For those of you who are curious, I've posted ALL the pictures I've taken in Peru thus far (which isn't all that many, because I'm not a huge photographer-type person) on my Picasa website. It's listed in the photo links section on the sidebar.
Included in these pictures is documentation of my first cooking experiment in Peru. I made breakfast tacos this weekend for a group of friends from Santa Isabel's congregation. It was an adventure. Unlike back home in the States, they don't sell tortillas that are pre-made and packaged here. So the first step for this past weekend was learning how to make homemade flour tortillas (yeah, yeah, I know, I should have used corn, but the flour ones looked easier). Let's just say that the first batch kind of looked more like biscuits than tortillas -- how was I supposed to know that MORE water = THICKER tortillas?! I thought it would be the opposite!
I also couldn't find pre-made refriend beans. So I got to do that the old fashioned way as well: with a bunch of vegetable oil, pinto beans, salt, pepper and a little garlic. But somehow, everything came out edible, and nothing caught on fire. And everyone at the meal CLAIMED that it tasted really good! I think it was the first meal I've had in weeks that didn't include ANY rice OR potatoes! The Peruvians were all worried about the gastronomical after-affects of eating a bunch of eggs, beans, sausage and cheese all mixed together. I just told them that North Americans fart a lot.
Anyway, if you have any homemade refried beans/tortilla tips, let me know! (I'm talking to YOU Guatemala YAVs!)
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Friday, November 21, 2008
The White Randy Jackson
Last week, I served as a member of a "jury" for an elementary school singing contest. Yep, not kidding. My friend Eva helps me teach English at Santa Isabel (she definitely speaks English better than I speak Spanish, despite the fact she's never traveled outside of Peru), and her husband is the music director of the local elementary school. Every year, the school has a big concert/contest where choirs and individuals from all grade levels perform. He always has trouble finding people who are "qualified" enough to serve on the jury to judge the contest. Eva told me all of this a few weeks ago after finding out that I played trombone for 8 years during elementary, middle and high school. And then she asked me if I would be on the jury. I told her I would be on it as a last resort - that her husband should continue looking for people, and if he just couldn't find anyone else, I would do it. And you can figure out what happened from there.
Before the contest, I had to prepare my "resume" that detailed my musical experience. So I wrote down on a piece of paper that I played trombone in concert band and marching band from 8 years. For good measure, I added that I was in my church's handbell choir (which mainly consisted of going to practice about twice a month--and all we really did was play stuff like chords for "Silent Night" during Christmas). After I showed my resume to Eva, she insisted that we spice it up a bit. So I didn't just play trombone for 8 years - I played trombone and studied music for 8 years at the "Institute" of Decatur High School. And when the MC of the concert/contest announced the jury, I was introduced as "Professor" Alex Cornell, a "specialist" in wind instruments, who studied music for eight years at an Institute in the United States of America! They didn't mention that, as a judge of a singing competition, I hadn't EVER received ANY type formal instruction in voice/singing/performance, and the last time I had practiced or participated in any sort of organized singing group was when I was in the church choir in 5th grade. In fact, until my sophomore year of college I thought the only meaning of the word "jury" was the group of people who decides if the defendant in a court of law is guilty or not guilty.
So suffice it to say, as I'm sitting there between ACTUAL music professors (or so I thought--you never now...) getting introduced at the beginning of what would eventually be a 5 hour concert, I couldn't help but feel a little silly and out of place. I was mainly just praying that I wouldn't inadvertently ruin the promising future of some 5 year old musical child prodigy by giving him or her an undeserved low score. I really had no idea what I was doing -- seriously, I don't even watch American Idol!
To evaluate the performers, we (the jury) had to give them scores from 1 to 5 in four categories: pitch, rhythm, diction and performance. Let me just take a moment to say that the spanish word for performance is "interpretación," which I thought (wrongly) meant "interpretation" (duh). I didn't find out until the next day that it actually means "performance." So while they were supposed to be graded on pitch, rhythm, diction and performance, I graded them on pitch, rhythm, diction and interpretation. I quickly learned that it didn't matter that much anyway. As long as you don't give 1's and don't give 5's (unless somebody is REALLY good or REALLY bad), everything will be okay. Throughout the night, my judging method was more or less "hmmmmm, let's pick a random number between 2 and 4." Especially for the 3 year olds. That's right, there were 3 year olds (just choir groups, not individuals). How are you supposed give a group of 12 three year olds a score for "pitch" when the only thing the choir director is concerned about is preventing them from wandering off the stage in the middle of their "performance?" They were all really cute though....
