First of all: There was an Earthquake in Chile that has caused a few of the beaches in Lima to be closed, and a Tsunami warning to be issued. All is well, there seems to be very low risk, and there are routes of evacuation, though none have ever needed to be used (and I´d be really intrigued to see how they function with so many people in such a big city). But anyhow, I am safe, not to worry.
There are many systems here I have yet to figure out. One is the trash pick up at the apartment I am living at in Lima. Some days the cans are there, usually on days when I don´t need it, then the next day when I lug the fly filled bags down the 8 floors, they are no where to be found. With no rhyme or reason to the day or time.
When I step out onto the street and am just hoping to walk in peace in search of who knows what, I am greeted with beeps, honks, wonk wonk, weeeep, tweeet, calls for buses, honks from Taxis, whistles from bike taxis, all of which I do not want nor need at this time.
The next day, when I am late for my class, I run out to the street and....it is a ghost town, quiet, peaceful, completely empty of any taxis, any bikes, any buses. When I need them, they are no where to be found!
The second system I have yet to understand is the entire bus system of the city of Lima. There are millions of private ¨combis¨, that sometimes have the same prices or fares, other times depending on how the tarif taker is feeling it might be a little more, a little less. It is all pretty flexible. There is room for 100 in a 10 seater bus. Then there are note takers along the main roads that the tarif taker pays a small fee to keep track of their buses, what times they pass a particular point, and when the next one will likely be coming along. Apparently, this notetaker then let´s people on the street know when the next bus is coming, and depending on who pays their buses are given preference. I have not yet figured out if there are groups of combis under the same owner or if each one is private with the driver and tarif taker working together as business partners separate from anyone else.
There is also a funny skill I have been trying to learn, which is to baja (get down from) the bus without it fully stopping at your stop...they call it something special that involves or translates to getting down with your right foot first...getting down running actually. I did it today. It quite surprised me that I didnt totally biff it, to my luck I stayed standing and cooley continued on my walk home, feeling quite like a true Peruvian. :)
Next is how we pay for water, and then we pay to pee. I walk around here with the substance of life in a plastic container that I refill over and over...refilling my body over and over. Sometimes I pay little coins to consume the liquid that keeps me living, and then I pay coins to release the liquid into porcelein containers that deliver the liquid back to the ground.
The price of life.
I actually owe some guy S/.50 (fifty cents of a Sol, which is about maybe 15 or 20 cents of a dollar), on the highway to Lunahuana, south of Lima, when I ran to use the bathroom he told me it cost 50 cents, and I said I didnt have it but it was on the bus, so he let me pee, then I ran to get my money from the bus but the bus was on its way out so I had to run to jump in it and he called after me and I tried to rush to my bag but it was too late, we rushed away, leaving him in the dust, to contemplate how the Gringa girl stiffed him on 50 cents worth of pee time.
Again, I return to the concept of fear. We see the world the way we believe the world to be. When we believe the world is a scary, frightening place, we encounter a scary, frightening place. Sometimes we are broken out of our perspectives bubbles, we are surprised, even stunned by random acts of kindness, strangers attempting to make a connection through the fear and distrust. Often we have our beliefs reinforced, because that is what we are looking for, and that is what our attention rests on.
I find this so true, when I give in to the fear of news, and distrust that comes along with big cities and lots of people and poverty next to large amounts of money and corruption, I begin to see a scary place, I begin to distrust everyone. Luckily, on these days, I happen to sit next to señora after señora that talks to me about my life and becomes worried that I am traveling alone, but then gives me her phone number, tells me to call her for any reason, asks if I have a place to stay, that I am being taken care of, or goes out of her way to show me where to go or where to get off the bus. And then the bus drivers are extra helpful, and the student sitting next to me details to me exactly where I need to go to get where I am going, or the nursing student I asked about the bus times and stops, walks from all the way in the back of the busy bus to tell me that the next stop is the one I want to be sure I don´t miss it. There are so many good intentioned, good hearted people in every moment. Mix in a few challenging, perhaps even frightening characters, and you have got yourself a solid story going.
A few notes on language:
Dar Cuenta...to realize. to become aware of. to be given a telling of something. For something to tell you and you pay attention to it.
Una Historia.....a story. I remember learning in Italian how una storia, is how you say you have a relationship with someone. You have a story with them. I´ve always thought that was such a beautiful way to describe it! We have stories with so many people throughout our lives!
Dar a la luz--to give to the light, to give birth. What a beautiful way to describe the birthing of something!
I have also really come to appreciate how in Spanish, there is a built in manner to give respect to the people you are speaking with. I am aware of this every time I speak to an older woman or man on the bus or on the street, using the form of Usted, to address them, and how I can use the informal Tu to create the experience of friendliness and closeness. I always like the moment in the conversation when I switch my form usage---beginning with the Usted, and moving into a relationship of tu with the person. It´s kind of beautiful.
Lima is the largest city I´ve ever experienced. There are 11 million people that live in this city, and I would guess a bit more than that even. One third of the population of all of Peru lives in this city. It is placed next to the ocean, with many earthquakes and tsunami warnings. There is a depressing fog that makes its way over the sky and into your heart, the ¨garua¨, which has been written about by many prominent writers including Charles Dickens and Mario Vargas (a famous Peruvian writer). Here is Los Olivos, the district I am staying in and working at the school in, we mostly have sun, but when I take the bus in to the center or to the beach districts, I enter into the garua like a Halloweeney smoke machine.
