a bit of history...

We went to central Lima and toured the church that houses Pizarro's remains.  The church is quite old, and is massive.  It has doors through which an army of elephants could just walk inside for mass.  Not that there are many elephants here, but if there were, I bet they would be at church simply because its the only place where they could fit through the doors.

The walls are covered with beautiful mosaics, paintings, and wood carvings.  The mosaics are made of tiny tiles and the detail and colors are vivid  - look at the conquistadors and you can see what I mean.    Pizarro's remains are kept in the church, but for many years, they weren't actually his.  Sounds confusing, but there was a mistake, and some other person was residing in Pizarro's space.  When they discovered the error, they kicked out the unknown remains and put Pizarro where he belonged.

 

mosaic

church pews

 

Pizarro's remains with a sculpted lion

a confessional

Going out to lunch in downtown Lima.

Social Life Rocks!

September 12, 2009

      OK - just have to tell you all that our social life here is like nothing I've ever seen before! We're busy most evenings, especially on the weekends. What fun adventures we have, even if it's just to check out a new restaurant, or visit a new boot/shoe store! Lots of delicious food, too. Last week, we were out for dinner on Thursday night at a wine bar where we ate lots of appetizers as we tried different types of wine. An evening for Women & Wine for me on Friday night, and Saturday I ran with the Peru Runners (my new hobby), before we went to a friends' house Saturday night for fabulous  baked garlic, shrimp with cocktail sauce, eggplant appetizers followed by homemade lasagne, fresh salad, and even creme brulee for dessert.  What a treat! We were out again Sunday for late lunch/early dinner of chicken and ribs - yum!

       We took a break on Monday and Tuesday but were out again on Wednesday for a movie at the South American Explorers Club, which we joined last weekend. The movie was good, but was a rather depressing story of Peru during the 80's when Sendero Luminosa was terrorizing the population.  Seemed like things were just so out of control.
    

(On the side, a picture of causa - mashed yellow 

potato with layers of tuna or shrimp - delicious!)

On Thursday we had another delicious dinner with friends at an Italian trattoria, and then on Friday, we went to a huge all-staff TGIF at our school superintendant's place ! It's a whirlwind of social activities and is so much fun.
     Today, I ran again (Saturday-and with all of this socializing, I think it is going to be a necessity!)) and got my arm gently twisted into going for a massage. Wow - so luxurious! The massage felt fabulous after an 8-mile run, and the location is breathtaking, The spa is in a gym that sort of dangles over a cliff above the ocean. The room I was in has all glass walls and through the whole massage, I could just relax and listen to the waves crashing on the beach below.
     I rushed home for a quick change and was out again for an afternoon at a pottery factory with the same friends. We drove like mad to get there because we lingered a bit longer than we should have at our massages, and the factory closed at 1:00 - we pulled up to the gate at exactly 1:00 and thankfully they let us in. We all shopped for nearly and hour and a half before we drove a half hour back into Lima.
     On the way to the factory we had quite an adventure because we inadvertently took a round about way to get there. On the way back, we planned a quicker return, but drove directly into a police roadblock. They were stopping everyone and checking for insurance papers. So much for my growlingly hungry belly! We weren't sure what to do because we weren't keen on paying a fee to go on our merry way, and weren't entirely sure what we were being asked for. In the end, the husband of one of my friends was called, put on the phone with the police officer, and a few minutes later, we were once again on our way! So, still famished, we were finally heading off for lunch at 3:00. Longer day than anticipated, but what fun! We ate at a cool restaurant on the water, almost directly below where we had our massages earlier in the day. We could watch the waves crashing nearly under our table!  (pic from http://www.in-lan.com/en/0710/images/top_lima_cala_restaurante_a.jpg)
      What a lovely morning and afternoon. I had fun and was out all day.   Spencer just left a bit ago to join a few of the other new guys for dinner. I passed on going out tonight, and think I may be heading to bed before too much longer. Starting the day at 6:30 with a run makes for a long day!

