. Oh, Peru. So it was hard to get a bus this morning but I got about six square inches of standing room on one that took me almost where I wanted to go. And on the way back I rode in an enterprising taxi driver´s car who was pretending to be a bus- calling out his route, packing in passengers and charging double bus fare instead of taxi fare. Now I am writing my travel articles. Ok, NOW I am.

i´m not a bum.

My dad said he read this blog and it sounded like I was a bum. I´m not! I´ve had my moments but they´re past. I actually have more jobs than I can handle, beginning Tuesday. I will teach an english class M-F from 9:00-10:30 and maybe teach another class M-F. I´m supposed to start another job, (at a call center!) from 11-8 (an hour for lunch) but I am waiting until next week to start that because I am also working with Jorge on the translation of a very boring business manual and I am writing sample articles for a possible travel writing job. Unfortunately they will not pay to send me around the country, but I plan on traveling anyway and they will pay me to write about it. So if I get that job I may quit some of the others. But I will be busy from now on. Yesterday, Jessica, Jorge and I went to the Inquisition Museum where they told us about torture tecniques from the Spanish inquisition that migrated to Peru. Then we took a bus to the highest point in Lima, up steep cliffs and past shanty towns called pueblo jovens. I´ll put up pictures later. They look sort of beautiful because the government painted them to impress some visiting officials. But of course people live there in extreme poverty. You have a view of downtown Lima from the top of moutain-hill. We drove around the city 5 times until the bus filled up and then we finally made our way up. We passed all the governmental buildings around the center square of downtown Lima, Plaza Mayor. Beautiful sort of spanish-style mansions where the president and other officials live, each one of the mansions surrounding the square. Also a gorgeous church where they were having a procession for a saint. And we saw the old post office, the oldest post office in the universe or something. My lack of attention to this kind of detail may prove to be a hindrance in my burgeoning career as a travel writer, but I can always just look up the information after I see the places right? Or just look them up without going there, easier but not as much fun.

today is

HOT! I appreciate that this may not mean much to you, because it is probably hot there all the time now but it has been really COLD here. So I am sweating. Mmmmm . . . sweat.
This week hasn´t been super action-packed for me. I may have spent a few mornings watching TV and stalking people on facebook. Maybe even a few afternoons. This afternoon I was in my roommate´s room on her laptop, watching TV, when her mother and their cleaning girl walked in to find me in pajamas, drinking the last beer in our fridge and eating jelly out of the jar. Multitasking. I forgot that we are getting doors today. So she was there to supervise I guess. She must think I´m such a bum. Which I am obviously not. But now we will have doors for the bathrooms, so that is good.

american-canadian society

So what have I been doing with myself . . . Ok, here´s what I haven´t been doing:

getting a job

Ha ha. What did I do. I did go to a Canadian-American Society drink thing. Who knew they had such a thing? But they did. They do. My friend Jessica researches stuff to do and then I go with her. We met some cool people. One girl who was born in Argentina, lived there for five years, lived in Italy for five years, now lives in Canada. Another girl who has been to like 30 different countries. A newly married couple- a peruvian guy who doesn´t speak english and an irish woman who doesn´t speak spanish but they met in Italy and speak italian. There were some peruvians there too, and a guy from hungary. I thought why do I want to make a point to meet americans, I can just meet them when I go back to the US. But it is kind of nice to talk to people with whom you have at least this one thing in common.

