(Mis)adventures in Teaching: Getting Ready for the Kids

Jorge and I had a lovely, relaxing weekend at the beach and taking in some Afro-Peruvian music, but on Monday it was nose to the grindstone as the school year gets off the ground.

As of last Friday, my contract officially started with the school. This week has been a whirlwind of theory, planning, logistics, revising curricula, finding lost documents, and meeting my colleagues. The kids come the first week of March, so we have another week and a half to prepare everything.

So far, it's been quite overwhelming. I'm teaching 3rd and 4th grade English, and I found out that I will also be the 3rd grade science teacher. That was a shock, but now I couldn't be more excited. I can't wait to do all those fun experiments with the kids! And this is their first year of science, so it will be exciting to see their enthusiasm and watch how they develop into little scientists. We're going to learn how to measure and estimate, watch how plants grow, and learn about the solar system.

However, I'm still terribly nervous about managing thirty 8-year-olds at once. On top of that, there are two "special cases" in the 3rd grade, and they are BOTH in my section! One child has a learning disability and will have a tutor, and the other has Asperger's and is prone to being disruptive in the class. Next week, we will have some meetings about these special cases and hopefully they can give me advice on how to handle them.

English Tea Party

A colleague of mine in San Francisco told me that his father lived in Germany for 20 years, but never learned German and only met other British expats. So when I arrived in Peru, I resolved not to be that person who only speaks English and hangs out with fellow Americans. But while I certainly improved my Spanish, I spent a lot of last year feeling out of place and lonely. About two weeks ago, I finally joined Internations after resisting for a long time. It was the best decision I've made in a while, because I have already met some great people.

One of those people is the wife of the Deputy Ambassador of England, and today Jorge and I were invited to their house for English tea time. The house is beautiful, and has a pool! But the highlights were definitely the Sri Lankan snacks and delicious cakes she made, as well as her beautiful baby. He's definitely a smiler!

It was a really nice afternoon, and despite some language barriers, Jorge felt really comfortable with the whole group. It's been such a relief to have an English outlet, and also to have people who understand the expat experience! I'm all for the authentic experience and hanging out with Peruvians, but I didn't realize how much I missed English.

Summertime in Lima

The months of January, February, and March are summer down here in Peru, and it's quite a welcome break from all that grey that hangs around the rest of the year (and from the extreme cold of the frozen north, which is where I was less than a month ago!). Lima is the only coastal capital in South America, and Limeños love going to the beach.

Jorge and I went last weekend for a bit, but getting there can be tricky. There's a reason the picture above is not full of people: look closely at the ground. It's full of rocks! There are sandy beaches in Lima, but the traffic to get there is awful and parking is impossible. That's manageable however; what I can't manage are the huge crowds. So we settled for our rocky bit of shore and had fun listening to the sound of the tide turning over the rocks.

Another thing that screams summer here in Peru are the ice cream vendors. They ride on little carts (and they breeze through busy roundabouts and intersections as if they had nine lives) and have a distinctive whistle that they use. Of course there were tons of them on the beach, but they are everywhere in the city and pass by the apartment at least once a day.

One thing I find charming about Peru is that many vendors will pass by, offering different services, and they each have their own distinctive whistle. Aside from the ice cream vendors, there is a guy who sharpens knives. He walks along, rolling his equipment with him and blowing his whistle, and when someone stops him to have their knives sharpened, he puts down the stand and connects the belt (it's like very rough sandpaper) and pumps the foot pedal to turn the wheel. It's an incredibly cheap and convenient service, and someday I will remember to take a video, or at least a photo.

Next week I start training for the elementary school, and I won't be able to take in the summer like I have been. But next weekend, Jorge and I are going to the beach in Paracas, four hours south of Lima, to celebrate Valentine's Day (and the anniversary of when and where we first met). I can't believe it's been a year already, but I can't wait.

