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.