Lima Living

You may have noticed a subtle difference in my blog title. My old title, "Pensamientos Peruvianos" is Spanish for "Peruvian Thoughts," or so I thought. Actually, "Pensamientos Peruanos" (no 'v') is correct. That's what I get for trying to show-off and be fancy with a suave, mysterious, foreign-sounding blog title.

But more importantly, I want to share that the past 11 days or have been a whirlwind! Orientation in Louisville lasted for a week. The entire group of YAVs bonded really, really well. After 8 days of meaningful worship services, small group sessions and meetings about self-care, culture shock and how to "do mission," we were all definitely ready to get our feet on the ground in our new countries and get to work. But at the same time, we were sad to say one last round of goodbyes. In all, there are 30 international YAVs serving in five different partner countries: India, Northern Ireland, Kenya, Guatemala and Peru (there are six of us in Peru). You can read blogs of the other YAVs at www.pcusa.org/yav.


And now I'm here, in Lima. Sean, Leslie, Michael, Lynn, Katie and I landed in Lima last Tuesday. Since then, we've been doing group orientation in Lima, which lasts until Saturday. Katie, Leslie, Michael and I will all be living/working in Lima for the entire year, so we've been staying with our permanent host families since day 1. Lynn and Sean have placements in Huanuco and Huancayo, two smaller rural towns that are each a several-hour long bus ride away, so each of them is staying with a temporary host family in Lima during orientation. I am EXTREMELY thankful that we have these 10 days of orientation together in Lima before we're off on our own. I feel a lot more confident getting to know the city with five other gringos than I would if I were solo.


My host family is amazing. I'm staying in Comas, a department on the northeastern side of Lima (a "suburb" by the US definition) that is about an hour-long taxi ride from downtown during normal rush-hour (but if you take a bus, or if the traffic is particularly nasty, it takes much, much longer - I'll get to that later!). My host family is among the most loving, caring group of people I've ever met. They greeted me from the airport with a big posterboard sign that read "I Love You Alex!" (in English). Daniela is my madre here in Lima. She speaks Spanish slowly and clearly, and often "translates" the faster, slurred spanish of the other family members - especially Juan Carlos, my padre. He is a bus driver in Lima and works a lot, so I haven't spent much time with him. Daniela really keeps the family running. I don't know how she does it - I think she hardly ever sleeps between caring for children and grandchildren, and making 3 meals a day for everyone. On top of being a full-time mom and grandmother, she also works part-time with youth and children in one of the churches that I will be serving for my placement here in Lima. She's basically a super-heroine. Juan (or "Juancito") is my 19 year old host-brother. Damaris is my EXTREMELY energetic and affectionate six-year-old little sister who is absolutely delighted with anything I say or do. Julia is my 16-year old host sister who stays busy attending night classes and taking care of her daughter Dayra, who turned one this weekend. Cristiano is a three-year old grandson of another of Daniela and Juan Carlos' sons (who doesn't live at home). Needless to say, it´s a crazy, energetic family.

Luckily, I have the ground floor of the house all to myself (which I also feel kinda guilty about), so at least I have a place to sleep that's relatively quiet. As of now, the house doesn't have hot water. So taking showers is fun. Lima is technically in a "desert" climate-zone, in that it hardly ever rains and there's not much vegetation. However, it's usually totally overcast (I think I've seen the sun once so far), and the humidity is always above 80 percent, which means everything is always damp. It's winter now (but we're coming up on spring), and temperatures are in the 60s. Aside from its interesting climate, one thing you notice pretty quickly about Lima is that the traffic is much crazier than any I've seen in the states. During our 10 days of orientation, I take a city bus for about an hour and a half from my neighborhood to the Uniendo Manos de Peru's headquarters (the PCUSA's partner organization). Most of this ride, I end up standing up shoulder to shoulder with the other Limeños going to work as we all try to brace ourselves while the bus driver navigates the insane rush-hour. Traffic here is governed by unwritten rules of the road much more than it is by signs and lights. Many busy intersections have police officers directing traffic instead of lights. Everyone drives pretty much as fast as they can, as close as possible to the person in front of them. You use your horn to declare that you're coming and that you want the right of way. If two vehicles want the right-of-way at the same time, the smaller yields to the larger. Pedestrians NEVER have the right of way. It's fun!!!

As I sit here thinking that I need to wrap this post up, I'm realizing that I haven't really said all that much, though there sure are a lot of words on the page (sounds like I'm becoming a preacher already, no?). So I'm gonna try and do this whole blog-update thing more often in the future, once orientation with the other YAVs is over and I've moved full-time to my job with my two churches here in Lima. In the meantime, I'll leave you with the top 5 things to love about Lima and the top 5 things to.... not love.

TOP 5 THINGS THAT KINDA STINK ABOUT LIMA
5. The air. It kinda stinks. There's a lotta smog. But that makes sense in a city of 8 million - even if everyone DOES take public transportation.
4. It's so big! On a day with particularly bad traffic, I had to ride the bus for 2 hours one way, standing up the whole time to get from my house to orientation. Urban sprawl isn't just a US thing.
3. 90% humidity + dust - rain = EVERYTHING is just kind of dirty
2. They speak spanish SO FAST. And use so much slang!
1. The water. You can't drink it. You can bathe in it, but it isn't hot.


TOP 5 THINGS TO LOVE ABOUT LIMA
5. Everyone greets each person individually with a handshake/hug/kiss on the cheek when you arrive or leave a place, rather than saying a cheap "goodbye" to everyone at once.
4. Even though they drive like lunatics, NO ONE drives while on a cell phone (it would be suicide).
3. The prices. Everything is really cheap. A big lunch (the main meal here - including an appetizer and entree) in a really nice restaurant costs about $5
2. The food - especially the abundance of meat 'n potatoes. Steak. Chicken. Mashed potatoes, whole potatoes, sweet potatoes, potato puree, french fries. Plus there's ceviche, which is a type of seafood salad with "raw" fish that's been "cooked" in lime juice. And there's "canchitas," which are a type of salty nuts that all the restaurants have for you to eat while you're waiting for your real food.
1. It's much closer to the REST of Peru (mountains, jungle, beautiful natural beauty, etc) than the US is!

So that's about it. Hopefully I'll post again soon with more detailed, fun anecdotes!