4th of July

July: Scene Change

The main change of scene is that July is Winter Break for Carter and the transition from 2nd to 3rd grade. Not only is he pleased with this, Jen and I are relieved to have a month of school vacation in which he takes a bus to morning camp, traffic is light and we get an extra hour sleep. The "llovizna" is back...the low mist that blankets Lima for much of the winter here. This is also the time of year when turnover happens at the embassy, a whole contingent picks up and moves on to new assignments. This means less to Jen and I than for others; still, friends of Carter's are going, people I play soccer with, etc.

Meanwhile, our 4th of July also reflected two very different scenes. The first happened the night before the 4th; we attended an open-air celebration at the ambassador's residence, a manor house in the middle of the city. It's was a formal affair, so after navigating the pitted back streets and traffic that I have become familiar with, we parked and went through security, with the metal detector seeming like a magic portal from the clamor outside to the manicured lawns and tea lights inside. This annual event is pretty much obligatory, we all arrive early enough to be there when all the various Peruvian VIPs show up, and the bar does not open until they arrive. For all that, it's very pleasant…a deluxe spread of sushi, servers circling with good beer and wine, and a Peruvian swing/jazz band doing really great renditions of the classics my grandmother used to dance to.

For the 4th itself, Jennifer and I headed out for a rare chance to see the kids at the Hogar on a weekday. These last 2 weeks have seen a couple of large groups of American teens visiting, learning, helping out where they can. We brought some apple pies, and the Hogar kids gathered outside on the patio for little lesson on the 4th of July and to wish us all a happy day. It was a fun day, though not without some sobering points. I was trying to fix some of the disintegrating bikes out back while Bruno, a 10yr old burn victim, had his physical therapy which means the therapist stretches his hand to keep the affected skin from healing up too tightly and crippling him. For Bruno it seems to mean he screams for 5 minutes straight, exiting afterwards for all the world trying to pretend he was tough. More profoundly sad are the test results that show Julia's leukemia is back with a vengeance, so much so that people seem to assume the worst. A pre-teen girl, as nice as can be, she seems to assume the worst too. At the playground, with all the kids, she sat alone on top of a play structure with peeling paint when I asked her what she was doing. "Just taking the sun," she said and, sure enough, there was a final lick of sunlight that she had found there. What could I do but join her up there for a bit, too stupid to say anything? Then some of the kids wanted to steer our car while on my lap, and Lisbeth peed her pants and Kiara threw a sulk-tantrum with Jennifer and we took them all back to the home.

But forget about that! What about the World Cup?!

I hear from folks back in the States that the World Cup is getting more attention than ever before. That's good, because Carter and I have caught World Cup fever. Perú did not qualify to go, but even so the streets are empty during games and TVs in supermarkets are like man-traps, snaring groups of men, transfixing them. Without their own team, most Peruvians have a detailed set of priorities to determine who they root for. For example, they want the Cup to stay in South America EXCEPT not in Chile (The Saltpetre War 1880). Not so much Ecuador (small wars and border disputes). And they tend to root for underdogs…so the U.S. got a lot of support, and when Costa Rica upset Chile…well, the cheer might have been heard in Brazil. For the record, this is the first time Carter has really felt the emotions of being a sports spectator. For better or worse, he's a fan now! A couple of other spouses like me, JoJo the Paraguayan and Aquiles the Ecuadorian, have been watching.


The pickup soccer games continue to be fun, though for a while there during the Cup no one was showing up hardly at all. I've improved somewhat, even scoring a couple of "real" goals (in which I actually did something, rather than just being in the right place at the right time to tap a ball into the goal). Of course, my age and sedentary proclivities mean my joints complain for 24hrs after every game. Worse, during one game a tendon in my knee actually made an audible POP and I have a distinct memory of the expression of horror on the opposing player's face when he heard the sound and I buckled to the ground. But I soldier on!

I've been taking Spanish classes almost every weekday for 3 months now, and it's finally starting to show. I am able to have more comfortable conversations with people now, and it's almost to the point where my Spanish is as good as JoJo's English and certainly better than Aquiles. I've been going to classes at the Agrarian University, right near our home, at a language center tucked among trees, rutted roads, and forestry classrooms. [trivia: just prior to winning the Presidency of Perú, Alberto Fujimori ran the Agraria. He's now in jail, convicted of crimes during the Shining Path years] Anyway, Rosario, my teacher, is very patient and the people at the language center are very nice, even gathering for my birthday to share cake and Inca Kola. Now, being Winter Vacation, Rosario is tutoring Carter 2hrs per day at home. We leave in a week for the Dominican Republic; I'm looking forward to being able to converse with the many in that family who speak no English. I've spent many evenings there drinking rum with the guys there, all in good fellowship, but not saying much.