Score/Bust

So, my sister and I had these friends that always played the score/bust game. It is played like this: One person says something that is either good or bad. If it is good, everyone then shouts, "Score!" and if it is bad, everyone shouts, "Bust!" People from older generations (like my parents) usually shake their heads and don't think it's funny, but it is quite hilarious if you give it a chance. I was thinking about it the other day and decided to make a score/bust list of Peru. I'm sure I will add to it as time goes on, but here is what I've come up with so far:

Score:

• Mopping the sidewalks- Every morning on my way to class there is a man mopping the sidewalk in front of a particular apartment building. It even looks shiny! I've never seen a shiny sidewalk before.
• Cool drying rack- Our new apartment has a washing machine, but no dryer. We went shopping all over looking for a drying rack and couldn't find one. When we got home, we realized that we already had everything we needed! They have installed a drying rack that comes down from the ceiling on a pulley system. I'd like to see Derek engineer something like that!
• Breastfeeding women- Jeff laughs, but everytime I see a woman breastfeeding in the middle of the street I want to give her a high five. No one has problems with something as ordinary as a mom feeding her baby. I'm not quite sure why in the U.S. it's considered pornography by so many people.
• Tanta- For anyone travelling to Lima, you have got to try this restaurant. SO GOOD!!
• My school- For anyone travelling to Lima to learn spanish, El Sol is the place to be! It is awesome.
• Handwashing sink in the mercado- Not sure why they haven't thought of this in the U.S. There is a handwashing sink next to the meat section in the supermercado! Unfortunately there are almost no other food safety practices that I am aware of. You can wash your hands, but you still might be buying week old meat that has been sitting at room temperature.

Bust:

• Cucarachas- we are in cucaracha season. Apparently there are always cucarachas here, but during these months they are bigger. And there are a lot of them, dead and alive, on the sidewalks.
• Honking- Anyone who has travelled outside North America knows how imporant it is to have a working horn on your car. They honk EVERYTIME they cross an intersection to let people know they are coming, everytime they see a gringo, everytime they see an old lady crossing the street, etc. I haven't the heart to tell them that when everyone honks that much, it doesn't mean anything anymore.
• Giving change- People here HATE giving change. Everytime you give them a large bill, they either refuse to take it or give a long sigh as though giving change is the most difficult thing in the world to do. One day we needed change to take a taxi, so we went to a tienda to purchase something and break a larger bill. The lady wouldn't let us buy anything because she didn't want to give us change!
• Hot water- Every apartment has a little breaker switch that controls the hot water. Usually you don't have hot water 24 hours a day. You have to flip the switch and let it heat up each time you need hot water. This means that we wake up every morning at 5am to flip the switch so that we can take warm showers.

Yuck!

Today I got kissed on my face by an italiano. It was weird. Everyday as I walk through Miraflores I pass countless men who hope for some attention from an extranjera. Some have no teeth, some are 4 times my age, some look like they stepped out of a clothing catalogue from the 80s. I haven't mentioned it before because everyone already knows this about South America, and I didn't want to sound falsely modest by saying how much I can't stand it, though I truly can't. A typical day in my life involves walking down the street followed by a line of about 10 taxis with drivers either honking at me, whistling at me, asking if I need a taxi (incase I don't know how to wave in spanish), shouting, "guapa!" or any other number of words that I pretend to not understand. In addition, on every block I also pass an average of about 2 men who try to strike up conversations, or who stare at me until I am completely out of site. One taxi drove by me with a man inside who waved to me for 2 blocks and wouldn't stop until I waved back. I suppose this is some women's paradise, pero a mi, no me gusta!

So today as I was walking to my spanish class an Italian man joined me along the way. He spoke some combination of mumbled english, spanish and italian, and since I only speak english and a little spanish, we didn't have the tools to become great friends during the minute and a half that he walked with me. It didn't help that when he was walking fast, I tried to walk slow, and when he slowed down, I tried to walk faster. Maybe he thought I was playing hard to get? We finally passed the little magazine booth where I think he said he worked. Before I figured out what was going on, he leaned over and kissed my cheek! I understand that this is a very cultural thing, and in Peru it is common for people to kiss the air beside another person's cheek. However, it is not common to kiss someone who is just walking down the street that you have never met before in your life! And he didn't kiss the air, he actually kissed my cheek. And what's worse, I think he did it in front of all his friends in order to show off!

On another note, Jeff and I didn't make it on our pinguino excursion last weekend because Jeff picked up a nasty foodbourne illness and was sick for 4 days. He's feeling much better now, so hopefully we'll make it there a little later.

La Noche Americana

Sorry this is a late post. We have had trouble loading pictures onto our blog.