School!

 September 2009
    Work for us had been great - I'll have to describe our typical work day.  Things changed a bit when Cristian, our driver, had to cut back his hours with us as his hours with the government job increased.  It has worked out great, though because now we are driving in with a teacher who lives in our neighborhood.  She likes to swim at the school pool before work, so recently we have been going in early.  Very early - but there are several advantages.  One of which is that we are really making an effort to get to bed early at night.  We are in when the school is quiet so we can get a lot done before the kids arrive, which cuts back on work we bring home. After school, we are taking the school bus nearly all the way home, and we have a chance to talk about our day during the 15 minute walk from the bus stop.

I have spent a few Saturdays at the school, and today it was Spencer's turn. He spent several hours grading papers.
    So now we are getting up at 4:45, getting ready, having breakfast and getting our lunches together.  We leave about 5:50 or 6, and get to school by 6:10 or so.  The bell rings for the kids at 7:55, so I have had lots of time for checking work, planning, and working on my classroom.  I pick my kids up at 7:55, and we're started on our day by a little after 8.  We work on a bit of spelling or grammar, and then do our math lesson before the kids head to Spanish at 9:30.  They have Spanish language, history and a bit of science at that time.  I have meetings a few days a week, and planning time for myself other days.  The kids have snack from 10:15 to 10:30, then we're back in the class from 10:30 until 12:45 when they leave for lunch.  My schedule with their specials worked out so that thye go after lunch to PE twice a week, aand art and music each once a week.  On Wednesdays, the kids are dismissed at 12:20, and we have professional development meetings all afternoon.
     Spencer's schedule is similar,  and he spends time in the morning preparing for his day.  He has 5 classes per day 2x each week, 4 classes per day 2x per week, and on Wednesday - the half day - he has just 2 classes followed by an afternoon of meetings.
      There you have a glimpse into our daily school life.  We are having fun all the way round!

Our home...

8/23/09
Our apartment is coming together nicely, of course with the exception of anything that has to do with media and communication.  Last week, we came home to discover that our cable TV had been disconnected.  This week, it was our phone.  This is actually dreadful since the same company that has yet to install our internet is the same one we will now be struggling with to get our phone reinstalled and cable reconnected.  What a mess!  Just to make it more unpleasant, each division of Telefonica is independent of the other so it’s like dealing with three different companies. 

We just got our spare bed in the guest room, and have our first guests set to arrive in October, and others in February.  We have a few more things to get to make the guest room feel like home - sheets and pillows will help.  We are also in desperate need of some art work to hang on our walls. but want to wait until we find some really great local art that we fall in love with.  The walls aren’t bare, but could sure use a bit more décor.  We’ve wandered around the art stands in Parque Kennedy in Miraflores, but haven’t found the perfect paintings yet. 

Social life is good - we are out a lot.  I met up with the Peru Runners group yesterday and impressed myself with being able to hang in - albeit way in the back and then even a bit further behind.   It is nicer to run early in the morning and to run by the sea so the pollution isn’t an issue.  Sometimes when I run around the golf course, I wonder if I’m actually taking years off instead of getting healthy!  After running, I rushed home to change and we met friends for breakfast at Crepes & Waffles (how can you go wrong with that??) and then all of us went to the school for a Welcome Back to School bbq. 

