Chocolate Cake etc.

Peruvian chocolate cake is to die for. I don´t know why I always have such a craving for chocolate cake when I am in Peru but I suspect it has something to do with the altitude and the fact that the chocolate cake here in Peru is frankly, excellent (must be all that fresh cacao!). So anyway, I have been eating some kind of dessert of either chocolate cake or chocolate brownies or 12 milks cake (doce leches, don´t ask me how there are so many different types of milk) or chocolate pudding almost every day. In addition, multiple carbs at every meal are a must: rice and potatoes, rice and french fries (papas fritas), rice and pasta...es normale aqui!! (it´s normal here). My appetite is huge here, and I know this is related to living at altitude where just going up a flight of stairs makes you feel as if you just sprinted 1 km.

So, while chocolate cake is always on my mind, so is food in general and today I find myself in Cusco to go to the MEGA (the big supermarket) to get some food that I can´t seem to find in Urubamba. Specifically, I am craving corn flakes, peanut butter, and good cheese. Andean cheese is ok, but very salty with not much other flavour, it kind of reminds me of feta but without the bite. And while yes, this is the country of corn, the ladies in the bowler hats and big skirts in the market, do not sell cornflakes. Now, if you are interested in potato varieties, purple corn or chocla, chicken heads and feet, the ladies in the market can certainly help you. And I discovered I will never go hungry while at work either, because there is a storage room which I recently discovered contains Cuy or guinea pigs, considered very tasty here.

Adapting to living with unpredictability, food and otherwise, is the key to surviving living in Peru. As well, learning to accept being uncomfortable often is also important. And it is all related to accepting that I am not living in my home country and respecting the ways and the culture here and attempting to embrace it too. The culture here is very different, but it does not mean that everything at home is better either, only different. I do find myself constantly comparing life in both Canada and Peru and while I believe the quality of life for most people in Canada is significantly higher than here (more people have more), there are some things that I think the Peruvians really have going for them: Cuy. But besides chocolate cake, from my perspective, the food here in general is affordable and widely available, fresh vegetables and fruits are in abundance and very cheap, which is in my opinion, not always the case at home; food at home can be very pricey. And everyone here shares and enjoys the food together...often in the evenings you can see whole families and their friends sitting at tables set up in the street in front of shops, all eating together, sipping soups from bowls, enjoying plates heaped with rice, potatoes, meats, vegtables, spicy aji.

So suffice it to say right now I am in observation mode, taking everything in and trying to be conscious and non-judgmental about what I am perceiving and how I am perceived. Enjoying the little things like savouring my daily chocolate cake, sitting on a bench in the plaza de armas warming myself in the sun. Learning from the exchange of culture and ideas with my students during class, watching the absurdity of the packs of dogs in the streets that remind me of humans. Here, dogs are not merely dogs, they are people too; they have their own little society, rules, cliques, betrayals, conflicts, all going on right under the noses of the people here.

A few more pictures to end with...

Some interesting graffiti in Cusco













Cusco

















Village close to Urubamba

















Cultural exchange night with my students and a group of American high school students

Photo Time!

A shot of some children sitting in the street in Urubamba.

This is a typical street in Urubamba.

The view on my walk into town.

This is a shot of the hostel where I am staying called, Ccatan. It is a bit of a walk outside the village centre of Urubamba. This is a shot of the outside of my room. It is lovely and peaceful here and very rural. I often wake up to the sounds of roosters crowing and donkeys knaying which I cannot really say is all that peaceful at 6am.

Another shot of Ccatan. There is a shared kitchen and this outside sitting area that all can use. The door you can see here is the door to my room. The garden is beautiful and there are fruit trees in the yard. This is a hostel for long term stays. There are about 7 of us staying here at the moment. Several people are volunteers and a few are working here at local hotels or schools.

This is Urubamba village center or the Plaza de Armas as they say here.

This is the road I take when I walked into the village from Ccatan. It is about a 15 or 20 minute walk. This is a typical local house which also doubles as a small convenience store when you can buy water and soft drinks etc. Sometimes I can catch a break and hop on a passing moto taxi, but they do not often come up this far. If I do, it costs 1 sole which is equivilent to about 30 cents...