return to the living

I´ve been away from my computer for the past two weeks. By which I mean my roommate´s computer. We moved in with her parents and the 18 yr old girl who cleans for them. In a very small apartment. So I am glad to be back in my own space with my awesome roommate who is away like 18 hours hours a day. The apartment is mostly finished except we have no doors anywhere, even in the bathrooms. So that is entertaining.
Still no job. Well, I had a job but that class ended and they said they are giving me another class but it hasn´t started yet.
It is getting cold here. I wear three layers of clothing to bed. Ideally, I would be in Philly for the summer and Lima for their summer. But I guess I can handle it. My family is coming in two months. I am excited.
I´ve been having a good time. What have I been doing? I don´t really remember. Ok, I finished teaching my english class the first week of June. I made up this test that I knew everyone would pass. One girl didn´t but I passed her anyway, because my boss told me to. That was a little depressing. That weekend I went out for karaoke with some peruvian girls I met at church and my friend jessica (american) I met in my spanish class. It was really fun, I had the best drink ever, marique sour. I forget how to spell it. Sort of like a margarita but more sour and more delicious. Jessica and I sang english songs really badly and the other girls sang spanish songs a little better. Last weekend Jessica, Jorge and I went to this club to hear spanish bands play. Well, of course they are spanish. We are in Peru. But lots of bands play english music too. Sometimes people talk about the cost of expensive things in terms of dollars, too. Because they love America, I think.
OH! And sometime last week Jessica took me to an english-language used book sale at this church. It was so exciting. English language books are a little scarce and pricey, so this was a total score. I brought some books with me, which I´ve read at least twice since I´ve been here. I bought ten books, from Much Ado About Nothing to Edgar Allen Poe to random novels I´d never heard of. I just finished ¨Down Among the Women¨by Fay Weldon. There´s also a book exchange next week for even more books.
I saw Dan in Real Life in the theatre, which they renamed in spanish ¨me, my brother and our girlfriend.¨ I love that movie. We also saw . . . what´s that blockbuster? Oh, terminator. It was pretty good. I´ve also been watching nineties tv, namely 90210 and ally mcbeal. I love them.

news

So I never really watch the news here, but the other day on fox I saw this reporter questioning whether the al jezeera channel should be permitted to be broadcast at Guantanamo, for prisoners or soldiers I don´t remember. But either way. Really?
And then I turned to CNN to see this female Asian reporter explaining China´s purchasing of American debt by pouring rice into bottles, then cooking the rice and then smiling and eating it with chopsticks. I was totally offended by both segments.
My Spanish classes ended, and I don´t think I´ll be taking them next month. I´m going to teach myself. I had this dream last night that I knew Spanish really well. I think that is an omen. I met some cool people in my classes, and I keep in touch with them. I´m looking for english-tutoring jobs. I´m dating Jorge (!), my friend whose family I stayed with the first two months I was here. Also, it´s starting to be winter here. I miss you, Philly-in-summer.

happy wednesday

My last post was sort of moody, I felt, so I have been wanting to write a peppier! happier! blog. But this is not it. I´m not sad or anything. I´m just . . . bleh.
You thought moving to another country would solve all of your problems, didn´t you? You´re so silly.
I am involved with a church that I like. On Saturday I went with some of them to do this program for kids in a poor area. The kids were really cool. They wanted me to teach them english next time I come.
I have a place to live. I will start paying rent when I get paid and that is really cool. Cooler than living in a hostel, although that sounds kind of romantic. I would meet people, but would have no space. I am taking really good spanish classes and like my classmates and teacher. I have a job teaching english, which I hate a little bit but whatever.
But some other things I was expectings, volunteering with this organization and working at this restaurant, I am unsure about because people haven´t been getting back to me. I should be proactive and just pursue other things, I know. Sometimes I do, sometimes I just watch tv.
You know how in the US they will put any crappy movie on tv? Well, here, they really put anything on tv. Even crappier, even stranger, more bizarre movies that you´ve never heard of.
You know when you start watching a movie and you don´t have the cable description of the movie so you´re just watching it to see what it is and the movie totally blows your mind? Like, I would never, NEVER have imagined a movie where Richard Gere is a gynocologist and Kate Hudson is his lesbian daughter who is going to marry a man and Liv Tyler is her girlfriend who is also going to be a bridesmaid and goes to see Richard Gere for a gyn app. And I realize this is a better known film, but I likewise could never have imagined a film with Morgan Freeman, Chris Rock, Aaron Eckhart, Renee Zwelleger and Greg Kinnear. While eating breakfast the other morning, I watched Chris Rock do a very unpleasant thing to Aaron Eckhart, who actually carried off a mullet and aviators. Sort of like the convenience store guy in Ghost World, but better-looking. Anyway. Being american, I love Morgan Freeman. And Christ Rock. And it was extremely disturbing to see them in an uncomplimentary light. I am barely recovered.