We’ve had several delicious dinners out recently. One place close to home has a great steak stir-fry served over risotto that tastes fabulous.  The same place served a pretty good meat lasagne.  Another night, I had a beautifully arranged pasta stuffed with ham and cheese.  Yes - there is a good bit of Italian influence, but we do eat other foods, too.  We’ve had loads of great seafood - the scallops are as good as we remember having in Japan and go great with a pisco sour!  We had a couple of great steak meals, too.  One was a lunch  - a set menu with a glass of wine, and appetizer and a dessert.  Yum!  I got a chorizo - not at all spicy, but very tasty.  Spencer tried the beef heart.  Of course we tried each others and it was pretty good!  For dinner another night, we went to one of the “Gaston” restaurants.  He is a famous Peruvian chef who has several restaurants in Lima, and a few in other countries (even one in San Francisco at the Embarcadero in San Francisco, which we heard was great when we were at the Peruvian Embassy in SF).
When you go for a drink, the bar snacks are delicious, too.  One of my favorites is cancha - and type of popcorn that pops without opening up all the way.  Hard to explain, but come visit and I will take you to try it.  Spencer loves when they add bits of chicharron, which are basically bits of bacon.  Fried yucca slices served with a heavenly green sauce (at least I think so) although I think Spencer would prefer if it weren’t quite so smooth.
     The attached pictures are of snacks...one is cancha, and the other is a bowl of potato chips.  Remember us talking about the huge variety of potatoes?  The chips are made of potatoes with purple or red sections inside.  Yum!  I recently learned that the word potato came about because the local word "papa" was too close to the Spanish word for the pope.  The only difference is masculine vs. feminine forms of the noun - el papa vs. la papa...interesting trivia.  I suppose I should look into it more.  That's all for now.  Hope everyone is well and we'll talk soon!

Sunday, August 16, 2009
Here's what we've been up to outside of school....
Saturday, August 8- We went to our first movie in Peru - The Proposal. We arrived about 10 minutes before the film, but should have been earlier. We learned that people start to queue up outside the theatre 20 or 30 minutes before a film begins. We got in the back of a very long line and sat quite near the front of the theatre. Ah well! It was a fun movie, and like many movies, was subtitled in Spanish. Makes it convenient for us!
Monday, August 10 - school and a quick drop-in at Casa Hacienda Moreyra in our district that has been converted into an impressive bar and restaurant. The decor is often original...here is a bit more about our district, and you can see a bit about Huaca Haullamarca, an ancient pre-Incan ruin we wandered over to see recently. http://www.sanisidrolima.com/distrito/atractivos-turisticos/
Tuesday, August 11- school then came home to a dinner of aji gallina - a Peruvian dish of hot pepper and chicken served over rice.
Wednesday, August 12 - school followed by a long conversation about our respective days as we gazed out over the golf course below our window and enjoyed a glass of wine.
Thursday, August 13- school and a fine dining experience at Panchita (one of the famed “Gaston” restaurants of Peru) with new friends. The steaks were so tender and the conversation never stopped. We are looking forward to making this a Thursday night tradition.
Friday, August 14- tour of the commissary at the American embassy where we can shop for some American items if we choose, followed by a party at the home of other newcomers to Peru. It is so fun to see what everyone’s house/apartment looks like!
Saturday, August 15- Starbucks for a coffee and a short 20 minutes of internet before running off for two hours in a pottery class. I am so happy to be reunited with clay, but will still check into options at the school since it would be more convenient!
I met friends after that for lunch at another Gaston restaurant. We then wandered over to a shoe shopping experience like no other. The six of us walked into an immaculate three-room store, and left a shop strewn all about with shoes, boots and handbags of all shapes, colors and sizes. I surprisingly found a pair “off-the-shelf’ but because several of us have feet larger than the normal sizes in Peru, many pairs of shoes were custom-ordered that day. More often than not, I will have to custom order shoes. How awful for me! Next on my list - a pair of tall, black boots. Can’t wait to get that order in!!
After shopping, we met friends for an amazing steak and risotto dinner, then six of us wound up at one apartment talking for a few hours. Two things happened that stick in my mind. The first was that there was an incredibly large and (in my opinion) hideous spider nestled in a corner of the ceiling. I left and they disposed of the monster - Joe threw it out the window. We all crowded around the computer as we compared it (and found quite a disturbing similarity) to a brown recluse spider. Yuck!! Then, while we were online and on the topic of horribly poisonous creatures, Reid shared a blog of a trip he took to some ruins and villages in Panama, where he encountered a fer de lans. This is not a snake you want to mess with…and luckily, I doubt we will encounter any here in Lima. It was a fun night and we have met so many great people!
Sunday, August 16, 2009
We had another incredible membership dining experience. Peru has opened her doors in such surprising ways through the kindness of some wonderful co-workers and their spouses. So far, without exception, the people of Peru are very kind and helpful. When I can, I am trying to use my limited Spanish so I can learn more. This means that any taxi driver I happen upon becomes a great source for practicing Spanish, and each time we go somewhere I learn a bit more. It’s really fascinating to watch myself as I learn a new language. One or two words or patterns a day emerge as I use the language and compare it to English or Japanese. I don’t think Spencer is quite as interested in this language acquisition process as I am, but we are both growing our vocabulary bit by bit.
     This morning, we woke without having much on our agenda, but were invited to join in a barbecue at the Lima Cricket Club. Things shifted, and instead we ended up at the Lima Golf Club. This is the club we overlook each day in our apartment, and have often observed as we eat or sit in the living room. To have the chance to wander inside was fun. We gazed up at our apartment from our patio lunch spot and decided that it would be quite easy to see people in our apartment from where we sat. Always good to know! The kids in our little group shimmied their skinny bodies under a gate that opened up to a mini soccer pitch and play area in the kids zone. While they played, we sat by the pool with pisco sours (a drink that was “invented” by an American who was searching in vain for a whiskey sour), sharing and enjoying each other’s stories. I could learn to really love it here - this is not a bad life and I think we are learning to respect the strength of the pisco sour!

