culture shock

Culture shock is basically all of the feelings you experience when you operate in an entirely different culture or social environment. I always thought it was when you got somewhere and we´re really surprised by stuff (like how I felt the first time I rode a micro), but I learned in orientation it can be any feelings of anger, depression, confusion, misunderstanding, etc. that you feel when you´ve been living somewhere for a while. I think I started to get some of these feelings for the first time this week. I got really frustrated in my classes this week- at the end of my Tuesday class we had a discussion and I thought we were discussing a reading (it was in English, so I´m sure I understood) about the foreign policies of Wilson and Roosevelt but we somehow ended up talking about the war in Iraq and I was SO confused, and on Wednesday afternoon I tried a new class and I didn´t follow at all as a student gave like a 45 minute presentation on I don´t even know what. I decided maybe I would feel better if I only took 4 courses this semester, so hopefully that will work out. I also felt really annoyed when we had to do this process called matriculating, which is basically registering for courses, but it took over 3 hours of waiting (because there was only one person for all of the foreign students), so we moved from room to room waiting to watching one person click on the computer and another person print out a piece of paper with the classes we reigstered in. Other small things have been bothering me too, like the fact that cars beep at each other ALL the time, that there are no bagels anywhere, and even that ch is it´s own letter, but it´s all part of the experience I guess.

Now that we have more free time in our schedules (no more intensive Spanish from 9-4 every day), I´ve been able to explore Lima a little more. On Tuesday I went to a museum that my host family recommended called the Museum of the Inquisition. It was small, but I learned a lot about the Spanish Inquisition in Peru, and some of the original jail cells where they held and tortured prisoners were still in tact. Saturday I went to another museum about anthropology, archeology, and the history of Peru. It was practically never-ending I guess because the history of Peru is so long, but there were some pretty neat artifacts. I also saw a movie this week, which doesn´t really count as tourism, but it was the X-Files and really interesting and spooky. Another big highlight this week for me was Monday night after the epic matriculation process. My favorite professor Rocío called me to tell me she was unexpectantly on campus, and when I called her back she asked if she could put me on speakerphone because her English students wanted to hear what a real American sounded like. Stephanie and I decided to pop by the class to talk with Rocío during her break, but she told us she was going to play charades with her students and we decided to play too! The students asked us some questions, then naturally we dominated the game (though there were some English words that I did not even know), and it made me almost forget about the terrible matriculation.




This weekend also turned out to be really fun. After the culture shock of the week (I think I wasn´t the only one to experience it), we really wanted to go out. Thursday night we ended up meeting up with / running into another group of foreign students from our university but they all attend Holy Cross in Boston. I had met a couple girls from their program when I was trying out classes, but I really enjoyed hanging out with them! Thursday night we barhopped with them in my neighborhood. We went to an Arabic bar, a Brazilian bar, and another bar called the Bear. Friday night we met up with them again in Barranco to go to a bar they recommended. It was 10 soles to enter ($3 USD) and it included free drinks until 2am and complimentary glow bracelets (that was my favorite part). The offer seems too good to be true, but in fact there were many free drinks, including piña coladas. Saturday night we wanted to go to this discoteca in Barranco where my host-sister just started working, but at the last minute we changed our minds and stayed around my neighborhood again (but we did get my favorite ice cream, so I was definitely okay with that choice). Maybe I´m imagining it, but going out is so much better at age 21 even though it doesn´t even matter here. The only downside is that I´m now sad the weekend is over, and I´m not looking forward to going back to class, but hopefully this week will be better (and, I´m pretty sure it will be since we only have classes until Wednesday).

swimming with the sea lions

Saturday afternoon, everyone in my program went on a cultural excursion to the Islas del Callo. Callo is the province where the airport is on the outskirts of Lima by the ocean. There are a few islands off the coast, but not many people live on them anymore because there was an earthquake followed by a tsunami that only a few hundred people (out of almost 5,000) survived. The boat was small, really cold, and really rocking in the waves so much so they made us all take a motion sickness pill. We passed the time sleeping from the pill and talking, mostly about how hungry we were for the pizza I was getting for my birthday. We weren´t exactly sure where we were going or what we were doing until we smelled something really really foul. We circled around this island that was literally covered in sea lions! Even though they were smelly (our pseudo tour guides told us they poop a lot) and making really annoying barking noises, it was so amazing. But can you imagine passing your day pooping and pooping on your friends and family? Some people got in the water to swim with the sea lions (they´re very friendly even though they´re poopy and stinky), but it was way too cold for me. After almost 3 hours on that boat we spent probably 20 minutes around the sea lions, but it was still a really incredible site, and we got to watch the sun set over the Pacific Ocean on the boat ride back to Callo.
This picture showcases our ugly life vests that we were required to wear the entire time. Also, some of the Islas de Callo are in the background. Sometimes I thought they were beautiful, but other times they just looked like rocks.