Jeff got pretty sick the Thursday before we were supposed to go to Paracas to see pinguinos and we weren't able to go. Instead, we spent a few interesting days doing absolutely nothing. Well, I did absolutely nothing while Jeff puked his guts out. As he started recovering, he couldn't stomach the thought of eating peruvian food, so we decided to have a noche americana. We ordered pizza

from Papa John's and watched a movie. We walked for miles to find a Blockbuster, but found out that they were put out of business by a little market that sells "cheap" DVDs. So a nice taxi driver took us to the market and we bought 5 movies. Despite being sick, Jeff still maintains that this was his best day in Lima.

Shower Curtain

I almost forgot! This is for Charlotte. I should have known that she would be the first to comment on our designer shower curtain. It is full of wonderful exercises that you can do to sculpt and tone your body. The best part is that you can do them in spanish, or in english!

La Primera Vez ...

I had a lot of "firsts" this week.

We had our first cucaracha in our apartment a couple of days ago. I was home alone, looking for something to eat, when I opened the freezer and saw a cockroack hanging out on the edge of the freezer. Luckily I was brave enough to wait until Jeff got home so he could spray it with anti-roach spray.

I also got to see the embassy for the first time. It's an odd looking building from the outside, but the grounds are beautiful! I finally got to meet all of the people that Jeff has told me about. I'm pretty sure the ambassador wanted desperately to meet me as well, but I was on a very tight schedule.

I took my first taxi ride sola in order to get to the embassy. That was a little scary because we are always hearing stories about awful things that happen to gringos who take taxis by themselves. But I lived through it and had another first along the way ...

My first real, long (about 20 minutes) spanish conversation with someone who is not one of my teachers. The taxi driver told me all about his brother who lives in the U.S. He is married to a woman who doesn't speak spanish, and he doesn't speak english. Apparently they understand each other, but when they speak to each other they only speak in their own language. Then he told me all about how everyone in Peru wants to come to the United States because in the U.S. almost everyone has a Ford Explorer.

And my last first came in class today. Today I had my first chance to use the word "amamantar," which means "to breastfeed." I never thought I would use my wealth of breastfeeding knowledge that I accumulated during my time working at WIC. However today in my conversation class we each had to tell about a strange story that we had read in the news recently. My fellow classmate told of an article about a mom in Chicago who was still breastfeeding her 12 year old boy. That launched a whole discussion on breastfeeding, and I was asked what I tell my clients at work when I teach them about it. There is hardly a topic that I have talked about more in spanish. Finally a conversation I was prepared for!

And on top of it all, I found the cure for obesity. Move to Lima and don't buy a car. I think I've lost about 5 pounds already from walking everywhere (although most of it is probably sweat).

Well, we have our big trip to Paracas this weekend with OUR AWESOME FRIENDS GABE AND APRIL from the embassy (that was for you, April!). We get to surf down sand dunes, then take a boat tour to check out some cool aquatic friends. I was informed that to see pinguinos I probably need binoculars, which I don't have, so you have to settle for pictures of sea lions.

Hasta luego!

Larcomar Mall

Our apartment is 4 or 5 blocks from a very Westernized shopping area called Larcomar. It has a few American restaurants such as Tony Romas and the fine eating establishment of Hooters (I've heard their wings are great). They also have such great Peruvian stores as the Alpaca store and Bugui (pronounced boogey). Today we went for a walk to Larcomar after church and decided to take a few pictures to put on our blog.

Be sure to stay tuned next week as we visit one of Peru's wildlife reserves. There will be sea lions and other creatures, but most importantly there will be Carolyn's favorite: penguinos.

Come with us on our bus tour!

Today we went on a bus tour to many of the most important sites in Lima. We thought it would be fun to vicariously take you all along with us.

This is outside the San Pedro cathedral. Our tour guide introduced it as the grandest cathedral in Peru, and in her opinion the world. She said that some people find it too gaudy, but to most it is an important place of worship.

This is the main chapel of the San Pedro cathedral. The people who built it were very skilled in working with gold, and much of the inside is made with 24k gold. We tried to get a better picture, there was a mass and we had to move quickly through.

Just one block from the San Pedro cathedral is Torre Tagle. It is the main office building of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The brown boxes on the outside are balconies. They were designed so that when you are standing in them you can see outside, but no one can see you from the street. We were lucky to be one of few groups to have a private tour of the inside.

Here is Jeff and I on the inside of Torre Tagle.

And here is Jeff taking his natural place at the conference room table as Ambassador to Peru.

This is the Plaza de San Martin, probably the most beautiful park we have seen so far in Lima. San Martin is one of the main people who helped liberate much of South America from Spain.

