You know you have lived in Peru for 2 weeks when:

• You have to stop yourself from kissing your American acquaintances on the cheek when you greet them.
• You are not bothered when vehicles you are riding in follow the white dashed line rather than drive alongside it.
• You automatically tune out hisses, whistles, and weird pick-up-lines in broken English when walking down the street.
  

Quote of the Week

Me: I kissed a random stranger today.
Amanda: Really! Oooh...
Me: His name is Miguel. He is a money changer.
Dale: Oooh Miguel.

Ok, so maybe 2 weeks of cultural acclimation is still not enough for us.

A Day in the Life of Pre-Teaching Eden

7ish Get up, run maybe, get ready.

8ish Leave for the school using public transportation here. To keep in mind: The man comfortably reading the morning paper is not a passenger on our bus but the driver.

9ish Arrive at school and begin Spanish classes. During Spanish classes we chat in Spanish, learn which culturally inappropriate/rude/comical actions we have committed lately, and learn other cultural differences such as the difference between...

... a United States Guinea Pig













... and a Peruvian Guinea Pig













I still do not know which is weirder.

1ish Go on a field trip to help us learn where resources are here, have a meeting, or work at the school. Today we went on a field trip on a tourist bus to downtown Lima.















5ish Get home, eat, relax, maybe go out and do something.

9:30 Dale falls asleep.

11:30 Eden falls asleep.

The Evil Thing

When we first got to our home, we saw one of these sitting on our table.

We had never seen one before and didn't know what it was for. Eden said, "Hey, I know what it is. A rat catcher. It pops up and you can use it to catch mice running across your floor without touching them." Below is my view of what the purpose of the strange item was for.


Soon however, I found out it was really simply a food cover, used to keep flies and such away. According to my roommate, it isn't just a strange Peru tool either but is commonly used in the states. Definitely not half as cool as I thought it was, but at least we were able to let it fulfill its purpose. See how it was put to use below.

Fruiticious

At the grocery store, Dale and I bought many different types of fruit and took pictures as we opened and tried each one. At the staff barbecue, we found out that some fruits you are supposed to eat plain, while others you should not eat plain - in other words - the Peruvians on staff at ICS laughed at us - for about 5 minutes.
This one was impossible to eat - unless you know how to eat rocks.




This one was good - like a melon sort of.


Tart deliciousness.


Cheap starfruit.


Really good flavor but with a lot of seeds - we just eat the seeds too and its all good.




Pretty when cut but with the taste of pure orange peel. The Peruvians laughed the hardest when we said that we had tried this one.

I can fly.

So we had a ICS staff barbecue where all us new staff were able to meet the old staff. Afterward, we walked to a mall on the side of a cliff to go bowling. Unfortunately, it was league night and no alleys were open. Fortunately, my room mate, Amanda, piped in.

Amanda: We can go paragliding.
Jens (old staff member): Seriously?
Amanda: Yeah.
Jens: You all really want to?
Everyone: (says or does something that means yes)

So because Jens knew the paragliding guy, we were able to fly for only $20. Usually Americans fly for $55.

The experience was like one of those wonderful dreams where you can fly and float around and above all mankind. I was strapped to a Peruvian flying me around, but I still felt incredibly free. Near the end he did some dips, rushing turns, and free falls which were thrilling. And then he pulled back in to land and I watched my first Lima sunset over the ocean.

Peru Journal Entry 1

I am in a different country! Here are some lengthy journal entries Dale and I wrote along with some photographs.

Wednesday, July 15, 2008

Eden

When we arrived in Lima I quickly realized we were not in the U.S. anymore as I asked someone a question in English and was answered with a blank stare. I quickly made a switch to a grammatically incorrect phrase in Spanish and was able to receive the information I needed. We went through customs, got our luggage, and saw signs which said ICS Lima on them. We soon met the people attached to the signs – the principal and the secretary – and then met others who had decided to stay up late to greet us. We sat around the airport for one hour, waiting for three other girls to arrive, threw our luggage on a teacher’s van, and drove to our lovely home. Our home is spacious. It is a two story building and we also have a roof as well (so if Joel comes to visit he can sleep on it with me). I will post a video of my home on my blog later. There are a lot of things we’ll need to learn to get used to. Particularly, we will need to get accustomed to dealing with hired help – we have a guard, a maid, and we may end up with a gardener. The principal says that we are providing these people with jobs, so I am trying to stop assuming that by having these people work for me I become a wealthy and snobbish American.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Dale

What a long day it’s been! After going to a nearby gym with Sue, we went grocery shopping at Metro, a nearby supermarket (or “supermercado”). That was quite an adventure, taking two hours. Eden and I got every type of fruit that we hadn’t tried. Oh, and star fruit, even though we’ve had it before (they were only something like four cents each).

In the afternoon we went to Doug and Sue’s house to utilize their Internet access (or their neighbor’s, rather). We had a lot of online-catching up to do

This evening we picked up Melinda at her apartment on the way over to “Eidle Wies”, a nearby panaderia. Eden ordered a variety of empanadas for supper, and for desert, some devilishly-good chocolate cake, kind of like a ding dong. After walking Melinda home, we came back here. Right now Amanda’s walking around with her camera, narrating an apartment tour to send home. We’ll make our own tour pretty soon, so keep checking Eden’s blog.

Eden

Here are a few stories I took from the day. At the gym, one of the workers sat down with us and tried to sell us membership for 15 months. Just wanting to be guests at the gym, at least at first, we politely turned him down – saying we still need to think about it, but he took our number and will call us. On the way out, he gave us each our first Peruvian side-of-face kiss. As we walked to Sue’s car, Dale turned to me and said sorrowfully, “But I wanted to save my first kiss for my husband!”