This is Nicolle who was so excited to receive some of the art supplies my grandparents sent with me!

Peru Week 1

So it´s been not quite one week since I have arrived here in Peru, but it feels like much more time has passed. I guess this is what happens when each day is filled with so many new things that it feels like I have already been here for much longer than I actually have. Time is passing very quickly. At the moment my head is head spinning with ideas and emotions but I have had very little time to actually process what has been happening around me because I have actually been very busy.

I arrived in Cusco on Sunday afternoon. Elise and Nina (the two teachers I work with) picked me up at the airport and the first thing we did was take a taxi to central Cusco for lunch. Of course being with locals, they know that in order to pay the best price for the taxi you have to leave the airport parking lot, go out the side exit and get a taxi on the street for 3 soles ($1 USD) as opposed to the 20 soles (about $8 USD) it would cost from inside the airport grounds.
Arriving in Cusco was very familiar as I already spent 2 weeks there last August, so it was familiar in a nice way. And surprisingly I only felt a little bit of breathlessness from the altitude (Cusco is 3300 meters or about 11 000 feet).

After lunch, we went to the bus station to get on the combi van to take us to Urubamba. After strapping my luggage on the roof, we set off in the minivan for the one hour ride to Urubamba, cumbia music playing on the radio. The van was full and we stopped a couple times to let some riders off at various points along the way. The road is winding and climbs to an even higher altitude than Cusco at one point. If you are easily car-sick it could be an uncomfortable car ride. It was late afternoon at that point and I think this is the prettiest time of day here. The earth is reddish-orange and makes the reflected light from the setting sun feel warm and comforting (during mid-day the sun is very strong and sunglasses are absolutely necessary). This warm light casts dark shadows from the adobe brick houses and scattered trees along the road and the rolling hills. Eventually, from the rolling hills the cool, snow-capped, mountains appear in the distance and the cool blue and white from the snow is welcome relief from the harsh sunlight.
We arrived in Urubamba which is a small town compared to Cusco and for the first two nights I stayed with Elise and her husband Helard at their home just 1km outside of Urubamba. Most of the houses here are made from the earth, adobe bricks (mud bricks) which give a really rustic look to the architecture.

I began teaching on Monday morning at 8:30 am and it was the most nervous I have ever been! Contrary to what I thought, just because you may be a teacher, doesm´t mean you naturally know how to teach your own language to people who do not speak your language. At times this task actually seems too overwhelming to me and I think this may end up being my biggest struggle; learning how to convey what I take forgranted in my own language and deciding what is important to know and what is not as important to know. Already, I am learning a lot from my students and thankfully, Elise is good at teaching me what and how to teach my new students. The cost of the classes is a lot for these people and learning English is absolutely necessary for their career so I want to make sure I am doing the best I can for them.

I teach a conversation class in the morning from 8:30 to 9:30 am, an intermediate level 1 class from 5:30 to 7:00 pm and another conversation class from 7:00 - 8:00 pm. My students range in age from 13 years old to 45 years old and their level of proficiency in English is just as varied. They are lovely people and we have already had some good laughs. One student told me that she has 2 pets: a dog and a monkey.

For the sake of brevity here I will list my observations both sensory and otherwise.

• dusty, dirt roads that leave a fine powder over everything
• the polluted smell of the exhaust from the moto-taxis and combi vans
• music playing at all times coming from inside shops, homes, taxis, restaurants
• women carrying their babies on their backs, tied on with colourful, woven fabric
• the old, dusty, run-down soccer field with two young boys attempting to score on each other
• fleshy, over-ripe papayas in the market waiting to be used for fresh jugos
• stray dogs everywhere
• clay tile roof tops
• wide-spread poverty
• the woman picking up strewn garbage while her small child lays on a dirty blanket beside her
• the billowing skirts, the wide-hipped women, with long, black braids tied together at the ends, with a bowler hat
• being called ´teacher´by my new students
• cold, cold showers and cold, cold nights
• appreciating everything that I have back home
• wondering why I came here and what I am doing??!!

Well, I think this is enough for now. Thanks for reading!