Sí, claro, claro... Oh, you were asking me a question?

Sorry for the long delay, folks. My schedule here is much fuller than I ever expected it to be. But I want to take the time while I have it this morning to tell you all about the life that I've more or less settled into here in Lima.

But first, I added up all the time that I've spent traveling just that first month from Dallas, TX to Lima, and I think you'll be as astounded as I was:

161.5 hours.

That's almost an entire week of my five weeks in South America sitting in some sort of transportation vehicle. 112.5 of those hours were spent on a bus. The rest were in plane, train, boat, or car. Disgusting, no? Traveling cheap has its drawbacks.

Mi familia:

Pepe- Mi padre Peruana, a short, stout man with a toothy grin and bright white hair. He speaks with energy, loads of expression, and the best sound effects I've ever heard. It makes him very entertaining to listen to even when I can't understand what he's saying. He is a lover of modern art, theater, and the cinema. Many evenings have been spent with him out at independent film festivals, art galleries, theater productions, and last week, an international guitar festival. He loves to tell me and my housemate, Vanessa, all about the history of the city; he sits us down in front of a map and tells us which neighborhoods are dangerous, which ones have the best museums, the best parks, the best restaurants, the best beaches, how much a cab should cost to each place or which buses to take to each neighborhood, etc. Last week he gave me a section of the Peruvian newspaper here with instructions to pick an article to read and then discuss with him later to work on my Spanish.

Carmela- Mi madre Peruana, an extremely warm and generous woman with a bright white smile and a kind spirit. She loves to surprise me with a vase of fresh flowers in my room every now and then. It seems like every day there is a new, exotic Peruvian fruit in the fruit bowl because she knows how much I love the fruit here. Every friend I've introduced her to she's invited to come over whenever they want and to help themselves to any of the food in the kitchen. This weekend, she threw a party for Vanessa and I and all of our friends with a huge feast of Peruvian food, deserts, and drinks--her and Sara (who I'll introduce next) cooked for twenty people. She loves to hear all about my life, my friends, my classes, so Vanessa and I have a lot of fun trying to come up with words in our limited vocabulary to describe them.

Sara- Domestic servant, a small woman (couldn't be more than 5' tall), quiet as a mouse, but upbeat and kind. Apparently, domestic servants are very common here, but it definitely is taking me some getting used to. It's a strange feeling to have someone clean my room, do my laundry, and cook all my meals, but not eat with the family or go to the theater with us. But she is well-loved here and was affectionately introduced to me the first day as "Sarita."

Sandra- Carmela and Pepe's daughter, 28 years old, always at work or shopping or at the discotecas (clubs). I rarely see her except maybe in the morning at breakfast, though she is very sweet and has given Vanessa and I lot of advice about which discotecas to go to and where we can find the cheapest clothes. It's typical here to live with your family until you are married or even after you marry (see below). For this reason, the families are very close but each member usually has their own schedule so meals are left out on the stove to be eaten whenever is convenient.

Lorenzo (or just Renzo?)- Carmela and Pepe's son, 30-ish years old, married to Carola. Vanessa and I had been calling him Lorenzo for the past three weeks until we started noticing that no one else calls him Lorenzo, just Renzo. Everyone has a nickname here so we're not really sure if this is his nickname or his actual name, and which one we're supposed to be calling him. In fact, I just found out yesterday that Pepe's real name is Jose. Anyway, Lorenzo is one of my favorite people I've met here. He's got a thunderous laugh and a permanent smile and a fantastic sense of humor. Even when I don't get the joke, I can't help but laugh. He loves to tease me about one night when I accidentally pointed to the wrong state when I was trying to show him where Nevada was. He also tries to convince me that I'm eating dog or rat a lot. Oh, and he's got fantastic taste in music, which makes long, cramped car rides to the beach a ton of fun with him.

Carola- Lorenzo's wife, 28-ish, petite and fit, extremely intelligent, patient, and kind. Some of her family lives in Miami so she speaks a little bit of English, though she won't unless I really don't know one of the words or don't understand what someone is trying to say. Her and Lorenzo are a lovely couple and they both live in the house with us, as well. They tend to spend more time with the family so I am closer to them than Sandra and her boyfriend.

Pepo- The most loved dog in the world. A giant, calm golden retriever of ambiguous age (every time I ask I get a different answer). He is a vital member of the family and the life of every party. I always know when one of my family members comes home because the sound of their greeting to Pepo rings through the house: "Pepooooo! Hola, Pepo! Hola! Como estas?! Ohhhhhh, Pepito, perritooooo, ohhh, buenisimo perrito bonito!" Or some variation of this.


A few things I've learned about the Peruvian culture, the people, and Lima itself:

Every surface of the city of Lima seems to be covered in propaganda for one of the eleven candidates for the presidential election that will take place here in April. There is no main political party here, but the favor seems to be divided more or less evenly between seven of the candidates. Everyone in Peru is required to vote starting at age 18. When you vote, a stamp is put on the back of your identification card and if you don't have this stamp, many businesses such as banks are required to refuse you service. You must also pay a fine should you choose not to vote. In addition, two days preceding voting day, consumption or sale of alcohol is prohibited throughout Lima, though apparently there is a fair amount of bootlegging or sneaking in the back door of bars or clubs.