The reason we spent two hours at Metro (the “supermercado”) was because:

1. It took time to find out where everything is.

2. When we went to the counter, we realized that we should not just take everything we buy up to the cashier to pay for it and call it good - certain items need to be weighed in a different section of the store and others need to be weighed in a more different section of the store. So after waiting in a line for a long time, we had to get out of line, go to the balance, and weigh some items, get a sticker put on them, and go back to wait in line for a long time again.

3. We had to walk 7 minutes to and from our home each way. It would have been more like a 5 minute walk each way, but we had to cross two busy streets and driving is so different here – drivers are very aggressive but also very defensive (which means everybody pulls out in front of everybody else aggressively, knowing that the other person will respond defensively and stop). We are praying none of us get hit by a car while here – even if we do have insurance – though don’t worry about us as we are all still to chicken to cross the road (at least when traffic isn’t yet clear).

Speaking of chicken, we bought a whole one today at Metro. It looked just like a whole chicken you would buy from the states (and it only cost us <$2.50). When we got home, Dale began chopping up and found something inside the chicken. Inside the chicken was a package (read this like I am whispering in a low voice) and … inside the package … was …

...a chicken head

…two chicken feet

…a chicken heart

…other nasty chicken things which I won’t even mention

(Ok, now you can go back to reading this normal)

At Doug and Sue’s house, I was able to chat with Joel, Grace, Tim, and my father online. The younger ones gave me some interesting ideas on how we could make use of extra chicken parts. Here are some of the ideas:

1. make a doll
2. make a delicious dessert
3. give the delicious dessert to someone you don't like
4. make chicken foot candles for a creepy room effect

Oh yes, one more thing. Being 10 blocks from the ocean does things to my hair. Dale says I look like Richard Simmons. Lord have mercy on me.

Hooray for insurance! Now I can throw caution to the wind!

At training (which I am back from - 4 days till I leave for Peru!) a woman came from the insurance company to explain to all of us how to access our accounts online. She clicked on the Korean section of the website to demonstrate how we can find a list of good doctors all around the world. She clicked on the first doctor on the list the website gave her and sure enough - a Kwak.

Oh yes, I have an announcement: Heather M. has started a blog. There you can see the best first post ever! With Joel and Caroline both also starting a blog, this has been an eventful month in the blogging world!

YTA

Hello my name is Eden and I am a You Tube Junkee. Before you judge me let me explain:

Reason 1: Barats and Bereta - It all started with their Happy Mother's day video and went down hill from there.

Reason 2: two words: Alex Trebek

Reason 3: That one video with the guy who hates Americans and their subtitles

Reason 4: Random foreign music videos

Reason 5: Hollywood's power over me

Reason 6: Great videos people I have met have placed online.

To my family and friends: I apologize if my addiction has harmed you in any way in the past. I will try and get over this.

And they’ll know we are Christians…

I am sitting in the Atlanta airport nearing the end of a 5 hour wait there for my flight back home. I am bored.

Next to me a woman is quizzing her son on Bible trivia, apparently for some competition in Wichita. After a while they stop. The boy picks his nose. He looks about 17 years old. He picks up “Boy’s Life” magazine from his carry-on luggage and begins to read jokes.

Bible Quiz Boy: Hey, do you want to know where I get all my funny jokes? This magazine here (holds up “Boy’s Life” magazine). How do you keep a bull from charging?

Mother: Do you need to go to the bathroom?

Bible Quiz Boy: How do you keep a bull from charging?

Mother: You had better go to the bathroom, it’s going to be a long flight.

Bible Quiz Boy: (pauses) … How do you keep a bull from charging?

Mother: Take away his credit card?

Bible Quiz Boy: (disappointed look)

Mother: Am I right?

Bible Quiz Boy: (doesn’t respond)

As we waited for luggage at the Wichita airport, I quickly took a photo of Bible Quiz Boy. Just as I pushed the button, he swung his drink up and took a quick swig – just like Napoleon Dynamite. Yessssssssssss.

A rare shot of Bible Quiz boy alongside a random cowgirl.

3 Posts for the Price of 1!

First an announcement: Hey, did you all know that Caroline Fisher (Peak) started a blog? She has already produced two posts in which she blames me for things and talks about her new baby. So check it out if you know her.

Second a photograph: of the new staff members at the school in which I will be teaching (the older man in the photograph is the director, not a new staff member) (and the llama...I am not certain of what he is doing in the photo).

We are sitting in the home office where all the behind the scenes work is done for the International schools.

Third the Best Quotes of this week:

The things we are learning keep on coming up in our conversations:

Allison: Look at us. We just went to an All American Baseball game and now are eating American food at an All American restaurant.

Karen: Hey, it’s like what we have been learning about. You know, when the speaker talked about how we will go through an overseas grieving process and we will want to do things from our own country? We must be starting our grieving as we are eating all the things we are going to miss in the United States.

Everyone pauses in contemplation.

Elizabeth: (takes a sip of her chocolate malt and smiles) I like grieving.

All week long we heard that one of the speakers here would give a talk on "sexual purity" - always an enjoyable and non-awkward thing to listen to. Anyway, one of the speakers shared about how women are attracted to godly men. After the presentation, a guy approached a group of us girls saying, “Hey, any of you ladies wanna go to sonic? We can pray afterward.”

I would use the words "Southern" and "Hospitality" to describe the staff who serve us food here, though many aren't used to their kind. I overheard this short conversation as the staff left the kitchen and a group of young training participants were still sitting around.

Older person: Well, we’ll see all y’all young people later.

Younger person: We will see all of you old people later.