Here is Carolyn in the Hotel Bolivar, located in the Plaza de San Martin. Simon Bolivar the leader of the revolution and San Martin was his co-liberator. When the hotel was built, they wanted to name it a Quechua word for cemetery, but decided that no one would want to stay at a hotel called Cemetary. Instead, they decided to call it the Hotel Bolivar because it was commonly thought that "in front of every San Martin there should always be a Bolivar." As an interesting side note, John Wayne stayed here, as well as another famous actress from the '50s American actress who got wasted from Pisco Sour (the national beverage of choice) and danced on the tables.

This piece of fine art is located in the restaurant at the Hotel Bolivar. The man has a square head because one of the early tribes (pre-Incan) would place wood braces around their heads to form it into a square shape because they thought it was beautiful. We dedicate this picture to Jennifer, a true connoisseur of fine art.

Here is Jeff in front of Peru's National Cathedral.

The old part of Lima has large squares with these beautiful yellow buildings.

This is the Government Palace, Peru's equivalent of the White House, where President Alan Garcia lives. It was orginally built by order of Francisco Pizarro (the spanish conquistador of South America). It was then inhabited by the vice royalty of Spanish Columbia. Since independence it has been used as the presidential palace, though Fujimori was the first president to actually live in it. We got to see the changing of the guard, or at least the first 20 minutes of it. Apparently it is a pretty long process with a band and stuff. It was pretty cool, but there were so many people it was hard to see anything.

After the changing of the guard, we left for the catacombs. On our way we ran into a group of young Peruvians from the jungle. They had come to perform a dance at a show after the changing of the guard. We didn't get to see them dance, but we will be going to a show in a few weeks where we can see it. They also had snakes with them that don't show up in the picture.

This is Santa Domingo, a dominican church that houses the catacombs. What look like stripes on the outside of the church are actually birds that sit in rows on the walls.

Inside Santa Domingo Jeff snapped a picture of an old library that was used by the priests. It had books that were from the 16th century. The large books were used by the priests to read from at their meetings. Above the main chapel, there is a terrace where they would hold these meetings. The books had very large print, and they would place them on a revolving stand so that everyone could sing and recite together. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pictures of the room. All of the priests sat in folding seats. When they were allowed to sit, they would fold the chair down and use it as a chair. When they had to stand, they would fold the seat up. On the back of each seat was a little ledge to rest their behinds on while they were standing for very long periods of time. They called them "mercy seats."

Outside Santa Domingo there were tons of Rock Pigeons (aka Rock Doves, or just plain Pigeons by those not well-versed in the world of fowl). There were a bunch of little kids chasing them and it was so cute we had to take a few pictures.

After seeing all the grandeur of Lima, we hopped back on the bus and drove back to the embassy. Most residents of Lima live in extreme poverty and their are many make-shift homes on the hills or near the edges of the city. It was such a contrast from everything else that we saw. We returned much more grateful for the small apartment that we live in.

Viva el Peru!

The view from our living room window

The most important room in the apartment

Our bedroom

Our kitchen

Our living room

Hi everyone. We are finally settled in Lima, so as promised we are updating the blog and sending pictures of our apartment.

We arrived in Lima at about 1:30 a.m. on Friday. Well, I guess it was actually Saturday. Our flight was delayed leaving Atlanta, but other than that everything went pretty smoothly. We stayed at a hotel Friday night, then moved into our apartment on Saturday morning. It's very yellow and has mirrors on almost every wall, but it is nice and will suit our needs. We have no oven and the fridge only gets to 50 degrees farenheit - totally unacceptable for a food safety expert such as myself. Luckily I brought my kitchen thermometer so I could test it. So until we can get that fixed we'll have to put everything on ice to keep it at a nice, safe 38 degrees.

Yesterday we went out to eat with Lyra, the foreign service officer Jeff will be working with, and her fiancee Landry, who is also in the foreign service. They are both very nice and it sounds like Jeff will have a great experience over the next 10 weeks. Jeff will be working in the fraud prevention department. He will be investigating any suspicious claims or documents that people give along with applications for visas or immigration.

Today we went to church and made some new friends. There were a few other norteamericanos there. One man is from Canada and his wife is from Peru. They spend 6 months of the year in each place. There is another couple named the Walkers who have been here while the husband does research for the past 7 months. They are going away for the rest of the time that we will be here, but they got us in touch with a group of other americans that get together frequently. I was lucky to meet a wonderful woman named Laura who translated the Relief Society lesson for me. She also gave me my first church assignment. Actually my first two assignments. She was asked to sing in church next week and I am going to accompany her on the piano. Tonight is the stake choir and I will also be playing for that while I am here. She is a music teacher for 3rd grade students and is one of the only highly musical people around, so I guess she was excited to find another piano player.

I made a spanish sentence today as Jeff was finishing off the 2nd 1.5 L bottle of Diet Coke. Jefe toma demasiado Coca!