This is the island with sea lions. ALL of the bumps that look like rocks are in fact sea lions. This particular island is literally covered in them. Also, you can see a few of them swimming in the water.

This is a close up of the sea lions on the island. Our boat couldn´t get too close, and this was the best my camera could do, but you get the idea... soooo--- many sea lions! Also, they´re called lobos del mar in Spanish, which literally translates to wolves of the sea.

my 21st birthday!

It feels like I have been waiting for this weekend for 21 years! Though it´s a little anti-climactic to have a 21st birthday in a country where they start drinking at 14 (though technically the legal drinking age is 18), I still celebrated. On Saturday night (because my birthday did begin at midnight on Saturday), I invited everyone to my host family´s house for a party. I ordered 16 Papa John´s pizzas because I´ve been craving it, and they cost more than they do in the US, but it was totally worth it because I and everyone else really, really enjoyed it. Our housekeeper Mirza decorated the house for me while I was out in the afternoon, and it looked SO beautiful with tons of colorful balloons and ribbons. After a few hours of eating and drinking (collectively we consumed 4 cases of beer and 2 bottles of rum and 16 pizzas) at my house we took a bus I rented to a club a girl in one of my classes recommended. The bus was a big highlight for everyone because transportation back to our houses is always a concern since taxis tend to rip you off and because it was a Mercedes Benz bus. Anyway, the night lived up to my many years of anticipation, and even though I couldn´t be with my friends and family, it was still a good time. I´m really grateful everyone in my program, my host family, and even 2 of my professors celebrated with me and made my bithday special.

the start of the semester

This week, PUCP´s classes officially began. I personally began Monday morning at 9am with a course called Realidad Social Peruana (Peruvian Social Reality) that is required for all the students in my program. Even though the course was taught in Spanish, I was pretty comfortable and understood mostly everything, but I cannot say the same for my other classes. As foreign students, we aren´t technically registered for any classes yet, so we had the opportunity to attend any class we were interested in taking. I figured I would just attend the classes I planned on taking instead of trying a bunch of different courses, but by the end of the week I decided to only stay in 1 course I initially intedend to take. It was really overwhelming walking into class, hoping you´re in the right place, praying you understand the professor, and just wanting someone to sit next to you or talk to you because these are things I would never even consider at Richmond. In one class, all the students had to introduce themselves, and I had to go last because my name wasn´t on the official list since I didn´t register, and I was really nervous about speaking in front of the entire class, but I sort of made a joke (one of the questions we had to answer was how well do you know English, and I said oh, I know English pretty well) and a girl started talking to me afterwards (it turns out she´s in another one of my classes, too).

Now that the week is over, I have decided on and registered for my classes. In addition to the Realidad Social Peruana course Mondays 9-11 and Wednesdays 9-10, I´m taking Política y Estado de EEUU (State and Politics of the US) on Tuesdays from 6-9 and Economía Política International (International Political Economy) on Wednesday from 11-2. I´m still deciding between two other courses that meet at the same time, so I registered for both, and I´ll drop one later. One is called Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency in Latin America and the other is called Political Regimes, and they both meet 3-6 on Wednesdays. Originally, I had no classes on Fridays OR Thursdays, but our program had to schedule our Spanish classes around the times when we chose other classes, so my Spanish session will be 1-3 on Mondays and 1-3 on Thursdays with one of my favorite professors from the summer. Despite how difficult the week was and how many classes I attended that I´m not actually taking, I´m pretty pleased with my schedule, though I still have to negotiate for credit at Richmond.

I also had an interesting experience when I went to purchase my textbooks because in Peru, they don´t actually buy books. Instead, they photocopy all the material they´ll need to the class, which I guess they can do since they don´t have a lot of copyright laws. In class you ask the professor at what photocopier they will leave their material (there´s one in almost every building on campus), then you go there and ask for either all of the material from the semester or for the material for the next class, which is what most of the Peruvians do. While this process sounds easy, it´s incredibly disorganized and time-consuming, and I found you have to be pretty persistent to get your material. I paid for the material for my IPEC course and went back 2 times to pick it up when they told me it would be ready but it wasn´t, so on the 3rd time I returned, I refused to leave until they handed it to me (that was a very effective stradegy). Also, the University just hired a new photocopying company last week, so it´s especially bad. And, some of the material is not at the photocopiers but at the library or at an office, and I find it very annoying to literally track down my material. They should seriously consider investing in Blackboard.