i should stop watching friends reruns, and getting another job

I had this really maudlin moment the other day, watching the end of the friends episode where everybody moves out of the apartment. I got the worst pang for college, especially the end of senior year. Even though I was kind of an anxious wreck during senior year. And didn´t graduate. But it actually was really great, and I miss it in retrospect. I miss what I wanted it to be or something. I didn´t keep in touch with my friends from college very well. I don´t even know why. They were really amazing and I loved them, but I started distancing myself from them before we had even graduated.
Maybe I felt like I didn´t have the college experience I had been planning since I was 12. Even though it was really amazing, especially freshman year. My junior year I was in Scotland, away from everyone. They mostly chose to go . . . somewhere in Europe. I forget.
Looking back, I see that I had really high expectations for senior year. I had such an idealistic, dramatic stage set for that year. I let myself get really . . . bitter or something, when it didn´t turn out exactly as I´d imagined. I think I´ve gotten better at not having expectations and just enjoying experiences and people for who and what they are. It´s a struggle sometimes. Part of me still wants my life to be this subtle, nuanced but still dramatic indie film, skipping the overly pedestrian, insipid parts and highlighting the painful, thrilling, really ¨authentic¨ parts of my life. But I want to be a girl in a movie like that, and that girl wouldn´t be thinking like this. Sometimes I feel like I´m 17, not 27.
Also, I have a waitressing job at a restaurant connected with a hostel. No, actually I would be hostessing. I can start as soon as my teaching english is finished, in 2 weeks. The interview was in spanish. Look at me, I can speak spanish. He said if it ever got too late for me to go home, I could sleep at the hostel for free because he considered me like his daughter. ha ha.

those who can´t teach . . .

My class was so great last night! I had another conversation with my boss where I told him that my students were at at least two different levels, and that four of the five shouldn´t have passed their previous class (which he taught). He was like ¨Yeah, I know. They are really slow.¨ I refrained from telling him that that was more a commentary on their teacher than on them.
I decided I shouldn´t try to teach them material from this class when they don´t know anything from their first class. I don´t know how that will go over, or how far we´ll be able to get, but that´s really all I can do. Last night´s class was really fun though. The guy who is conversational wasn´t there, and that helped a lot. The others are intimated to speak in front of him and he keeps translating what I say to them. I think I´m going to give him more advanced work pages and stick him in a corner. But I did a ¨review¨ with them of ten questions, what is your name, where do you live, that they were supposed to ask each other and write down the answers in the correct form. Her name is, she lives . . . It took us the entire hour and a half to do this supposed review. None of them knew the difference between the pronouns I ,you, he she it and possessive pronouns my, your, his, her. I´m not sure what they learned in their class but it wasn´t that. And they told my boss that they couldn´t understand when I spoke to them in english, so he asked me to speak to them in spanish. It´s such a bad school. Anyway. So I spoke to them in spanish a little bit, but also told them that they should speak in english, anything, even if it´s incorrect. They´re used to being spoken to in spanish while they learn english, and it is uncomfortable not understanding. But I think we had a good class.

