So I have been meaning to post all week, but when they say intensive 2-week spanish course, they really do mean intensive, go figure. :-) Actually I think the other levels are not so intense but in my class we have to research music genres and pre-Inca cultures and read stories, etc. Friday I had to give a 10-minute presentation about the empire of Tiahuanaco so I was up late Thursday night working on that. Anyhow, what has been going on for the last week or so? Sunday I met my host family and moved in to their house. I live in a really nice, sizeable house with my host parents, their daughter Blanca and her husband Juan Carlos, and their daughter Eveline. Eveline is married but her husband is working in the jungle right now (I don't know what he does) so she is staying with her parents while he is away. She has a son named Diego who is almost two and he is incredibly cute. Blanca has a daughter named Valentina who is turning one at the end of the month. Apparently it is tradition to have a big party when babies turn one, so there have been some preparations for that going on. I have my own room in the house with a TV and dvd player and plenty of space for all my clothes. The first day that I moved in with my family seemed very long because it was strange being in their house which is my home for the next 5 months, but at the same time feeling like a guest. Monday was my first day of intensive Spanish. My family drove me to the university which was very nice since the public transportation here is absolutely chaotic. I wish I could say that I had a great first day, but having gotten sick during the night, it was all I could do to stay awake through 6 hours of spanish spanish spanish. I felt much better by Tuesday and realized that I really enjoyed the topics we were discussing in class, even though being in class for 6 hours per day is like being back in high school. Tuesday evening I met my friends Sydney and Lauren who nearby and we walked around Pueblo Libre with Lauren's host sister. Wednesday evening, I went on a trip with my host parents to Villa El Salvador, which is a faraway district in Lima that is the best area to buy furniture. Driving through that part of Lima was like being in a different city because it was dirty, full of garbage, and hilly. However, the most unusual part of the district was the area with all the furniture. We turned onto a street and suddenly there were blocks and blocks of furniture stores with super nice furniture. I have never seen anything like it. My host father bought a giant painting to hang above the fireplace.
One aspect of Peru that I love is that Peruvians love to joke around. They are always making jokes about everything! The first day that I moved in with my host family, my host father asked me how old you have to be in the United States to vote and I told him ochenta instead of dieciocho, which means 80 not eighteen. Oops :-) He was making jokes about that for the rest of the day, telling me that his wife was the only one eligible to vote! The other day we had a cold tea which I think was called emoliente or something like that, and they showed me a package so that I could see what was in it. The first ingredient listed was "cola de caballo" which translated literally means horse tail. My host father tried to tell me that they actually plucked hairs from horses and put them in the tea :-) Another ingredient was "uña de gato" which means cat nail. Really these are cleverly named ingredients because looking at the all the different things in the package, I could tell which ones would be called horse tails or cat nails. A Peruvian student that I met on Thursday tried to tell me that his banana chips were in fact fried snake. I am very much in favor of all this teasing and joking, seeing as I come from a family of much teasing and goofing around.
A very unique aspect of Lima is its public transportation, which is a world apart from the super organized and dependable transportation that we have in Chicago. The public transportation here consists of taxis and micros, both of which roam the streets in large quantities. Although everyone else in my program began taking the micro on their own the first or second day of class, my family drove me to and from school for the first four days, which was very caring of them. Thursday after class I took the micro home with my host sister's husband Juan Carlos. Perhaps you are wondering what a micro is. Micro is the term that is used here in Lima for basically any type of bus, but there are not very many large buses like we have in Chicago. Rather, most of the buses are microbuses (thus the name micro, in Spanish pronounced meecro) or 16 passenger vans called combis. Each micro has both a driver and a "cobrador" who collects your fare. The cobrador's job is to open the door at each stop and yell out what streets the bus is going to pass through so that people know whether it is the bus they want. During orientation, when they told us that there were no maps of the bus routes and that the buses did not really have any set routes, I thought it would be very difficult to learn how to use this chaotic system. However, the buses actually have general routes that they follow and painted on the side are the names of the streets that they go down or the districts that they go to. Some micros are most reliable than others and stick to their routes, while others may try out a new route if they think they can pick up more passengers by going down a different street. Friday I took the micro home from school by myself, which was really quite easy because I just have to go straight down Avenida Bolívar and there are plenty of buses that run down that street. Yesterday I hopped a micro to Miraflores, which is a district about a half hour away. Already I am feeling that the micro system is not as complicated as I first thought it would be.
You are going to be spoiled! Your host family sounds great. :) Not to be outdone by your real family, of course...
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