¡¡ORGULLO TEJÓN!!
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Settling In (Sort Of)
Hello! The past week or so has been filled with interesting stories, hard lessons and excitement of all varieties. Last weekend I went on a Catholic "retiro" (retreat) with two girls from UW - Ann Marie (Anna Maria here) and Stephanie. Completely different from what I expected, it provided just as much culture experience as spiritual. Here's a short list of the amazing things that went on:
1. THE FOOD WAS DELICIOUS! Each morning we had a drink called "avina", which is like a thick appley hot breakfast drink, and bread. The lunches and dinners provided all kinds of delicious pastas, soups, and other traditional Peruvian dishes like papas a la huancaina (potatoes with a thick, creamy yellow sauce that tastes JUST a little like hollandaise). And the women who cooked were so generous! They gave us each a keychain rosary and the most beautiful little box with a pressed flower which said "Retiro, Marzo 11".
2. Confession. This was one of the best confessions I'd ever had... and it was in Spanish! The priest was about 30 years old and so relaxed, which both took me by surprise and is perfect when you're trying to remember things in a different language. God is so good!
3. The girls. At the end of our retreat, all family and friends of the girls on the retreat got to sit in and listen as each one of us told what the experience was like, what it made us want to do better, and what we want to tell our family and friends. As each girl spoke, her family and friends came up to the front to hug her and congratulate her on how far she'd come over the past couple of days. When it came time for us foreigners to share, all of our new friends came up to show their support for their new friends. They are such beautiful people. Truly amazing! And at the very end, as we were leaving, one of the uncles of the girls and a big member of church came up to each of us and said "Esta es tu casa. Esta es to casa." (This is your home.)
The retreat itself was a real cultural experience. We went to bed around midnight and got up around 6:30 in the morning. The day consisted of mainly talks from the priest and each of the older women helping us during the retreat. They talked about everything from the sacraments and what they mean, to how to respect ourselves, to our ideals and what they should be, and where God should be in the midst of that. All of the things were themes we've gone over in religious ed but it was wonderful to have context in Spanish. It proved really trying at times, to try to stay awake (Americans sleep more than Peruvians, it turns out {at least this one does!!!!]) and process everything in Spanish but it proved to be a beautiful experience.
Mondays I have no classes, so I went shopping in Miraflores for different clothes - it's not so appropriate to wear shorts at times, especially if you're going to be out and about for most of the day, and jeans are absolutely the hottest article of clothing you could choose, so I decided to invest in some dresses and cotton pants. Unfortunately, during this whole transaction my debit card got stolen! However, one of the things we've learned here (the hard way I might add) is that you positively cannot use any sort of plastic monetary device without having your passport present. Sometimes a copy will do, but sometimes not. So there was no risk of having someone use it and racking up the bill, but at the same time it will still take about 2 weeks for a new card to get here. You never know how long you can make soles last until you realize you have 8 left for the rest of the week! Luckily they do wire transfers in Peru... thanks dad.
Tuesday started the school year, with some AWESOME classes. The first was Quechua, which is definitely my favorite class. My professor is a really calm, cool guy who answers questions and gives awesome lectures. And he speaks really clearly, which is a major point of consideration for the foreigners. I also have a "Cine" (film) class, which is 3 hours long but only once a week. We watch a movie in the class and then discuss it afterwards - how cool is that?! I also have a phonetics class with an awesome professor. Our class is basically half American (and 9 from UW) and half Peruvian. Our professor utilizes that every class to show different things. For example, if anyone wanted to know, English speakers can differentiate between the vowels in "mother" and "father" but Spanish speakers pronounce them the same, when they say the English words. And thus goes our class, back and forth figuring out we don't sound nearly as good speaking Spanish as we thought we did.
Classes are very long here; if it's a 4 credit class it's twice a week for 2 hours, which is what the majority are. In all of my classes though are people I live with, so it will be really nice to have that support when we're comparing notes and things. And although there's a lot from the US, you would be surprised at the diversity in our house! We have people from Mexico, Belgium, Peru, France, Finland, Norway, Japan, Germany, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. It really is a great place to live!
Lastly, Thursday was St. Patrick's day and there was no way the USers were going to pass the day without trying to find at least one Irish Pub. And we did... one of the only two in Lima! Named "Murphi's Pub", in half English/half Spanish spelling. We also made cookies and dressed in green... and of course played lots and lots of Flogging Molly (sorry Molly, it's just a name!)