those who can´t do, teach

So my english class is kind of a disaster. The language institute where I´m teaching is not the highest quality institution, shall we say. Which is why I´m allowed to teach there without working papers. It pretty much just exists to make money. And if people happen to learn another language in the meantime, so much the better. The instruction I received mostly included telling me how slow my students were and how it wasn´t in my best interest to fail anyone, ever, for anything.
There are five people in the class, which would be awesome if they had similar ability levels. But no. One guy is at a conversational level and keeps translating what I say for the rest of the class. Three people are at a similar level, I think I could work with them, but they probably shouldn´t have passed english 1. I think I am teaching basic english 2. I don´t know enough spanish to teach a class in it, so I don´t have that option. But when I took basic spanish 2 , the teacher spoke exclusively in spanish. And I learned so much in that class. But at this school, the students and teachers are mostly native spanish-speakers and they speak in spanish all through the begininng english classes. It is a terrible way to learn. That is how my spanish classes in the US were. We spoke english all through class, and then just had these little moments of speaking in spanish, like it was a special occasion. I think the best thing a class can do is to make you feel like you can speak, and that you have to speak. If you have the option of speaking in your new language or not, you will feel that whatever you say in that language has to be perfect. And you can´t learn a language by learning all the rules and then speaking. You have to start speaking and that´s how you learn. Like a baby starting to speak. The class I sat in on last week didn´t include a lot of speaking by the students. And when they did speak, it was like they were on trial to see if they used the correct grammar. I thought it wouldn´t be hard to do better than that, but these students are at such different levels. Oh yeah, the fifth guy. He might as well have never heard of english. He should also be in another class. The curriculum I have to work with is not good, and it is british english. So the students will learn all about Ceri, who trains for her rugby matches, even though all my students are a hundred times more likely to go to the US than to go to the UK. It is like me learning Spanish from Spain (which is what I´m learning) even though I am in Peru, where the language is actually Castilian. Pronunciation and vocabulary differ as much as between american and british english, I think.
Four of my five students don´t know how to pronounce things. Although now that I´m thinking about it, learning english pronunciation must be way harder to learn because there are no real rules. (Are there rules?) Spanish has pretty straightforward rules about how to pronounce a word and which syllable to stress. English must seem pretty capricious by constrast.

If someone really wants to learn a language, I guess they can do it there. In spite of everything. But these people work all day, and some drive an hour to get here. They don´t have time to do more than come to class for an hour and a half a day. Which is actually a lot, but I don´t know what to do for them. My boss doesn´t care what I do. He said I can´t take the books home, but I should show up a few minutes early to prepare for class. The amount of outside work I´d have to do to make it a good class and to actually address the needs of my students and the amount I´m getting paid for the class are in different universes. I hope they´re not paying too much for the class.

job!!

I think I have a job. Teaching English. Because I know English. I think it counts as a skill. Also, I may have said that I taught English as a second language to children. By which I meant that at the preschool, my favorite kid (who is Japanese) had his cousins come one week and they only spoke Japanese and I forced said four-year old to translate for me. That counts, right? My next entry will be about whether I actually get paid for said job. Also, my roommate might not move but keep living in this apartment and I could pay rent and keep living here. All these maybe´s.
I just watched Frost vs. Nixon. It was great, really amazing performances. That´s all for today.

why??

The good thing about the buses here is that they will pick you up and drop you off within a few feet of anywhere you want to be. The bad thing about the buses is that they might start accelerating while you are transitioning from ground to bus or vice versa.
I hate my new spanish class. My former teacher was perfect and adorable and pretty strict about keeping us on target. We had constant practice, constant conversation. I learned so much in that class. My current teacher is pregnant in kind of a disgusting way. I know that is pretty uncharitable to express, but she´s always hiking her pants up under her belly and it grosses me out. Also, the class is 3 times the size of the former. (9 or 10 students instead of 3.) But she is also way more more casual than my first teacher. I feel like she is teaching us spanish in this very casual, optional way. But we are in a spanish-speaking country, and I think there should be more urgency in getting students to the point of being able to express themselves. For example, we spent almost the entire two hours today discussing vegetables. I don´t care! I mean, I kind of do, but it would be way more helpful to learn verb conjugations than to be able to write a shopping list. People here are very friendly-- there´s always ¿como se dice . . . ? and pointing.
Also, I kind of want to kill some of the people in my class. But mostly my teacher. Betsy said I should ask her to be better at her job. HA ha ha. I love you, Betsy.
My deep thought for the day-- classrooms are like democracy. It is a system that theoretically could bring everyone up to the highest level (what´s that phrase-- a rising tide raises all boats? or something, even though that refers to economics) but inevitably brings everyone down to the lowest common denominator.

