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.