Oh, and as for my school ID picture... I'm just going to put it out here, right now, so you all can laugh and then we can move on.
1. THE FOOD WAS DELICIOUS! Each morning we had a drink called "avina", which is like a thick appley hot breakfast drink, and bread. The lunches and dinners provided all kinds of delicious pastas, soups, and other traditional Peruvian dishes like papas a la huancaina (potatoes with a thick, creamy yellow sauce that tastes JUST a little like hollandaise). And the women who cooked were so generous! They gave us each a keychain rosary and the most beautiful little box with a pressed flower which said "Retiro, Marzo 11".
2. Confession. This was one of the best confessions I'd ever had... and it was in Spanish! The priest was about 30 years old and so relaxed, which both took me by surprise and is perfect when you're trying to remember things in a different language. God is so good!
3. The girls. At the end of our retreat, all family and friends of the girls on the retreat got to sit in and listen as each one of us told what the experience was like, what it made us want to do better, and what we want to tell our family and friends. As each girl spoke, her family and friends came up to the front to hug her and congratulate her on how far she'd come over the past couple of days. When it came time for us foreigners to share, all of our new friends came up to show their support for their new friends. They are such beautiful people. Truly amazing! And at the very end, as we were leaving, one of the uncles of the girls and a big member of church came up to each of us and said "Esta es tu casa. Esta es to casa." (This is your home.)
The retreat itself was a real cultural experience. We went to bed around midnight and got up around 6:30 in the morning. The day consisted of mainly talks from the priest and each of the older women helping us during the retreat. They talked about everything from the sacraments and what they mean, to how to respect ourselves, to our ideals and what they should be, and where God should be in the midst of that. All of the things were themes we've gone over in religious ed but it was wonderful to have context in Spanish. It proved really trying at times, to try to stay awake (Americans sleep more than Peruvians, it turns out {at least this one does!!!!]) and process everything in Spanish but it proved to be a beautiful experience.
Mondays I have no classes, so I went shopping in Miraflores for different clothes - it's not so appropriate to wear shorts at times, especially if you're going to be out and about for most of the day, and jeans are absolutely the hottest article of clothing you could choose, so I decided to invest in some dresses and cotton pants. Unfortunately, during this whole transaction my debit card got stolen! However, one of the things we've learned here (the hard way I might add) is that you positively cannot use any sort of plastic monetary device without having your passport present. Sometimes a copy will do, but sometimes not. So there was no risk of having someone use it and racking up the bill, but at the same time it will still take about 2 weeks for a new card to get here. You never know how long you can make soles last until you realize you have 8 left for the rest of the week! Luckily they do wire transfers in Peru... thanks dad.
Tuesday started the school year, with some AWESOME classes. The first was Quechua, which is definitely my favorite class. My professor is a really calm, cool guy who answers questions and gives awesome lectures. And he speaks really clearly, which is a major point of consideration for the foreigners. I also have a "Cine" (film) class, which is 3 hours long but only once a week. We watch a movie in the class and then discuss it afterwards - how cool is that?! I also have a phonetics class with an awesome professor. Our class is basically half American (and 9 from UW) and half Peruvian. Our professor utilizes that every class to show different things. For example, if anyone wanted to know, English speakers can differentiate between the vowels in "mother" and "father" but Spanish speakers pronounce them the same, when they say the English words. And thus goes our class, back and forth figuring out we don't sound nearly as good speaking Spanish as we thought we did.
Classes are very long here; if it's a 4 credit class it's twice a week for 2 hours, which is what the majority are. In all of my classes though are people I live with, so it will be really nice to have that support when we're comparing notes and things. And although there's a lot from the US, you would be surprised at the diversity in our house! We have people from Mexico, Belgium, Peru, France, Finland, Norway, Japan, Germany, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. It really is a great place to live!
Lastly, Thursday was St. Patrick's day and there was no way the USers were going to pass the day without trying to find at least one Irish Pub. And we did... one of the only two in Lima! Named "Murphi's Pub", in half English/half Spanish spelling. We also made cookies and dressed in green... and of course played lots and lots of Flogging Molly (sorry Molly, it's just a name!)
