Oh hey there friends!
I should probably start writing blog posts more regularly because I know that even in a giant post I’m going to forget to include some of the experiences we’ve had since I last wrote! However, our days have been quite busy and varied so finding the time to write has been difficult!
As I’ve mentioned before, we are so incredibly lucky to be here and to be treated as well as we are. We have been introduced to so many people who are so kind and welcoming and eager to help us have an incredible experience here. I have many examples of this to share!
A major accomplishment for last week was learning to take a combi (the small buses), on our own to Pamplona Alta. This might sound like a first-year-university-student kind of achievement, but it’s pretty complicated in Lima! As some of you know, there is no central organizing association or business to manage public transportation- it’s all privately owned. Anyone can register their vehicle as a transit vehicle and start a route. As such, there are a LOT of different vehicles and routes and there is no website or guide to help you figure out which to take. We asked our Spanish teacher, Melissa, how people learn which combi to take where, and she said if you want to go somewhere you just ask other people which vehicle or route will get you there. The downside to this is that it’s very confusing and a little dangerous. The upside is that you can go from one side of Lima to the other for just a few soles! So for example, Christine and I learned to take a combi from la C.T. (which is a section of San Juan de Miraflores near our house) to “ciudad de dios mercado” or City of God Market for about 50 centimos (half of a sol). Then we get off that combi and cross a double lane street and find the combi that takes us up to Pamplona Alta. We can take that all the way up to the community centre in Torres Mina for one sol. So for about 3 soles each we can go up to Torres Mina to teach English classes, and return to la C.T., in what would normally be at least a ten soles cab ride each way (more if we get “gringa’d” as I like to think of it when the cab drivers purposefully overcharge us). It can be a bit dangerous- on our first solo ride back down to la C.T. there were two guys who were hardcore eyeing up our backpacks- but Victor gave us some tips to stay safe and those were the only issues we experienced. I just tried to look really tough and strong when the guys were checking our bags out, and they got off soon after so either it worked or stealing our backpacks was not a task worth missing their stop for.
After volunteering for the week, we had a wonderful weekend in Lima with some new Peruvian friends. We had gone out with Luciano and some of his friends Halloween night, and met several really nice (and English-speaking!) people. One of them, Juan Diego, offered to meet up with us to see some museums and sights in historic Lima. After Saturday morning Spanish classes, we headed to the Museum of the Inquisition with Juan Diego. Unfortunately the tour was in Spanish, so past catching the “bienvenidos al museo de la inquisición,” I was pretty lost. Juan Diego caught us up on some parts though, and the museum itself was quite interesting. After that we caught a tour bus up to San Cristobal, a big cross a-whay up high on a mountain. The ride was mildly terrifying (we told Juan Diego that if we plunged to our deaths we would no longer be his friends), but the view from the top was incredible. A particularly hilarious moment: When we were admiring the view of Lima, a Peruvian woman walked up to me and held out her child. Not quite knowing what to do, I took her kid from her, and then realized that she and her husband wanted photos of their two year old daughter with Christine and I. I am still not quite sure why, as we had never met them before, but I hope that we are immortalized in some small way in a photograph on a mantel somewhere in Peru! I think part of it is the blonde hair. We were talking to Lizeth today and she was saying that in most of Peru people have relatively similar skin tone and hair color, so having pale (or in my case pink) skin and blonde hair is a big novelty. It’s really interesting to be in a country where your identity as a foreigner stands out so strongly, and where in many cases it carries with it more privilege or at least guarantees that in some way you will be treated very differently (in both positive and negative ways). It’s difficult to walk around without being noticed, that’s for sure. Back to the couple and their child: We told Juan Diego that we’re actually very famous in Canada and these people probably recognized us from all of our movies and tv shows and book signings and other things that we’re famous for. After a slightly less terrifying, but nonetheless scary ride down the mountain, we headed to the water park for dinner and the show. It still blows my mind that in the middle of a desert there’s a giant water park, while people in the higher shanty towns struggle to have water transported to their homes.
Juan Diego then invited us back to his apartment, and to the birthday party of a friend of his. We didn’t want to intrude, but were so happy when we ended up going because everyone was so friendly and we had such a good time. At Juan Diego’s we had a chance to hang out more, drink some Pisco (which I’ve come to like a lot more!), share some Peruvian and Canadian music, and watch an AWESOME documentary about a town in Nebraska called Peru. I’ll post it! After this, we went to Rodrigo’s birthday party at his incredible apartment in Surco. It was on the top floor and had a retractable roof over a small pool. Everyone there spoke English phenomenally well, and we had a great time meeting everyone. Christine and I were talking at the party and we feel like we are getting a really varied and rich experience, from volunteering in the shanty towns to living in San Juan to visiting more tourist-y areas and the more well-off parts of Lima as well. Additionally, in all of these places we are being welcomed with open arms and we have the opportunity to talk to lots of different people about their experiences. I feel as though in many ways this is a truly 3-dimensional experience, and perhaps the only way to improve it would be to live and work here for longer.