Luckily, one of the other members of Santa Isabel Church, who was once a professional musician, was also on the jury, and he let me copy off of his paper. I'm also lucky that all we had to do as members of the jury was to grade those 4 categories with a number between 1 and 5 and add up the four numbers for a final score. If there was a "comments" section, I'm pretty sure my cover would have been blown. During the couple days leading up to the contest, I pictured us (the judges) giving verbal feedback, American Idol style. I figured I could just be like a "celebrity" judge. They could put me last in the line-up, and after all of the serious judges who knew what they were doing gave technical feedback, I would be waiting at the end as the US native-gringo who just told them if their outfits looked funny or that they gave "a great effort."
I DID end up giving a couple "5's" in the competition. There was one kid who was I think 7 years old who was AMAZING. I learned later that evening that he's been on TV singing multiple times. He sang a mariachi song in a full mariachi outfit. At the beginning of his performance, as the audience sat in silence waiting for him to sing while the instrumental introduction to the song played he suddenly yelled the Spanish equivalent of "put your hands together!" to get everyone to start clapping. From that point on, I was sold.
So that's my first ever jury duty experience - in either a courtroom OR a concert. I guess this is what the "new experiences" of being a Y.A.V. are all about.
Before the contest, I had to prepare my "resume" that detailed my musical experience. So I wrote down on a piece of paper that I played trombone in concert band and marching band from 8 years. For good measure, I added that I was in my church's handbell choir (which mainly consisted of going to practice about twice a month--and all we really did was play stuff like chords for "Silent Night" during Christmas). After I showed my resume to Eva, she insisted that we spice it up a bit. So I didn't just play trombone for 8 years - I played trombone and studied music for 8 years at the "Institute" of Decatur High School. And when the MC of the concert/contest announced the jury, I was introduced as "Professor" Alex Cornell, a "specialist" in wind instruments, who studied music for eight years at an Institute in the United States of America! They didn't mention that, as a judge of a singing competition, I hadn't EVER received ANY type formal instruction in voice/singing/performance, and the last time I had practiced or participated in any sort of organized singing group was when I was in the church choir in 5th grade. In fact, until my sophomore year of college I thought the only meaning of the word "jury" was the group of people who decides if the defendant in a court of law is guilty or not guilty.
So suffice it to say, as I'm sitting there between ACTUAL music professors (or so I thought--you never now...) getting introduced at the beginning of what would eventually be a 5 hour concert, I couldn't help but feel a little silly and out of place. I was mainly just praying that I wouldn't inadvertently ruin the promising future of some 5 year old musical child prodigy by giving him or her an undeserved low score. I really had no idea what I was doing -- seriously, I don't even watch American Idol!
To evaluate the performers, we (the jury) had to give them scores from 1 to 5 in four categories: pitch, rhythm, diction and performance. Let me just take a moment to say that the spanish word for performance is "interpretación," which I thought (wrongly) meant "interpretation" (duh). I didn't find out until the next day that it actually means "performance." So while they were supposed to be graded on pitch, rhythm, diction and performance, I graded them on pitch, rhythm, diction and interpretation. I quickly learned that it didn't matter that much anyway. As long as you don't give 1's and don't give 5's (unless somebody is REALLY good or REALLY bad), everything will be okay. Throughout the night, my judging method was more or less "hmmmmm, let's pick a random number between 2 and 4." Especially for the 3 year olds. That's right, there were 3 year olds (just choir groups, not individuals). How are you supposed give a group of 12 three year olds a score for "pitch" when the only thing the choir director is concerned about is preventing them from wandering off the stage in the middle of their "performance?" They were all really cute though....
Luckily, one of the other members of Santa Isabel Church, who was once a professional musician, was also on the jury, and he let me copy off of his paper. I'm also lucky that all we had to do as members of the jury was to grade those 4 categories with a number between 1 and 5 and add up the four numbers for a final score. If there was a "comments" section, I'm pretty sure my cover would have been blown. During the couple days leading up to the contest, I pictured us (the judges) giving verbal feedback, American Idol style. I figured I could just be like a "celebrity" judge. They could put me last in the line-up, and after all of the serious judges who knew what they were doing gave technical feedback, I would be waiting at the end as the US native-gringo who just told them if their outfits looked funny or that they gave "a great effort."
I DID end up giving a couple "5's" in the competition. There was one kid who was I think 7 years old who was AMAZING. I learned later that evening that he's been on TV singing multiple times. He sang a mariachi song in a full mariachi outfit. At the beginning of his performance, as the audience sat in silence waiting for him to sing while the instrumental introduction to the song played he suddenly yelled the Spanish equivalent of "put your hands together!" to get everyone to start clapping. From that point on, I was sold.