work etc

There are many important things I could be writing about. Last month, the Peruvian Supreme Court indicted former president Fujimori of human rights abuses. That is the first time a country has done that. I think. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison, but he is old so it is kind of like life in prison. It was very important that his own country sentenced him. So often, it seems like might makes right, from the richest nations to third-world countries. But especially in a country like Peru, where presidents have the power to change the constitution! So, that was pretty momentous. I watched some of the sentencing portion of the trial.

But the things that preoccupy me the most have to do with . . . me. For example, I hate that a taxi cannot pass me by without honking or whistling-- I look like a foreigner, therefore I am obviously incapable of taking the bus. I might need to study a map, turning around to orient myself, but I get where I need to go. At first, I might have secretly loved being the only blonde, but now I am sick of it. I really actually hate the taxi thing. Even when I´m walking decisively, keys in hand, they honk and slow down. There are more taxis than private cars on the road, so it´s not like it´s difficult to find one. It´s just insulting. Like not only am I too stupid to take a bus, I´m too stupid to see the taxi and so they have to honk at me. If my hair was still black, no one would notice me. But would I like that? That is the question.
This morning I had my first day of basico tres espanol. There are 8 or 10 people in the class, all japanese or german. I woke up at 730 this morning. I think it was good for me. I met one of the english teachers, a girl from texas. She met a peruvian when they both studied at the univerisity of Mississippi (Mississippi!), got married and now they live here. She said I should work here. But I found out I need a work card. You can get this if a company gives you a contract, sort of sponsoring you, but only professional companies do that, or if one of your parents is peruvian or if you marry a peruvian. So, I might get married so I can get a job here. I will expect toasters and throw pillows when I return.
However, I am also exploring less glamorous options, like working at a hostel. This one I went to today looks better than the one where I was originally going to stay, more organized and more legit. Except that the guy did ask me if I was ¨fun.¨ That kind of made me hate him. But we will see. I could also probably work in a crappier language school. I will investigate that this week.
I definitely love Peru, but it is hard to know if it is true love, because I always love new places. Unless I am lonely. Anyway, I am meeting more people. It is cool. Next week I have a meeting with a woman from WordMadeFlesh (a christian organization who works with street kids and I guess does other stuff) so I can volunteer. And I have friends from church, and soon maybe friends from my class. I love the girl I am staying with. She´s mostly at work, and I have the house to myself, which I love love love. But we have also hung out several times and she is funny and a good cook and a good listener. Maybe I can marry her for a work card, but I don´t know if that is legal here. In spain it is though.