The Amazon

Because we had a week off between our program´s intensive Spanish course and the start of semester-long classes, I took a trip to the Amazon with 6 of my classmates. We flew into a city of 600,000 people called Iquitos. We spent most of our time there eating at various restaurants (since our hostal had a very limited kitchen) and exploring a 4 block radius called the Plaza de Armas which has a building constructed by the same guy that built the Eiffel Tower. I tried this delicious ice cream (that I subsequently ate every day in Iquitos) called manjar, which is a combination of carmel and honey and this juice called camu camu, which is made from a red jungle fruit. Unfortunately, it was probably the hottest place I´ve ever been in my entire life (mid-90s every day), and I spent most of my time sweating and complaining about the heat. Thankfully, our hostal had a pool and a shower with no hot water, which helped me deal with the prevelant lack of air conditioning, including in the hostal. Despite the shortcomings of the accomodations of our hostal, the owner and incredibly nice staff set up everything we needed for our 4 day jungle excursion. Everyone says that Iquitos is near the Amazon, but we took a bus that turned into public transportation for 3 hours to a small town, a big boat for 2 hours to a small village, and a small boat for 30 minutes to our small camp. Our camp was pretty nice with running water, a cook, purified drinking water, lots of mosquito netting, bed, and pretty much everything we could possibly need. We had a great tour guide named Miguel who put up with all of our preferences / needs.

While in the Amazon, we did some incredible activities. We went on a 5am bird watching expeditions, which was one of my favorite things because it wasn´t hot that early in the morning. We also went fishing one day, and I caught 2 piranas, which everyone else ate for lunch. We trecked through a swamp to a lake to see these incredible giant lily pads. We also spotted a sloth near our camp, and 2 days later in a scary duel very high off the ground, our chef knocked the sloth off it´s vine and onto the ground to hold it, but the sloth was not pleased and sort of hissing at us. One night we went to the so-called town, which is more like a village with a couple of huts, to go to a discoteca, which we lit with the gasoline from our boat, and we were the only people there (so much for finding someone to buy me a drink). Aside from all that, we went on a lot of caminatas (meaning walks), where we saw ants, butterflies, birds, a monkey, a fox, more ants, spiders, trees, flowers, and all sorts of other animals and plants.

The most memorable walk was one very hot afternoon when we went to look for monkeys, and it was so hot, one of my friends and I headed back early with our young guide-in-training. We got a little lost, but stumbled upon a group of Canadians who gave us directions back to our camp, and we only crossed 3 extra swamps and walked 45 minutes out of our way. We thought the other girls would beat us back to camp since Miguel said they would only walk another hour, but they returned 6 hours later. I ate lunch, played a lot of cards with the camp´s staff, and worried a little, but everyone assured us Miguel took this long route. As it turns out, they got very lost (in the rain and in the trail of a jaguar), and the camp staff lied to us because they went to look for the other girls and Miguel, and needless to say I was glad I turned back early, though I couldn´t admit that because everyone was so grumpy. After that, we did not have any more caminatas, but it was quite the adventure.

Despite getting lost, the heat, and the many, many, many mosquito bites, I had an incredible experiences, and I was actually sad to leave. On the way back to Iquitos we got tattoos from a fruit that our guide told us lasted a week or two, but after one of the girls tattooed ¨Miguel¨in giant letters on her arm, he admitted they last at least a month, but I proudly drew all the tattoos. We had one more day to spend in Iquitos, so we mostly moped that we had to say bye to our jungle friends and sat in restaurants to drink juice and keep cool. We also saw a sign for an 'anaconda farm,' so we went there to check out the animals we didn´t see in the jungle, but it turned out to actually be a craft market. Ironically enough, someone was selling a baby monkey, so we could have just walked a few blocks instead of all the hours in the jungle to see a monkey. Our flight got in around 11, and I remembered that I was meeting my host mom for the first time because she was in Mississippi visiting her daughter and grandchildren for a while. I was hoping I could just make it to the shower before I met her because I smelled like sweat, smoke from cooking, and all sorts of other jungle disgusting smells, but there was a dinner party at my house, so not only did I meet my host mom looking and smelling nasty but my aunt, uncle, and cousins, but at least I had good stories for them!

