Tuesday, September 30, 2008

no summer for T

It's finally getting warm enough for beach weather the week before I leave. That means I'll go from winter to winter, no summer for me this year. The nice beaches are all about 1/2 hour south of Lima and have really nice sand and blue water and wide beaches, but the water is freezing cold and has questionably colored foam floating in it.

Alexa loves playing with her bucket and shovel and me carrying her in the shallow waves. Her other favorite game is pretending she's a baby and being carried around wrapped in a blanket and fake crying until we put her in bed and turn off the lights. Then she stands up and screams "mas baby!!!" and really cries until we do it again. For my last week we're doing what we always do, eating and sleeping and trying to keep Alexa entertained.

Looks like I'll have to wait until next time to see Cuszco, Machu Picchu, the jungle, lake Titticaca, Cajamarca, Ayacucho, Cohuasi Canyon, etc, etc, all of the millions of things there are to do here if you have the time and the money. I got to know Lima fairly well, and saw some places I hadn't seen before and definitely want to see again. Peru is really an adventure tourist's paradise.

We bought two pictures for Alexa's room from a famous Peruvian artist whose family is friends with Vanessa's family. She is in her 20's and is severely mentally handicapped. When she was young her parents gave her paint and paintbrushes as a part of her therapy and she's been painting like a prodigy ever since. You can see her work here: http://www.veronicapacheco.com. She came over to our house and tried to take all of Alexa's toys.

In other household drama, the two parakeets in our family (to the left) who we hang out our 8th story window have been getting attacked lately by a hawk. He sits across from them on a tree and then swoops down and attacks their cage and they fly around like crazy, but so far nobody has gotten hurt. Other times I hear flapping, and come out expecting to see a bloodbath but it's only doves that are trying to steal their food. Yes, this is as exiting as my life gets in Peru.

Below is a video of Alexa chasing pigeons in Barranco.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Red light green light

I pulled up to an intersection the other night to a traffic light that was a good metaphor for what my next move is in Peru. It was both red and green at the same time. Some cars stayed put and didn't move, and others went racing through, and others kind of putted around the intersection not knowing what to do. While it's somewhat normal for Lima traffic, not knowing what's next is a new experience for me. For those that haven't heard, Vanessa's pregnant and in the next few months we'll be needing things like health insurance and a real salary. That means that I will have to cut my Peruvian sabbatical short and return to DC to look for a job. Although I'm not looking forward to job-hunting and being told that my skills are perfect - if I only had a security clearance, I will be glad to leave some things in Peru behind.

First of all is the ingrained class system that puts people with white skin at the top, and people with dark skin that look like natives at the bottom, regardless of their education level. It's way worse than the middle east, it's horrible. They don't even try to hide it.

To the right is a picture of a park next to our house with two huge people making out.

Second will be the driving. I've driven in some crazy places, both in the US, Europe and the Middle East. Egypt, for example has no system or order to the traffic, and you always have to be on your toes or you'll get run over by a taxi, a mule, or herd of goats, but the people are pretty good drivers, and a system of organized chaos works itself out. Washington DC has the opposite problem. The driving is over-organized, but people are bad drivers. When one person goes outside of the established traffic system, nobody knows what to do and they all run into each other. Here in Lima you have the worst combination - no order, and bad drivers. Nobody follows the traffic system, and nobody ever knows what to do. So you have people parking in the middle of a one lane road and going to get something to eat and people backed up for 2 miles and everybody just kind of sits there and waits. Or you get people driving 5 miles an hour on the freeway for no reason, and people swerving around them and into everybody else. It's like bumper cars out here, and the body of your car is there to absorb all of the dings and scrapes that you collect daily.

The picture of the paraglider was taken right outside our house, they go back and forth all day giving tourists rides.

Third will be the pollution, and visiting relatives. It's not that I don't like going and visiting relatives, but in Peru a dinner visit is a 6-8 hour affair. You arrive at 2 or 3 for lunch, then you wait until about 5 until they actually start cooking, then you eat and are expected to take a nap in one of their beds, and then continue eating and hanging out until 10 or 11 or so. It's an all-day affair, and when you have stuff you'd rather be doing, like being in your own house scratching your bum, it get's to be too much. I will miss the food in Peru though.

We haven't done much outside of naps, nursery and eating. We did go to a wild bird refuge on the outskirts of town and took a little boat around a swamp. Alexa is talking more and more and is always doing something funny. She's in the making faces stage. She is also obsessed with spices, and makes me take her to the spice rack every five minutes. She has about 10 of them memorized by smell, and I let her sniff the cap and she'll say "paprika", or "cumin", etc. She also won't go anywhere without a funny red duck marionette that has to walk in front of her at all times.

Friday, September 5, 2008

The year of the potato

For those of you unaware, this year is the worldwide year of the potato. Since Peru is the birthplace of potatoes (over 8,000 years ago), and currently grows about 2,000 different varieties of potatoes, it's a big holiday here. They come in all shapes and sizes, colors and flavors. Some are purple, some are green, and some make your intestines clean. I'm thinking of throwing a potato party, but mainly I've been celebrating by eating a lot of french fries.

The stand below shows the average variety available at the local market. You'd probably guess that Peru produced a lot of potatoes, but you'd be wrong. They mainly produce for local consumption, the world leader of potato production is China, and the leading consumer is... also China. If you have no life, read more on Peru and potatoes here: http://www.potato2008.org/en/potato/origins.html.

As a family we went to the circus the other night and Alexa was mesmerized by for two hours straight, which was like a vacation. She also saw Barney and was in complete shock for about 5 minutes and couldn't take her eyes off him. She is getting into her terrible two's stage where everything is about what she wants, and when she wants it. She's speaking more and more and regularly mixes spanish and english so that I'm sure nobody at her nursery understands her.

Tonight is also a special night as I'm going to shave off my hair. I was planning on letting my hair grow out a little and sport a latino suave look, but because of all of the humidity in the air my hair looks like an afro, and instead of growing down, it keeps growing out. And that just won't do because it makes me look like a poof, so I'm just going to get rid of it all. On the left is a scary picture of the monster I have become. Hopefully Alexa will have no memories of this person.

Please eat a potato in celebration of this glorious year and think what kind of life we'd all live without them...