En Viaje

I've found that blogging is a lot like flossing. If you don't do it with pretty strict regularity, you end up not doing it at all. And then you feel all guilty about it.


Anyway, the past two months have been pretty full. My parents and sister came down to visit 2 weeks ago, which was a really good time. We hung out in Lima for a few days and then went down to Cusco and Machu Picchu. Both were incredible places to visit and well worth swallowing my "I live in Peru, I'm not a tourist" pride to take a bunch of pictures (which you can view at http://garyandpatpictures.shutterfly.com/; as you may have guessed, the photos of my sister shooting a handgun were not taken in Peru but in Kentucky). The pictures probably tell the story of the trip better than I could, so I'll just say that we saw a lot of incredible ruins, we ate a lot of great food (which only led to serious stomach sickness toward the end), and got to spend some quality family time together.


I actually ended up heading back to the US on the same day my parents did, spending Holy Week in one of the few places even more Catholic than Peru: the University of Notre Dame. Why Notre Dame? Because I decided to apply to Divinity School for next year to obtain to Masters of Theological Studies degree, and Notre Dame accepted me into their program.

When I mention my Divinity School plans, I generally get the following questions (1) Are you going to be a priest? (2) What do they even teach in Divinity School? and (3) When are you going to become a productive member of society? In case you had the same questions, the answers are (1) No. (2) They teach theology and ministry skills (I'll be focusing in moral theology and social ethics) (3) It depends on your definition, but probably a while.

Anyway, my trip to Notre Dame was good, especially because I got to spend time with my ex-JVC roommate Kate and my friends from El Salvador while in Chicago. Although I was really impressed with Notre Dame's program and was offered the opportunity to live in a nearby Catholic Worker community while studying there, in the end I decided Boston College is probably the best place for me for the next 2 years. Despite one of my priest friend's claims that "the only thing left unchanged after a Jesuit Mass is the bread and the wine", I'm really looking forward to studying with the Jesuits in Boston come September.


So now I'm back in Peru, trying to take advantage of my last 4 months here. I think I've either gained some immunity to street food or else I've consumed a parasite that is eating the other ones (I prefer the latter theory so when people give me weird looks for eating large quantities, I can just tell them I'm eating for two). I suppose my Spanish is improving but I still can't pronounce the double "rr"s. I've been told to practice saying "perro" over and over to get my tongue used to the sound, but I think it's much more effective at freaking out the other passengers on the buses (imagine a guy staring out the window saying "dog" "dog" "dog"...) than improving my pronunciation. In any case, people seem to understand me well enough, and I haven't accidentally told a co-worker that a patient died in several weeks, so I consider that a small victory.

A Quick Look Into a Pisco Circle

As promised, I am trying to add some visuals to the blog. Here some pictures from our Pisco circle at Lunahuana, thanks to the photographic prowess of my roommate, Ariel. As may be clear from the shots, I was not always aware photos were being taking. And in case you can't tell, the man sitting next to me is the aforementioned Shoeless.

Summer in the City of Kings

After a brief trip home to New Jersey for Christmas and New Years, I arrived back in Lima on January 2nd. It was a weird transition coming back from the snowy cold of New Jersey to the height of summer in Lima, but I'm slowly adjusting and working on one of the finest farmer's tans of my life.

1. Lima Facts

Lima is also known as the City of Kings even though Lima has never had a king (I guess it's kind of like calling New Jersey the "Garden State"). Also, the name "Lima" comes from a mispronunciation. When the Spaniards came here, natives told them the nearby river was called "Rimac" but they heard "Lima" and named it accordingly. To get back at the conquistadors, I grossly mispronounce the Spanish names for things here. One day I might even do it intentionally.

2. Combis

I now spend a lot of time traveling in combis (pictured above), which is a really good time if you have the right attitude about it. Lima traffic makes Manhattan look like Montana and combi drivers are masterful at navigating the centimeter gaps between cars with some code of hand signals and horn-honking I'll never understand. Sometimes you're sitting there and you know we have to make a left turn in 10 feet but we're in the far right lane, and you just sit back and watch the magic happen.

On the inside it's more like a game of moving Twister, at least when things get full. You could swear there wasn't room for one more person, but the guy working the bus is calling for 5 more people to get on with 3 giant bags of produce and you've gotta go from "right hand-overhead rail", to "right hand-seat back" and from "left foot - on barrel of unknown substance" to "left foot-hooked behind old lady's right foot." If you're taller than 5'6'' you have to crouch, but then you can push your shoulder blades against the roof to keep you steady. I'm slowly improving my balance and my tolerance for intimate contact with complete strangers.

If you want to get the full combi effect, go to http://www.fulltono.com/, then click on "Cumbia" and "Grupo 5" and play the top three songs on permanent repeat.

3. Carnival

I was on a combi a few days ago and we were slowly climbing a dirt road with groups of kids on either side. The driver all of sudden yelled at us to close all the windows immediately. We scrambled to get them shut, but when I reached for the last open window across from me, I got pelted in the arm with a water balloon. Then the kids unleashed a barrage of balloons on both sides of the bus. I found out that there is a custom here called Carnival during the month of February in which the goal of Peruvian children is to soak people with water (and sometimes dye), often by balloon but sometimes just pouring a bucket on your head while in a moto-taxi (which happened to two of my co-workers). It seems you get extra points if you get a woman or a gringo, so this month in the field should be interesting.

4. Lunahuana 2

This weekend Don Martin invited us back to Lunahuana, and this time there was a group of about 6 of us. It's harvest season there for all the grapes, and every time we met another local they would give us a huge bunch of grapes right off the vine. Great stuff. Don Martin's 95 year-old father is as lively as ever and his neighbor stopped by who has the peculiar trait of having never worn shoes for the past 70 years (and the biggest callouses I've ever seen on the bottom of his feet). I learned my lesson from last time and poured myself very small portions in the Pisco circle and let Martin, his dad, and Shoeless do most of work. Shoeless asked me what I do for a living and after spending a while trying to explain micro-enterprise and Partners in Health he said, "Oh I get it now: you sit on your butt all day", which was said less as an insult and more as an observation. I asked him what he did, and he said "Me? I work in the fields". So at least I'll have a little more humility about my work when I got into the office tomorrow.