Adventures in Peruvian Cooking

This week has been a very happy week for me, culinarily speaking. I found coconut milk and made a Thai red curry with ingredients smuggled from the US, I stumbled on a store that has natural goat's milk products and makes a delicious goat cheese, and discovered that craft beer has arrived in Peru after all, in the form of the Barranco Beer Company. On Sunday Jorge and I checked out the brewery for their Super Bowl party. Unfortunately, ESPN in South America switched all the commercials to local commercials! But that's what the internet is for, I guess. The beer was alright, not spectacular but a welcome change from the same old Pilsen and Cusqueña. The highlight, however, was the chili dogs. I convinced Jorge to try one, and he was hooked. I don't have a picture because we scarfed them down so fast!

They're just as serious about quantity as quality

So today, I decided to surprise him by whipping up some chili. Now, this would be a challenge for me under ordinary circumstances since I've never made chili before, but it's even more so here because it's no easy feat finding all the necessary ingredients in Peru. That means improvising! For one, there's no chili powder down here. I had most of the individual spices to make a batch of my own, but I was missing powdered garlic and cayenne pepper. Powdered garlic was easy to find at the supermarket (but the price, like the price of so many things here, made me cringe) and I bought a packet of what I thought was cayenne pepper. I have no idea what it is that I bought, but it has more of a smoky flavor and definitely no heat. Luckily, I had on hand a hot chili and so I sliced that up and dumped it in the pot with the rest of the ingredients. Problem solved. The corn down here is different, larger and not sweet, so I skipped that and added zucchini instead. Canned goods are pricey, so I skipped the black beans and just went with beef. Add some diced tomatoes, garlic and onion and voila! Dash of Italian herbs and we'll see what happens.

The finished product. Yummy!

Cooking American food, or any type of food that's not traditional Peruvian, can get expensive fast due to imported and specialty products. Ordinarily, I cook Peruvian-oriented dishes using what's fresh (and I make a mean estofado de pollo), but sometimes you just need a flavor break and a little piece of home. This week has been rather expensive, but I think it's worth it. I hope Jorge likes the chili!

Update: He liked it so much I don't know if we'll have much left for tomorrow!

Which direction is home?

On my flight back to Peru after being back in the U.S. for three weeks, I was chatting with my neighbor and mentioned that I had gone home for a visit. Then in the next sentence I said that now I was "coming home to Peru." After saying that, I stopped to think for a moment. Which direction is home? Is it "coming home," or is it "going home"?

Most everyone who moves away from the place they grew up asks themselves that question at least once, but for expats I think it's more pronounced and more nuanced. I lived in San Francisco for a year and a half, but home was always Minnesota.  When I moved there, I knew that I was going to go traveling so I never had any permanent mooring, never set down any roots. San Francisco is lovely and has great coffee and I love it dearly, but it was always just a place I was passing through, a love affair with an expiration date.

Home?

Peru is different. I came here with the intention of seeing what would happen. What happened is that I fell in love, and now I'm living with my Peruvian boyfriend. I'm about to sign a contract that'll take me through to December, and I'm filing the paperwork for my carné de extranjería, or Peruvian green card. I don't know what will happen after that time, but it's clear that I'm staying long enough to put my feet up. We're planning upgrades to the apartment (not the knock-down-the-walls kind, just some badly needed storage and aesthetic updates). And I'm finally going to do what I've been talking about for two years and buy some damn houseplants.

Home?

These are not things you do when you're planning on taking off again soon. And yet, I don't know if I'm ready to call Peru my home. There is a rightness in the word "home," a sense of fitting in.  A feeling like worn-in slippers. When you can say, I belong to this place and it belongs to me.

Minnesota belongs to me. I claim it when I hear a Bob Dylan song on the radio here and excitedly tell people that he was from my state. I claim it when I snort dismissively at other people's idea of cold. ("You don't know what real cold is! Come to Minnesota.")  Lima does not belong to me. The Spanish language does not belong to me.  But little by little, I'm laying claim to my life here.

As Austin Powers said, "Wherever you go, there you are." Maybe Peru is not my home, but I have a pretty kickass thing going for me here, and that's enough for me.