Gullible's Travels: 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!)