the move and the food

I have been threatened if I do not update my blog. I had lots of profound things to say, but I forget them now. I gave myself a bob with children´s safety scissors that I brought from the US in case Peru hadn´t invented them yet or something. It actually looks pretty good. I´ve been watching the season of One Tree Hill where Peyton had that really cool long blonde bob that was so much better than her stupid Madame Alexander doll curls. I think it inspired me.
I moved out of Jorge´s family´s house a few days ago and into an apartment with his cousin Indhira. She had an extra bedroom and said I could stay with her, rent free, until she moves to another apartment to be closer to her job. I think in a few weeks or a month she is moving.
This is a new chapter of my time in Peru, my pseudo-independant life. This new life includes things like being massively proud of myself for going to the grocery store, figuring out how to buy stuff, getting lost but then unlost, finding the house, and using the keys to get in.
Indhira knows more English than I know spanish but hasn´t been using it lately. Last night she came home late, we went to buy wine and then stayed up talking about relationships, the differences between men and women, death and the meaning of life in some kind of english-spanish hybrid. It was fun. I can kind of speak in spanish, but then switch over to english when I reach my boundaries of spanish. Kind of exhausting trying to understand a new language when you don´t really speak it. I am not even in basic 3 yet! Next week I will be. My institute has 10 levels of basic, 4 of intermediate and 4 of advanced. Each course is one month. I will not even make it to intermediate! I am sad.
It was exciting going grocery shopping though. I love food here. Peru has these condiments that are ubiquitous and so delicious. Like salsa rocoto which is made with peppers from here and garlic and is so good and this yellow creme sauce that is kind of like highly flavored, spicy mayonaise but so much better and they are at supermarkets delis. Also this stuff called manjar blanco. It is basically spreadable caramel sauce but is somehow acceptable to eat on bread for breakfast. Another condiment is olive sauce. Which I think is just like mashed olives. It is really amazing. Another delicious food here is the enchilada. But it is not the enchilada you are thinking of. Instead, this is a head-sized tortilla that is really not a tortilla but more like a crepe, crammed with shredded chicken, fried sausage and egg, salad, these ubiquitous chips that look like French´s french fried onions but are really more like skinny potato chips and topped with any sauces you want. Like hot sauce, salsa, mayonaise, olive sauce, creme sauce . . . a million different sauces. It is this hot mess that is completely delicious and I am salivating as I write this . . .
I need a job but for some reason people here consider speaking spanish helpful for working here.
Today is Labor Day. I think things are closed. I don´t know, I haven´t been out of the house yet. But I am going out imminently. I am trying to keep my english from going as I attempt to learn Spanish. I still can´t really speak spanish and if my english goes before I learn, I will have no language and be reduced to totally relying on hand gestures instead of just mostly relying on them as I do currently.
One deep thought about Peru before I forget and the knowledge is lost to the world. I have been noticing how so many institutions, stores, everywhere seem to make such grand gestures at formality. Neighborhoods have uniformed security guards. Every store has one, many houses have one. The cashiers at major supermarkets have identical uniforms down to matching hairstyles and identical yellow scrunchies. Even sanitation workers have identical, distinctive uniforms and people who sell certain things have uniforms that are walking advertisements for Nivea or Nestle. The thing I noticed was the uniforms, but also the attitude that went with it. People that wear them are very solicitous, even if you look young or poor. They greet you solicitously, ask if you need help. I´ve gone into expensive stores looking like a punky 15 yr old and they still act that way. It´s a far cry from snotty baristas and cashiers with attitude. In the US, I´ve waited in line while the girls behind the counter gossipped and ignored me until I finally left without buying anything. Like the scene in Romy and Michelle´s Highschool Reunion when Mira Sorvino holds up the line at the car place to call Lisa Kudrow and tell her that she saw Janeane Garofalo. Like that.
The country does not possess a long history of social stability and structure. They don´t take for granted the structure and stability that they do have, and demonstrate and reinforce it with immediately visible symbols of order. Ok, that is all for today. My new roommate is making ceviche, which is raw fish cured with lemon juice and it is very delicious.