So that's my first ever jury duty experience - in either a courtroom OR a concert. I guess this is what the "new experiences" of being a Y.A.V. are all about.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Culture shock...
First things first: no more virus. Sasser = matado. Which is good news.... sort of. I hate to admit it, but the virus kinda won. With the help of my computer friend, I ended up just starting over and erasing my hard drive. But, like I good boy scout, I came to Peru prepared for just such a situation. Before I left the states, I backed up everything on an external hard drive, and brought along all of the re-installation disks for my operating system, drivers, programs etc. And all the new documents I've created IN Peru since then, I've saved to my flash drive. So even though I had to erase everything to kill the virus, I had all of the important stuff backed up. And now all is back to normal. So we'll call it a draw. But now I have NOD32, so you won't be so lucky next time, Sasser...
* * * * * *
I've been in Peru for 11 weeks now, and so I thought I'd do a little reflecting on how things are going.
At this point in my work, I feel frustrated a lot of the time. Mainly frustrated with myself. See, I speak Spanish fairly well, and people frequently compliment me on how well I speak. Still, after living here for 2 and half months, the daily challenge of using a foreign language ALL the time has gotten to me. Sometimes when people talk to me, I just hear a blur. On the other end, I often just lack the vocabulary I need to express myself. It's REALLY frustrating not only to hear someone repeat something 3 times without understanding it, but even more so when YOU repeat yourself 3 or 4 times without being understood, even though you think you've explained whatever it is you're trying to say perfectly. My Spanish is getting better, but I really have to admit that I thought it would be a lot easier by this point.
I've also felt frustrated with my own ethnocentrism. I find myself blaming things that are different or "worse" than home on the Peruvian or Latin/South American culture. "They're just not as educated or advanced as we are." I would have told you you were crazy if you told me I'd find myself saying or thinking things like that before I left. Back before I came to Peru, when it was all just hypothetical, I always hated the typical "western = better, rest of world = inferior" worldview. I never understood it when I met people in the US who'd spent a lot of time traveling or living in another country, yet they seemed like the most snobbish Americans ever. I felt like this type of "ignorant" attitude in people who had NEVER in their lives left the US, (or the South, or Texas....) was easily forgivable and explainable, but to hear it from people who'd spent months or years traveling abroad just baffled me. But now, I'm kind of starting to understand how even these well-traveled and "cultured" people could sadly have the same type of mindset.
Back home, especially for white, upper-middle class university students, appreciating new perspectives and acknowledging the value of other cultures, peoples, worldviews etc is relatively easy, because it's all in THEORY. You're just doing it at 9:30 on a Monday, inside a modern, western university classroom, with other white, upper-middle class students and a white, upper-middle class professor. And after the 50 minute class period is over, you don't really have to think about it again until next Wednesday; meanwhile, you're going back to your dorm room to spend 4 hours surfing YouTube.
However, when you're living abroad in a culture where you don't speak fluently the language you need to survive, and when cyclical poverty, domestic violence, drug/alcohol abuse, gang activity and non-western thought processes actually become daily realities rather than bite-sized, easy-to-swallow textbook concepts, theory goes out the window. Life back home seems so simple, so easy, so FUN! in comparison.
Now, I know what you're thinking: "Alex, aren't you supposed to be an 'expert' at this kind of stuff, Mr. Sociology gruaduate? Aren't their GLOBAL social processes at work?" And, YES, I know there are "global processes" going on far beyond the scope of what I see at a micro-level during my daily life in Comas. I FREQUENTLY find myself applying what I've learned in classes to what I see here in Peru. But at some point it all just becomes "blah blah blah, globalization, blah blah blah, free-trade, blah blah blah, the multi-national corporations, blah blah blah, neo-colonialism, blah blah blah, self-fulfilling prophecy, blah blah blah..."
And maybe the fact that I pretend to understand the macro-level socio-economic theoretical concepts (how's that for a string of fancy words that doesn't really say much?) just makes it worse. Because then it just makes me go back to the attitude of "I understand this situation, because I'm an enlightened Westerner, and the Peruvians don't." In conversations with people, I just find myself thinking "if only they understood, if only they thought like I think, things would be better." And I can't stand it when I find myself having these thoughts.
I could definitely go more into some of this, but I can't right now. I don't think living in Peru is turning me into a cultural imperialist or anything like that. I'm just frustrated, because I'm learning that I'm a little more prejudiced, ethnocentric and "ignorant" than I first thought.
* * * * * *
I've been in Peru for 11 weeks now, and so I thought I'd do a little reflecting on how things are going.