Speaking of discotecas, they're so much more fun here than they are in the States. For one, Peruvians love 80's and 90's American music. It's been really fun to sing along to songs from my childhood with Peruvians and then attempt to try to translate them. There are also electronic/techno discotecas and salsa discotecas. And all of the men here love to dance and are great at it. My friends explained that if you don't know how to dance, you're not a man.

In addition to 80's and 90's American music, I have found that interestingly enough that Three and a Half Men is the most popular TV show here. I don't think I know anyone in the States that watches that show. Oh, and they also love Charlie Chaplin. Awesome, but pretty random. I see posters and paintings and cookies with his face on them everywhere I go.

Mayonnaise is the condiment of choice here and can be eaten with anything. Sandwiches, pasta, seafood, chips, any type of meat. Yesterday at the beach I had octopus in a sauce of mayonnaise, olives, and olive oil on saltine crackers. It took about an hour for them to bring it out and when we asked what was taking so long, they said they were killing the octopus. Not a joke. Literally. Fresh octopus straight from the ocean.

Breakfast is eaten whenever you happen to wake up and usually consists of coffee, bread, jam and butter, and fruit. Lunch is then eaten around 1 or 2pm and is the largest meal of the day. Then there's "lonchera" which is a small snack of bread and cafe around 5 or 6pm. Dinner in my house is leftovers from lunch and is eaten after whatever your activities were that evening, which usually means I'm starving and about to pass out when we finally eat around 10 or 11 at night. But people here typically stay up later than we do in the States. My padres take their walks in the evening after dinner, so between 11pm and midnight. Young people leave for the discotecas around midnight and come back between 4 and 5 in the morning. I haven't quite adjusted to this schedule yet so Vanessa and I usually leave early (3 am or so), to everyone's confusion.

The people here are incredibly friendly. One of my biggest worries when I left was that I was going to have trouble making friends, but whoever I happen to be sitting around in class has been so quick to strike up a conversation with me and it's typical to invite someone you've just met to the discoteca with your friends that weekend or over to your house for dinner with your family.

Classes are an interesting experience, as well. Somehow I wound up taking 22 hours this semester: four classes in English and two in Spanish. Most of my English classes are painfully easy, though I think a couple of the professors have such strong accents that it would be easier to understand them in Spanish than English. My Spanish language class is great and I'm excited to be learning some grammar to add to my mostly useless vocabulary that I just picked up in my month of traveling beforehand. (Things like "sparkles" or "oatmeal" or the Chilean slang word for "gangster.") However, I am the only gringa in my Organizational Behavior class (in Spanish, Comportamiento Organizacional) and I'm hoping I catch on to all the business lingo so that I can catch a little more of what we're talking about in class. There is very little homework during the semester in my classes, but instead you are usually put in a group at the beginning of the semester and will complete a semester long project to be presented at the end for your final grade. Also, the class environment is much different here than in the States. Professors don't care if students come to class or talk in class, so I've had to get used to tuning out the conversations going on around me as the professor lectures. As far as books go, people here just don't have the money to spend $200-500 on books every semester. But luckily, copyright laws don't exist here so students go to the Fotocopía (Photocopy Station) to purchase photocopies of whatever chapter of the book they need for the next class for S/.1 or 2 (about 50 cents).

I take the "public" buses to school every day which has been an experience in itself. The public transportation here isn't actually public as there's not one bus system owned and operated by the city. All the buses, taxis, and combis are privately owned. This also means that there's not an actual bus schedule. So to get to school, I walk about 10 minutes to one of the major intersections in my neighborhood, listen for someone yelling out "Todo Javier Prado!!!!" ask if they stop at near my school ("Baja La Molina?"), and then hop on and hope that there's a seat. It's about a ten minute bus ride depending on the time of day, and then at my stop it's another ten minute walk to campus. The violent starting and stopping of the bus combined with the smell of pollution and the suffocating heat makes for a nauseating start to the day, but I'm adjusting. Then I repeat the process in reverse on the way home. Taxis are only taken when absolutely necessary because they're more expensive than the buses, but I've learned all the tricks. I know exactly how much it should cost to each neighborhood so I know whether or not I'm getting ripped off and I know which types of cabs to look for (basically, just avoid the Ticos- extremely small Korean made taxis which are common here because they're very cheap but are also quite dangerous). Traffic here can also be quite frightening at first. Cars drive impossibly close to one another (within centimeters, it seems) and lanes mean nothing. If there's three feet of space, simply hold down the horn and squeeze your way in there. Also, pedestrians do not have the right of way. Cars will not stop for you, so don't try it.

Learning another language has been... amusing. Frustrating and exhausting at times, but mostly all the mistakes just make for good stories in the end. For instance, I sent out a mass email in Spanish to all of my new Peruvian friends that I met in my classes to invite them to the dinner party that we had on Saturday. One of them, Andres, informed me (between bouts of hysteric laughter, of course) that I had used one of the slang words wrong. You see, "pata" is a Peruvian slang word for "friend." So in my email to everyone, I greeted them with an enthusiastic "Holala patos!!!" I changed the word to pato because I thought that it was like most other words in Spanish and the ending changes depending on if it's masculine or feminine. Nope. Because "pato" means "duck" or is also slang name for a homosexual person. So when I thought that I was giving out a cool, friendly greeting to all of my new friends, I was actually saying "Hello ducks!" or "Hello gays!" I guess I won't make that mistake again.

This weekend I head to Ica/Paracas with my study abroad program. I'll try to post again when we return to tell you all about it.