Oh, and as for my school ID picture... I'm just going to put it out here, right now, so you all can laugh and then we can move on.
No, I was not being held hostage.
Hugs,
Keeley
Friday, March 11, 2011
Just A Brief Update
AHHHHH HEAVENS ALMIGHTY AND BUCKETS OF UNBELIEVABLE, I JUST TOOK THIS PICTURE OUTSIDE MY WINDOW
Kidding. Just a quick update. We don't have T.V. here so the majority of news we all get is from whatever people are seeing put on Facebook (minus me now). Which is how we all almost immediately knew of the budget bill passing, but have only just heard about the earthquake in Japan.
The district I live in is Pueblo Libre - it's located a good 2 miles from the coast and so far we are being told to be pretty calm about everything.
Here's a link of a statement from the mayor. According to this, we won't get an update until about 3pm our time, 2pm Wisconsin time. Side note, it's really hard to find english articles about a tsunami in Peru when Google creeps on your location (like it usually does) and gives all ads and articles in Spanish.
So, long story short, we don't really know what to expect and won't for the next 3 hours. No one seems really concerned about it; that being said, we're avoiding the beach today. Tonight I leave for a weekend retreat with Ann Marie, a girl from our program, with her church but if anything were to happen I'll be sure to post on here and call home so they can spread the word that everything's fine.
And if I can't get ahold of home at that very second, someone PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE help refrain my mother from flying down here for at least 24 hours. Love you mom.
Besitos y abrazos,
Keeley
Kidding. Just a quick update. We don't have T.V. here so the majority of news we all get is from whatever people are seeing put on Facebook (minus me now). Which is how we all almost immediately knew of the budget bill passing, but have only just heard about the earthquake in Japan.
The district I live in is Pueblo Libre - it's located a good 2 miles from the coast and so far we are being told to be pretty calm about everything.
Here's a link of a statement from the mayor. According to this, we won't get an update until about 3pm our time, 2pm Wisconsin time. Side note, it's really hard to find english articles about a tsunami in Peru when Google creeps on your location (like it usually does) and gives all ads and articles in Spanish.
So, long story short, we don't really know what to expect and won't for the next 3 hours. No one seems really concerned about it; that being said, we're avoiding the beach today. Tonight I leave for a weekend retreat with Ann Marie, a girl from our program, with her church but if anything were to happen I'll be sure to post on here and call home so they can spread the word that everything's fine.
And if I can't get ahold of home at that very second, someone PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE help refrain my mother from flying down here for at least 24 hours. Love you mom.
Besitos y abrazos,
Keeley
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Que Increíble la Ciudad de Lima
How incredible is the city of Lima!! SO much has happened since my last entry. Thursday, Ina (a girl that lives in our house) and her boyfriend invited us to a "gala de bicicletas", where we would dress up in our finest attire and bike ride with three hundred other people to call attention to this form of transportation. For those of you that live in Madison, you have NO IDEA how good we have it. "Car lanes" are few and far between, much less "bike lanes". Also, only AFTER biking (thanks be to God) I found out the city has the highest number of traffic accidents... in the WORLD. As in, worldwide. Probably would not have rode bikes for 3+ hours had I known that. It was so fun though! In the combis and taxis you don't get to experience the city like you do on foot and by bike. We all made it without a hitch though and even saw some news agencies filming!
Saturday we went to Playa Silencio (Silent Beach) which was a ton of fun. It's very weird, you get there and there are people trying to hustle you into their own part of the beach and then they bring you chairs and umbrellas. Only later do you find out that, unless you bought a good amount of food from their nearby restaurant, you had to pay 10 soles per chair. Not bad though considering the view was increíble! And the waves... I have never seen such large waves in my life! We noticed a lot of the families bring small pools for their kids to play in, and we figured its probably because one good wave will literally carry a child out to sea, no exaggeration. We met up with two of our other friends from the program and well as one of their amigas peruanas. Our family here is growing!
note to todos: wear sunblock! and not just on your back! whoops.