We have found a cab driver named Juan who we feel very comfortable with, so we are able to call him for rides to and from different places in Lima. Around 2am we headed home, although Rodrigo informed us that his intent was to party until 6am. Truthfully, I’m too old (almost 30, some might say- just kidding) and value sleep far too much for that!
The next day we headed to Miraflores for the day. We were sucked in by the Inca market (it gets me every time!) but it was an incredibly successful Christmas shopping adventure. We headed to the beach for a bit, and then went to dinner at San Antonio’s...complete with frozen maracuya juice. Oh dios mio- I missed it over the summer!
This week started with a bit of a slump for me, as I was sick Monday and Tuesday. After sleeping a silly number of hours and not eating for a day I was way better, and I feel totally fine now. We had made a date with Luciano to go for ceviche on Tuesday, which wasn’t awesome on my stomach but it still tasted delicious. We then went with Victor to check out our new volunteer placement for the afternoons. It’s a school in San Juan and it is so, so cool. They have a couple of small gardens and want help with them, and are excited by the idea of building some composters. We returned there today to confirm some details with one of the school directors, Gladys, and it looks like for the last two weeks that we’ll be volunteering together we will be in Cerritos Azul for the morning, and work in this new school for the afternoon- Christine teaching English to 6 year olds and potentially helping with art classes, and me working on an ecology project in the gardens with 8 year olds. So it sounds like the most perfect volunteer placement I could think of! I am very, very excited and I hope that it works out well! It officially starts on Monday, so I’ll have more updates in my next post!
On Wednesday we accompanied Victor for his day of work, visiting a Solidaridad en Marcha collaborative project in a nursing home in Callao. I got my butt kicked at checkers by an elderly Peruvian man, although I still contest that he had some liberal interpretations of the rules regarding the abilities of a King. We were then given a ride by two women, Cecilia and Amelia, who are a part of a Catholic organization in which women dedicate their lives to service. They were so incredibly nice and after dropping Amelia off at her home, Cecilia gave us a full tour of the beachfront and other districts such as San Isidro. Victor had offered to take us to San Bartolo for chifa (a fusion of Chinese and Peruvian cuisine) and we obviously said yes to this- not knowing that San Bartolo is just over 40 kilometres to the south! We are so happy we went though, for so many reasons. We got to visit a SEM centre for music and theatre education, and while we were there two music students and their teacher gave us a private classical piano concert which was absolutely beautiful. At this centre, they offer students from poor and middle classes the opportunity to study music and theatre from an early age. We were told about one student who lives in a poor area on a farm. At 4am he is out in the barn milking cows, and by 10am he is in school- and he has found that his work on the farm has strengthened his hands and he is a phenomenal pianist. The centre felt like a completely different world, and we were both incredibly overwhelmed by it. Victor also gave us a wonderful tour of San Bartolo, which is where he grew up. We saw some of the places that he has lived, his old school, and the church where he and Lizeth were married almost exactly one year ago (their anniversary is this Sunday the 13th!). He took us to one of his favorite restaurants, and we spent some time running around by the beach and taking photos of the Pacific. If you ever go to Lima, I would highly recommend paying the 5 whole soles to ride down the Panamerican Highway and check out San Bartolo. Lima often feels hectic, crowded, and overwhelming, while San Bartolo was peaceful, tranquil, and filled with gentle breezes off the ocean. Christine and I decided that if we ever lived in Lima, it’d be in San Bartolo, and we’d put up with the commute into the city to do it! We left around 6pm as the sun was setting, and I wish I had a photo of us as we reached the highway and saw our bus pulling up- on the opposite side, heading back into the more populated part of the city. With the sun setting over the ocean behind us and cars and buses racing by below, Christine, Victor and myself ran at full speed up the stairs and across a walkway that extends over the Panamerican Highway shouting at the bus to wait, and made it on for the 45 minute ride back. All in all, I think it was one of the best days we’ve had here so far.
The next day we went with Lizeth to visit one of her places of work in the district of Lurin (we have also found out that Lima has a LOT of districts!). Lurin is located off of the Panamerican Highway about 30 minutes away from San Juan, and is an “ecological centre” in Lima, although I’m not quite sure what that means except that there are some farms on the way there. It’s really interesting how different many of the districts are from each other. Going from Barranco to San Juan to Central Lima to Lurin to San Bartolo, you might not even know that you’re still in the same city.