At this point in my work, I feel frustrated a lot of the time. Mainly frustrated with myself. See, I speak Spanish fairly well, and people frequently compliment me on how well I speak. Still, after living here for 2 and half months, the daily challenge of using a foreign language ALL the time has gotten to me. Sometimes when people talk to me, I just hear a blur. On the other end, I often just lack the vocabulary I need to express myself. It's REALLY frustrating not only to hear someone repeat something 3 times without understanding it, but even more so when YOU repeat yourself 3 or 4 times without being understood, even though you think you've explained whatever it is you're trying to say perfectly. My Spanish is getting better, but I really have to admit that I thought it would be a lot easier by this point.
I've also felt frustrated with my own ethnocentrism. I find myself blaming things that are different or "worse" than home on the Peruvian or Latin/South American culture. "They're just not as educated or advanced as we are." I would have told you you were crazy if you told me I'd find myself saying or thinking things like that before I left. Back before I came to Peru, when it was all just hypothetical, I always hated the typical "western = better, rest of world = inferior" worldview. I never understood it when I met people in the US who'd spent a lot of time traveling or living in another country, yet they seemed like the most snobbish Americans ever. I felt like this type of "ignorant" attitude in people who had NEVER in their lives left the US, (or the South, or Texas....) was easily forgivable and explainable, but to hear it from people who'd spent months or years traveling abroad just baffled me. But now, I'm kind of starting to understand how even these well-traveled and "cultured" people could sadly have the same type of mindset.
Back home, especially for white, upper-middle class university students, appreciating new perspectives and acknowledging the value of other cultures, peoples, worldviews etc is relatively easy, because it's all in THEORY. You're just doing it at 9:30 on a Monday, inside a modern, western university classroom, with other white, upper-middle class students and a white, upper-middle class professor. And after the 50 minute class period is over, you don't really have to think about it again until next Wednesday; meanwhile, you're going back to your dorm room to spend 4 hours surfing YouTube.
However, when you're living abroad in a culture where you don't speak fluently the language you need to survive, and when cyclical poverty, domestic violence, drug/alcohol abuse, gang activity and non-western thought processes actually become daily realities rather than bite-sized, easy-to-swallow textbook concepts, theory goes out the window. Life back home seems so simple, so easy, so FUN! in comparison.
Now, I know what you're thinking: "Alex, aren't you supposed to be an 'expert' at this kind of stuff, Mr. Sociology gruaduate? Aren't their GLOBAL social processes at work?" And, YES, I know there are "global processes" going on far beyond the scope of what I see at a micro-level during my daily life in Comas. I FREQUENTLY find myself applying what I've learned in classes to what I see here in Peru. But at some point it all just becomes "blah blah blah, globalization, blah blah blah, free-trade, blah blah blah, the multi-national corporations, blah blah blah, neo-colonialism, blah blah blah, self-fulfilling prophecy, blah blah blah..."
And maybe the fact that I pretend to understand the macro-level socio-economic theoretical concepts (how's that for a string of fancy words that doesn't really say much?) just makes it worse. Because then it just makes me go back to the attitude of "I understand this situation, because I'm an enlightened Westerner, and the Peruvians don't." In conversations with people, I just find myself thinking "if only they understood, if only they thought like I think, things would be better." And I can't stand it when I find myself having these thoughts.
I could definitely go more into some of this, but I can't right now. I don't think living in Peru is turning me into a cultural imperialist or anything like that. I'm just frustrated, because I'm learning that I'm a little more prejudiced, ethnocentric and "ignorant" than I first thought.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
The Virus
For all of you computer-literate type people out there, the name of my laptop's virus is "The Sasser Worm" (cue ominous scary music). I looked up information about it online, and it sounds pretty scary. All of the ways I read about to kill it are kind of beyond my computer knowledge.
I have a friend here who is a computer systems engineer, but I think he's having trouble understanding the problem, because although I speak spanish pretty well, I'm not too good with the whole computer jargon vocabulary.
If you ever start up your computer and soon see the message "LSA Shell (Export Version) experienced a problem and needed to close," followed by another pop-up window that says "The system process C://WINDOWS\system32\lsass.exe terminated unexpectedly with error status code 128" and a countdown timer telling you your computer will shut itself down in 60 seconds, then you're in trouble....
I have a friend here who is a computer systems engineer, but I think he's having trouble understanding the problem, because although I speak spanish pretty well, I'm not too good with the whole computer jargon vocabulary.