Sunday... words will never describe how crazy and fun Sunday was. Our peruano friends Michael and Guillermo wanted to go to a Karnaval... so I thought rides and food. Never did I imagine we would be painted head to toe marching through the streets of Barranco wearing armor made of garbage bags and "playing" a giant water bottle with a stick. We got to Barranco, a district in Lima famous for its artsy atmosphere, at about 10am and there was a small congregation of about 50 people under the Karnaval sign and they were wearing some seriously weird bright orange leggings. We thought to ourselves... so, this is it? We decided to walk around a little bit when we happened upon a woman painted head to toe in purple and red paint with buckets of it just waiting to be slathered on. She asked us if we wanted to be painted; of course we said yes. We followed her to a large gathering in front of a balcony of an apartment, where apparently our king resided.
He stepped out in front of us in all his glory and everyone fell to one knee. He told us we were his people and so good, and to do him honor in the battle. Something to that effect. Then his right hand general in command made an appearance with this thing in his hands, saying "This thing is very special. We must protect this thing. We must get it." I still don't know what this thing was, it looked like a garbage bag. Then he regressed into his "quarters", and returned with an obnoxious pig face hat made out of plastic garbage bags. "¿De quién es?" (Whose is it?) And someone in the crowd called "It is mine, sir." He returned with some shoulder armor and asked the same question. Another person in the crowd called out "Me! It's mine!" And this continued until most people had armor.
Here's an "action shot" of the armor tossing. Most of these photos are courtesy of Kalli Wolf, one of the girls we live with who brought her camera.
We then followed the troop as they led us back to the original sign, where a ton of people had conglomerated. For the next two hours or so we listened to the "bands" of our "tribe" playing their massive plastic wrapped drums, wrapped to avoid being painted on. We were absolutely covered from head to toe!
We then commenced the parade, where we danced through the streets of Barranco with our little team in the midst of thousands of thousands of people! Afterwards when I got home someone was in the shower, so I jumped on the computer real quick... who knew Mom, Kenny, Dad, Grandma and Grandpa, and Lisa-Beej-Pat-Steve-Carrie were going to call!! Hope you guys enjoyed.
I miss everyone at home. But it is SUCH A BLAST here! This city is truly amazing.
Ciao,
Keeley
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Sunburns, Beaches, and Cathedrals - oh my!
These first few days in Lima have been amazing. First, we went to a futbol game with our new peruvian friends, Guillermo y Michael (they play futbol at La Católica.) We got to tour part of Miraflores, a beautiful district right on the Peruvian coast. We crossed a bridge that would've had a gorgeous view, if not for the giant plates of plastic on the sides. Michael told us it's because there were suicides at least once a day on this bridge - it has a beautiful, poetic view. The next day we went to Punta Hermosa, a beautiful beach with huge waves and lots of surfers. It took us about an hour and fifteen minutes to get there via "combi", which are the somewhat dilapidated VW looking vans that drive around and make various stops around Lima. We returned, VERY much sunburned and ready for a nap. Later we went to a heladería, which is an ice cream place. Such awesome flavors! They probably have a hundred kinds of fruit here we've never heard of, and they make for some fantastic gelato. I had guanabana gelato, you can see the fruit here if you so desire:
http://www.google.com/images?hl=es&safe=off&q=guanabana&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&biw=1184&bih=621
I don't know if that link actually works or not; if it doesn't just google it, it's a pretty intense looking fruit. While here I've also tried "mandarindos", which are like mandarins but green on the outside, mangos (which are GIANT here) and lucuma, which is a fruit that smells like raisins.
Today we went to El Centro de Lima, where we visited the cathedral San Francisco. I wish we could have taken pictures inside, this place was amazing. The architecture, which is called mudéjar (wiki has a fantastic article) is an ornate mix of Spanish and Arabic influences. And there were DEAD PEOPLE. I kid you not, we probably saw a hundred real life skulls of real dead people. Apparently they didn't have a cemetery in Lima for a long time and would bury people under the altar in the church so they could be lifted up to heaven. After this cathedral we walked around a bit, at which point two of our crew members (Drew and myself) were dying from our burns we were blessed with the day before. We found a free museum of an artist named Eldiberto Mérida, which was fascinating. He did these crazy looking sculptures of various indigenous and religious scenes. He also attended "Depauw" University in Chicago, EEUU.
We returned home and ate at a "Chifa" - they have these all over the place, a sort of chinese-peruvian hybrid, kind of like our mix of american-chinese food that we have. "Chi fan" in Chinese means "to eat food" so it makes perfect sense, very interesting.
And now... to rest!
Abrazos y besos,
Keeley
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