Lizeth’s work was really cool. In the mornings, she works at a school for children with disabilities as a physical therapist. We got to watch her work today and help out a bit, and it was really special. For children with more difficulties she has one on one appointments, and for classes with less physical disabilities she does group work. She has a wonderful space to work in that is very calm, and it was so wonderful to see children with a range of abilities doing balancing exercises, learning to fall safely, etc. At the end of the group session, all of the little boys we were working with had lotion rubbed on their bellies, backs, and arms, and had boards with different textures of materials rubbed on their hands and bellies to learn what they feel like. At the risk of sounding cheesy, it was a really gentle and loving experience to work with these children, and Lizeth is so good with them. After helping Lizeth with a group, Christine and I rotated between different classrooms helping out until about 12:45, and then went to a lunch at a little restaurant in Lurin. 7 whole soles (about $2.50) later I’d had an appetizer and a full meal of chicken, rice, yucca, and of course aji. I don’t know if food prices are so comparatively low because Peru is a developing country, or because restaurants can’t charge more or they wouldn’t have customers, or if low prices accurately reflect how inexpensive food can be when it doesn’t have to travel as far and prices aren’t inflated. It’s probably a combination of many of these factors and others. Either way, I think it’s interesting how accustomed we are in Canada to paying ridiculously high prices for often low-quality processed food, or to ship in food from far away, when we have access to so much arable land and water.
Beyond this, we’ve been trying to plan our travels for the weekends and for the end of November until December 7th or so. It’s been surprisingly difficult! It seems that to find services in English you have to jump right to the swanky, tourist-y companies that look lovely, but probably aren’t the kind of experience we’re looking for. Raoul sent me a contact of his in Cusco though, and Apolo is helping us to set up a customized tour of Arequipa, the Colca Canyon, Cusco, Machu Picchu, Puno, and Lake Titicaca and the Uros Islands. We are just waiting for flight dates from Maria at Sol Travel, and we should be good! We’ve also been very lucky in planning some other adventures. Today I ran into Jorge, Lizeth’s brother-in-law, on the way to Cerritos Azul and he gave me a ride there (he and Mariel, Lizeth’s sister, run the school). He offered to help us organize a bus to Ica, which to him meant finding the bus line we needed, explaining everything to me, and offering to drive Christine and I to the bus station himself! So at 5am in the morning we’re getting picked up by Jorge and being driven to the bus station, where we will catch a bus for 30 soles for the 4-5 hour ride to Ica. Jorge said that Mariel is in Ica right now, so she will meet us and help acquaint us with the city (when things like this happen, which is pretty much every day, Christine and I just look at each other with these mirrored looks of “How the f*** are we so lucky?” on our faces). Once in Ica we’re hoping to book a tour to the Ballestas Islands in Paracas for Sunday, and then head to Huacachina to try sandboarding and hopefully spend Saturday night there! We’ll see what happens.
I should wrap up, but first a funny anecdote: We’ve been meeting a lot of teachers and we usually get asked the same questions. We get asked our names, what country we’re from, how long we’re here for, where we’re staying, and what Canada is like (most often: is it really cold and big, and are there bears). Next we get asked how old we are, and if we have husbands, children, or boyfriends. When I say no to all of these things (well, I tell them my age obviously), I get asked, again, if I’m single. When my response is a yes, invariably the reaction is an incredibly dramatic, “Pero por queeeeeeeee?!” Basically, “But whyyyyy?!” Then they say, “Pero tu eres guapa!” or “Pero tienes pelo muy guapo!” ie “But you’re pretty!” or “But you have very pretty hair!” which always makes me laugh for a lot of reasons (it also makes me want to update my eHarmony profile to say, “I’m pretty and have nice hair. Date me.” Kidding. What’s eHarmony?) And then I am usually asked if I am perhaps looking for an hombre peruano, to which I usually say that I need to be single to travel. Anyways, I don’t really have the heart or the balls to tell them the real reason I have no boyfriend back home (Beau hasn’t asked me yet) but these repeated moments are suuuper funny. Christine keeps telling them to not worry, I’ll get a boyfriend someday soon. That’s why we’re here together- she’s so encouraging!
I honestly can’t say it enough: we are so lucky to be here. Chelo is so caring and SUCH a mom. She makes us so much delicious food and fresh fruit juice every morning. We are so well taken care of by everyone that I don’t think our volunteer hours can even measure up to how much we are being given back. I truly hope that with this next volunteer placement we can be of true service and leave something beneficial behind for the school to use. I am also still hoping to build a composter for Chelo, and create a guide for families in San Juan de Miraflores to have their own backyard composters. We’ll see what the next couple of weeks bring!
Thanks for reading this everyone! I haven’t been journalling very much because usually by the time I’m in bed I just want to read and fall asleep (plus I just read The Kite Runner- finally!- so that trumped my journal every time), but I’ve found writing these posts very helpful as a way to reflect on our experiences and record what we’ve been doing during our time here. Hopefully we can turn these reflections into a helpful guide to future volunteers at the end of our trip!
Much love to everyone back home, and many thanks for the comments and emails! More photos to come soon!
Abrazos y besos,
Cassie
P.S. The Peru, Nebraska documentary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAqFJP4N4ME
No comments:
Post a Comment