Champing at the bit

Yesterday (Wednesday), I went and got my credentials at the embassy. I can't say much about it because clearly some shadow ops guys would be after me. Jen will be going there in her work capacity, but also our mail comes weekly and the health center and community center will be available to us. In fact, today I took Carter simply to play frisbee on the soccer field since it's the closest to the hotel.

I was not up to much more. The culprit, ingested at this morning's breakfast, was most likely the pineapple juice or the acidic papaya. The result was nothing too horrible, nothing too scatalogical...mostly achy and tired after a stomach ache, but a brief bout of the chills was also not pleasant. It isn't Montezuma, but instead Pacha Kamaq's revenge...although a little reading tells me that he is supposedly banished to the sea now, so perhaps only bad fish can be blamed on him.

We are kind of champing at the bit right now...we haven't gotten local phones yet, I'm not allowed to drive the company car, AND I have work coming in. All in all, it means that there hasn't been a ton of cross-cultural experiences so far. I don't doubt that they are on the horizon, but for now I'm spending a lot of time in a hotel room. Colegio Roosevelt is very english oriented, which has helped Carter not feel threatened. But even that, we're eager to have him connect to spanish and Peru before he gets too habitualized to the bubble he is in.

Jen was given a nice book of essays, though, that were selected to give a broad picture of Peru. Last night I read a cool one by Hiram Bingham, who "discovered" Machu Picchu when locals led him there. Here's a link to an online version.

Coriolis Effect

Carter went to the zoo today with his "camp", though by his count there were only 7 things to see, but not the llamas he wanted to see. I guess they're not considered exotic here. While he was doing that, I mustered the courage to mime my way through a haircut. That's not totally accurate, my spanish is not good and I don't know verbs, but I can string together some basic ideas. For instance, when the barber told me his name was Ismael, I said "Ah, 'Ismael' como el maninero famoso" while making harpoon gestures.

In the afternoon, Carter and I went out to a local park. The big, bustling, noisy boulevards are misleading...after we cut off the main drag, we quickly entered a quiet neighborhood situated around a manicured park. I suppose it's similar to visitors who judge Los Angeles from what they see from the main arteries, missing the fact that the urban sprawl is a collection of places that can't be judged as a whole. Carter taught me Uno (he laughed and laughed when I pointed out that we were playing a game in spanish). Then we played frisbee.

I think the frisbee was spinning the wrong way. What a weird hemisphere.

The first 36 hours

Carter and I arrived in Lima yesterday morning. The drive in from the airport did not give a broad picture of the city, it was enough to see that the neighborhood we are staying in (Surco) is on the upscale side of the spectrum.

View Our Lima Places in a map

The less gentrified residential neighborhoods we drove through seemed to be made largely of brown blocky bricks  much like cinderblocks. Many appear as if the builder intended to build 4 stories but stopped somewhere at floor 2-1/2, with rebar rising skyward and the half finished floor turned into an outdoor patio and laundry line area. The area we are in now is home to the Peace Corps offices, our hotel (situated directly across from the US embassy) and not far from Colegio Roosevelt (Carter's school). 

Colegio Roosevelt

View of embassy from our room.

The climate is new to me...humid, yet overcast and cooled by a marine layer of fog/drizzle. It is winter here and everybody seems to be wearing their winter fashions, but Carter is comfortable in a hoodie. My personal thermostat has always been happier in colder places but what with the humidity, this winter does not seem like one (walking 1 mile today had me sweating as if I'd worked out). It's strange, this fogginess does not seem to sync with the burnt-moonscape of the hills that jut up out of the metropolis. How can a desert be so damp?

After our arrival and happy reunion with Jennifer, we got in the Peace Corps loaner car and drove to a chicken place (surco.png) with tasty rotisserie chicken served with papas fritas. Really tasty and Carter attacked the play area ("I spoke to that kid. Then he spoke to me. We totally didn't understand each other." --- didn't seem to hamper the camaraderie in the playhouse). Afterwards, we drove up the half-mile around one of the big, brown, moonscape hills to the neighborhood where we will be living. If Surco is one of the upscale business & shopping areas, then La Molina is clearly the upscale residential area. We are not scheduled to move in to the house rented for us until Aug26, and driving by it reveals nothing because it, as with most homes in these neighborhoods, is surrounded by a 9' wall with electrified wire on top. Gives new meaning to "A man's home is his castle." 

We did, however, go down a couple blocks to a local communal park where families come Sunday afternoons. There's bouncy houses, simple mini-golf, super slides, and activities...some cost a dollar or so, but the whole shebang is obviously funded by the neighborhood and overall experience is mostly free. It's probably mostly locals, but it's public and I saw several poorer families taking part as well. My ability to read where people are in the social ladder is not very finely tuned, but some things are obvious. Jennifer heard today that this little park has a farmer's market weekly. 

ANYWAY, after the park we went to shop at the local grocery store...I always have enjoyed foreign markets, so that was fun, but I also feel silly about some of the thought we put into bringing things like peanut butter. Sure, it's not common, but there it is on the shelf if you are willing to pay the premium. At the register, the cashier wouldn't let Jen purchase a large bottle of beer because she did not have an empty to trade in for it...Jen confounded the cashier by asking how one STARTS when one is new to the country and does not have an empty bottle, how does one get into the loop? The problem was not, and has not, been resolved. Jen made do with a rather sweet Peruvian bottle of wine. 

Today, Monday, was Carter's chance to get to know his new school a little bit by partaking in the last week of "camp" there. In the "Fun Games" portion, he pretty much immediately wiped out and planted his chin on the mat. So he now has two nickel-sized "asterisk" bruises on his chin that mirror the imprint of the sports mat holes. Then in "Ninjas" portion he bonked heads with a kid and got a bloody nose. Still, he pulled it together enough to get halfway up the climbing wall in the third portion.

After a dinner in our little studio-type kitchen, we went downstairs for ice cream and cappuccinos.