picture is from - http://www.mincetur.gob.pe/TURISMO/OTROS/webcocina/pisco_sour.htm

August 9, 2009

Hi! Tomorrow is the first day of school. We can’t wait! It will be fun to get started, although I must admit, the extended vacation hasn’t been so bad. Our personal taxi-driver, Cristian, picks us up at 7:00 to take us to school. Last week, it only took about 13 to 15 minutes each day…not bad but with schools back in session, I think it may take a bit longer from now on. We met Cristian the first week when the school sent a car to pick us up. We liked him, were impressed with his clean and tidy Yaris, and asked him if he would take us to and from school each day. He seemed enthusiastic to have a “regular” run, and gave us a file with his resume and copies of all of his licenses the next day. Very together! So far, he has been great, even with the less than regular schedule we’ve kept so far. We were supposed to start school on Aug 3, but the Ministry of Education postponed the opening of all Peruvian schools as a precaution against any further swine flu issues, so his patience with our daily schedule changes has been fabulous.

The hard part of our commute so far is it’s been hard to guess what time to tell him to pick us up. We’ve picked times, but have found that we have to go when we aren’t totally ready to leave. We were going to tell Cristian this week that we would only need him in the morning, but he beat us to the punch. He got a job that he has been working on for three months as a driver for the government, so he will only be available in the morning from now on. He is really pleased that he got the job and it works out perfectly for us, too. I think they picked a good one!

Other transportation has been fine - we have been walking tons, and taking street taxis the rest of the time. Knock on wood, good luck so far. There are no meters in the taxis, so you have to negotiate a bit. Times like that, I wish we didn’t look like the gringos we are…easy for prices to become inflated quickly! We usually have to bargain for a cheaper fare since we’ve been told what local Peruvians pay. We have walked away from some who wouldn’t come down, and other times, drivers have driven away because they didn’t like our price or don’t want to drive as far away as we live - usually if there is a ton of traffic. I wish taxis were metered, but we are getting to practice Spanish as we negotiate and once we get in and head across town.

We discovered that we can take the Administration Bus home from school in the afternoon. This means we have to leave school by 4:40, but there’s no charge and we just have a quick 10-15 minute walk from our bus stop. Not bad! Not terribly different from having to be ready in time for Cristian, but it’s working out!

That’s it for our transportation update. Hope everyone is doing well and that we get internet at our apartment soon. Wishing either of us knew enough Spanish to call a hundred times every day to bug them.