If you ever start up your computer and soon see the message "LSA Shell (Export Version) experienced a problem and needed to close," followed by another pop-up window that says "The system process C://WINDOWS\system32\lsass.exe terminated unexpectedly with error status code 128" and a countdown timer telling you your computer will shut itself down in 60 seconds, then you're in trouble....
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Protesting the Devil
On Friday, I went to my first protest here in Lima. Generally, I’m a fan of protests. Free speech and Democracy in action. It’s the “cool” thing to do when you’re a college-ish aged white kid – standing up to the establishment. Even better – this was a church protest.
Every year, the kids at Kilometer 13’s compassion program hold a protest against Halloween. A protest march, that is. All of the kids bring posters that say things like “Say No to Halloween, Say Yes to Jesus!” And they have pictures of jack-o-lanterns in red circles with slashes through the middle. Many of the kids wear sandwich-board style signs with messages on both sides. One girl, who must have been about 4, wore an adorable pink sandwich-board sign with white cloth frills around the edges that said “No Al Halloween”on the front and “Christo Te Ama” on the back. Unfortunately, I’m still kind of paranoid about bringing my camera places in light of getting robbed a month ago, so I don’t have pictures of this event. I really, really wish I had brought it, because the photos would have been awesome to share.
So as you probably already knew, I wasn’t exactly in favor of the cause behind this particular protest, but that doesn’t matter. I kept that little fact to myself. Living with this bit of hypocrisy is a small price to pay to be able to say that I participated in a protest march against Halloween on the streets of Lima, Peru. There were about 60 or so kids marching, and 5 or 6 older leaders to help keep them in order. We walked a good 9 or 10 block loop, the whole time shouting “¡No al Halloween! ¡Si al Cristo!” and other variations on this basic theme. People in the neighborhood came out of their houses and stores to watch us. Most just stared in bewildered silence, but a few clapped along.
I’m still not exactly sure why the churches here are so anti-Halloween. They say it’s all about the Devil. I must say I’m kind of unfamiliar with the origins of Halloween and trick-or-treating myself. I kind of like the idea of kids dressing up and getting free candy. I guess the pagans just have all the fun holidays…
Oh well, I thought the protest was tons of fun. Of course, I’m still pro-Halloween. But I’m definitely not anti-Halloween protest marches. If the churches here want to be against Halloween, I say go for it. All the kids had a blast. They had been talking about it with excitement earlier in the week. I think they’d be pretty disappointed if next year the adults told them that things had changed and Halloween was okay now. They have a blast drawing pictures and making posters. And who doesn’t like the idea of marching around a neighborhood en masse shouting “¡No Al Halloween!” at the top of your lungs?
Every year, the kids at Kilometer 13’s compassion program hold a protest against Halloween. A protest march, that is. All of the kids bring posters that say things like “Say No to Halloween, Say Yes to Jesus!” And they have pictures of jack-o-lanterns in red circles with slashes through the middle. Many of the kids wear sandwich-board style signs with messages on both sides. One girl, who must have been about 4, wore an adorable pink sandwich-board sign with white cloth frills around the edges that said “No Al Halloween”on the front and “Christo Te Ama” on the back. Unfortunately, I’m still kind of paranoid about bringing my camera places in light of getting robbed a month ago, so I don’t have pictures of this event. I really, really wish I had brought it, because the photos would have been awesome to share.
So as you probably already knew, I wasn’t exactly in favor of the cause behind this particular protest, but that doesn’t matter. I kept that little fact to myself. Living with this bit of hypocrisy is a small price to pay to be able to say that I participated in a protest march against Halloween on the streets of Lima, Peru. There were about 60 or so kids marching, and 5 or 6 older leaders to help keep them in order. We walked a good 9 or 10 block loop, the whole time shouting “¡No al Halloween! ¡Si al Cristo!” and other variations on this basic theme. People in the neighborhood came out of their houses and stores to watch us. Most just stared in bewildered silence, but a few clapped along.
I’m still not exactly sure why the churches here are so anti-Halloween. They say it’s all about the Devil. I must say I’m kind of unfamiliar with the origins of Halloween and trick-or-treating myself. I kind of like the idea of kids dressing up and getting free candy. I guess the pagans just have all the fun holidays…
Oh well, I thought the protest was tons of fun. Of course, I’m still pro-Halloween. But I’m definitely not anti-Halloween protest marches. If the churches here want to be against Halloween, I say go for it. All the kids had a blast. They had been talking about it with excitement earlier in the week. I think they’d be pretty disappointed if next year the adults told them that things had changed and Halloween was okay now. They have a blast drawing pictures and making posters. And who doesn’t like the idea of marching around a neighborhood en masse shouting “¡No Al Halloween!” at the top of your lungs?
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