fin de semana

So, I've realized that I didn't do a very good job of advertising this blog. Which is to say that this blog doesn't have very good advertising. If anyone would like to advertise here, please let me know.
Yesterday we went to this club at like 2:00 in the afternoon. It looked like some kind of ridiculous mtv place, huge and with open walls and part of the ceiling open to the outside, palm trees growing all over. So much fun. Wall to wall people, having drinks and loud music, some people dancing. It is the perfect way for me to party, in the middle of the day. I never want to go out at night because I get tired before we even go out, but this was early enough even for me. I met a bunch of Jorge's girlfriends and they were really cute and nice to me. Then we went to a one-year-old's birthday party, Jorge's friend's baby. I ate lots of chocolate things and cookies that I think were alfajor and cake. Then I went to this small group at the church I started attending. We met at the church and took a taxi to this girl's house. It was really good even though I didn't understand what was being said in the group. Only when I was talking to people one-on-one could I understand them. They all speak english a little, but they don't think they can. It got really late and I wanted to go home before everyone else, so they ALL left the house and walked me to a spot to take a taxi. I told this girl to ask the driver how much it would be. There are no meters in taxis here. Instead, you have to negotiate a price before you get in. Then I got in the taxi after kissing all 6 or 7 people, and we started driving. I didn't really know where we were, but it wasn't too far from the church, which isn't far at all from Jorge's house. I knew the main road and some other roads, but I've never taken a taxi alone and also don't have a very good sense of direction in general. So we're on the right road but I'm not exactly sure where we are, when the driver tries to ask me something. But I don't know what he's saying. How am I supposed to know. Do I look like I speak Spanish? So I told him I can't speak Spanish and I don't know what he wants (in spanish). But I told him the landmarks and the road I wanted and everything looked kind of familiar but also kind of wrong. I had this moment of total panic before I realized that we were just going the wrong direction. So we just turned around and were soon home where I tried to remember how to say "left." We had a few laughs, that taxi driver and me. Also yesterday for the first time I saw a guy on a roadbike and got such a pang. I miss my bike. I love my bike. Thursday and Friday my two classmates didn't show up so I had a private lesson. I want her to be my best friend anyway, so it worked out. Thursday we kind of had a regular lesson but Friday we just talked in Spanish about random things for two hours. It was so much fun and made me feel like I'm on the brink of learning Spanish. Even though whenever I didn't know a word I just said it in English and she gave it to me in Spanish. Which unfortunately does not happen in real life.

the people on the bus

I've been walking around with my ipod on recently. I've always thought that was kind lame when people do that, like they can't be bothered to fully participate in the drudgery of real life, like waiting in line and walking down the street. But I do it now, only sometimes. I actually almost got hit by a car today and missed a bus that I think may have been my bus because I had it on. Oh well.
This post is less new things about Peru than new things about me. For instance, now I like juice. Everywhere you go, you can get fresh juice. All kinds of juice, from fruits you never knew existed.
I think my espanol teacher is bored with my class. The korean girl in the class is smart but gets really slow when we learn new things. And it's a class, so we always learn new things. And the hungarian boy misses class and comes late so she kind of hates him. I don't think she hates me, but I'm not such a speedy learner either. Nothing is intuitive, you just have to memorize things. I prefer more relative subjects, where anything that sounds good, is good. Like philosophy. Anyway. On the bus, this boy gave me his seat! Rush hour in Lima is from 5pm to like 10pm or something. After class gets out (5:30) I bum around until rush hour dies down, which it doesn't really ever do. It's bumper to bumper. You can be waiting for your bus, looking at the car in front of you and it will not move an inch for 10 minutes. Swear to G-d. So after waiting for a bus with seats available, I got on this really full bus and was like ok whatever. I had to stand up. But then about 65 more people got on and we had only moved about 2 blocks and we weren't moving at all and I couldn't handle it so I pushed through everyone and got off. The guy tried to get me to pay but I was like "dos cuadros!" I don't even really know what that means but I just walked away. I'm not paying you anything, dude. Then I got on a big bus, the good bus. There were still no seats, but it wasn't too crowded. I walked to the middle of the bus and kind of made eye contact with this guy, this kid really, in shorts listening to his ipod too and he looked at me and just got up and gave me his seat. We both had headphones on and I just sort of smiled. I was in shock. It made me smile for like 10 minutes. He spoke english too. I asked if he wanted me to hold his bag because he had to stand up now. And for some reason I spoke to him in english and he answered. I should have talked to him but I just put my headphones back on.