The Christmas Condor

Micros are the one and only form of public transportating in Lima. They come in 3 sizes: combis (basically glorified 16 passanger vans), custors (pictured here, named for coaster as in roller coaster), and buses. Unlike public transportation in the US, there are no regular routes, no regular stops, no regular times, and no regular prices. Instead you wait on your corner, flag one down, verify that it´s going where you´re going (though sometimes they´ll say they are but actually aren´t), negotiate a price, and yell baja whenever you want to get off and hope it stops for you. This particular micro is called the NM 28 better known as the Christmas Condor (someone from the previous semester named his favorite micro the Golden Eagle, so I needed a name to rival that). I have recently discovered that the Christmas Condor runs from my house to school in record time. Previously I had just been taking whatever micro said ¨Universitaria¨(my school) or ¨Arequipa¨(my house) on the side (this is a good indication that the micro will go where you need to go), but some took an hour or an hour and 20 minutes and took different routes everytime I rode, but now I can count on the Christmas Condor.

puzzling

When I first arrived in Lima, I brought my host family a jigsaw puzzle of Philadelphia as an initial gift for their hospitality. My 6-year-old host was the most excited about it, though he probably contributed least to putting it all together. However, his excitement was contagious, and everyone in my family spent countless hours putting the 1000 pieces together. My first day in my new home, the night before classes began, my family and I stayed up until 1am working on the puzzle. After that, I always saw at least one person working on it, regardless of the time of day. When I returned from Lunahuana, our masterpiece was complete. Even though I don´t really like puzzles because I find them so frustrating, I still enjoyed my first bonding time with my family. I´ll probably even buy my family another puzzle to show my appreciation for them, if I can find somewhere in Lima that sells jigsaw puzzles. It took me 7 stores at home to find one, but it was totally worth it.

a weekend in Lima

Even though this was my third weekend in Peru, it´s actually the first entire weekend I´ve spent in Lima, and it was amazing. Thursday night I went to Calle de Pizzas (Pizza Street), which is a street off of Parque Kennedy lined with restaurants that have beer, music, pizza, and open patios. Ironically enough, we found a gringo (the term Peruvians use to refer to Europeans and North Americans) bar that was decorated in American, British, and Canadian flags. We also found a fun club called Llamado Peru, but there were a lot of 15-ish year-olds and a really creepy guy that kept trying to hang out with us saying he just wanted to have fun. Friday night I took a much-needed salsa lesson with one of my classmate´s host sisters, but after the lesson we decided we didn´t actually want to go to a salsa club and opted for Beer House (spelled Birhaus), which is also within walking distance of my house.

Saturday afternoon I went to my friend Chanel´s birthday party. Her Dad is Peruvian and temporarily staying at his family´s house in a nice suburb of Lima, so he made her an incredible party. There were about 150 people, most of whom Chanel didn´t actually know. There was also live music, delicious catered food, and beer pong, which was very difficult to introduce to Peruvians, especially because it appears there are no solo cups in this country. It was a lot nicer than I expected and all the people from my program felt significantly underdressed, but we had a great time and everyone in attendance was incredibly welcoming.

Saturday night we celebrate another classmate´s birthday by going to a peña, which is basically a traditionally Peruvian dance club. There´s tables surrounding the dance floor where everyone sits for most of the night to eat, drink, and watch the dance performances. Every 30-45 minutes everyone was permitted on the dance floor for about 3 salsa or reggaeton songs before they cleared it off for more entertainment. In addition to the dancing, there was also live music and a DJ / comedian. They even held some dance competitions, and my friend Samantha entered one for foreigners. She came in second place to a Japanese girl (who only won because the DJ kept shouting Pikachu, Kong Fu, and other such words and inappropriate times), but she got a big bottle of Peruvian beer as her prize. I can´t say she represented the US particularly well seeing as they whipped out a chair for her to dance with (though given the Japanese girl it´s obvious to see they played into every country´s stereotypes), and it was so fun seeing her up there.

I got home from the peña pretty late because the performances usually continue until after 4am, but my host grand-father Carlos knocked on my door at 9:45 and asked me if I wanted to go to the mountains. I said no because I was tired, but he insisted and said it was a family outing and I was part of the family. I reluctantly get myself ready in sneakers, a sports bra, a t-shirt and mentally prepare myself to hike a mountain. I seemed to be dressed appropriately because everyone else was wearing jeans and sneakers, but in the carride I figured out that we were actually going to a country club in the mountains. Regardless, it was really nice. We had a nice lunch, sat by the pool even though it was too cold to swim, got ice cream, flew a kite, and watched my little host brother play on giant inflatable slides and trampolines (he doesn´t like being photographed, so he´s not in this picture). Even though I was and still am super tired, it was an amazing weekend.