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!