There´s nothing like writing reflections of my time here in Peru set to a soundtrack of Usher´s ¨Yeah!¨
YEAH!
YEAH. Lima. Is. HUGE. I regularly spend 1-2.5 hours straight on the bus going from one part of town to the other. Often it is because of traffic, but beyond the traffic, Lima is just incredibly LARGE. There are many districts, many cars, and many people.
It makes for interesting adventures, often ending in exhaustion and stressful tension in all parts of my body. It is nice to leave the city which is what I have been doing as well.
Tyson visited me about 2 weeks ago, and after our adventure at the airport (hearing news of a murder that took place the night before in a ¨secure taxi¨, right before I got on a bus alone at 9pm to go to the airport and wait for 4 hours for him to arrive, and then a ¨friend¨ (a guy who was on the first bus with me to the airport) waiting with me at the airport until finally he told me his cousin he was waiting for wasn´t coming, and we could all take the taxi back together to where we lived--supposedly near in the same neighborhood, and me finding Tyson and ditching the ¨friend¨, lying straight to his face, which I felt bad about for about 3 days after, then securing and bargaining with the taxis outside and finally arriving home, safe to the apartment)......
....We took an adventure (as if that wasn´t an adventure enough) up into the mountains of the Andes. Siiiigh. Out and away from the city madness. The day before we left the city actually we also went to the school I have been working at and all the kids went absolutely crazy to see TWO Gringos!!! Not only Miss Celine, but a Mr. Tyson! We talked with a few classes, and had a goggle of girls surrounding us asking a zillion and two questions about life in the United States while we attempted to gobble down our lunches in the cafeteria before we were gobbled up by the little girls!!
That weekend we took a day bus to Huaraz that wound along the coast north of Lima, then darted inward to climb up into the Andes.
On the bus ride, I experienced one of the most stunning sunsets of my life. A melting sun into the horizon, wispy surreal mist rising up over the valley as we rose above it all, winding precariously up mountain sides, zigzagging so that we turned out heads every second to keep our eyes on the sinking sun. The mountains green and blue, and the mountainsides growing dark shades in the shadows as the sun sunk further and further. It truly felt like we were entering into the kingdom of gods, where Zeus lives, floating in the sky in another world above the world.
We arrived in Huaraz, at the base of the mountain ranges the Cordillera Blanca and the Cordillera Negra. After an unfortunate bout of stomach ickiness for Tyson, (most likely due to the bus food), we made it finally to the full day hike into the national park of the Cordillera Blanca to the infamous Laguna 69. Don´t ask me why it is called Laguna 69, I think we may have passed Lagunas 67 & 68 on our way up, but I´m not positive.
The hike itself was magnificent. Like something out of a National Geographic photographic journey. Along with the altitude, it proved to be quite the adventure, climbing to about 4,800 meters...over 12,000 feet I believe. I once skydived at 15,000 feet in the air. Think about that. We HIKED to near the altitude you would skydive from.
Arriving at the Laguna was magical, appearing at the top of the mountain we traversed, after valleys and mountains and more valleys, was a pristine, crystal blue blue lake, an icy waterfall splashing down from the glacial covering of the mountain above. A few from our group dove into the lake´s icy waters, I humbly stuck my feet in. :)
The rest of our week spent in Huaraz involved meandering through the streets, me eating ceviche on the street, questioning it for hours afterwards, finding an awesome hostal with a fireplace and enjoying this service for a few days, checking out a hotsprings a few towns north of Huaraz, which turned out to be the most bizarre hotsprings that I´ve ever been to. The water was too hot for anyone to get in, only I immersed my body for about 1 minute at a time. The hotsprings had natural sauna caves in the side of the mountain, which with the combination of extra hot water immersion, and steamy, strange vapory and questionable sanitation in the room before entering the sauna, (mixed with my street ceviche experiment a few hours before), turned out some interesting bowel movement bathroom experiences almost immediately. That being said, we did not spend much time there, returning to the haven of our fireplace laden hostal.
Upon returning to Lima, I finally lay eyes on Cecilia! My dear friend from Italy, who was an exchange student my Junior year of high school at Chico High. She lives in Lima now, working as an architect for a NGO as part of the civic service of Italy. Tyson, Ceci and Luccia another Italian friend, all went to Barranco, to explore the beaches and the famous Bridge of Sighs. We walked along the Pacific Ocean, passing many signs that had directions of how much sunscreen you should wear depending on skin color and tint, and a full on wedding set up that was to happen between the beach and the lovely big highway right next door.
For Tyson´s remaining few days in Lima, we walked the streets of Miraflores where we stayed in a really sweet family hostal, The Explorer´s House. We checked out the final Choco Museo, so that now I have visited all of the Choco Museo´s of Peru. Always nice to visit a free museum that dishes out free chocolate samples! ;) (Last night I actually discovered a second Lima location of the Choco Museo in Barranco! Of course, I had to taste and make sure their quality of samples was up to parr with the rest of them).
We also visited the famous Larco Museo, a museum that houses a huge amount of pottery, gold, jewelry, objects and weapons of various pre-inca cultures, including the only ancient Erotic pottery collection I´ve ever seen in a museum--including models of fallacio and masturbation. Pretty darn cool. Not a typical every day museum experience.
The week Tyson left, I continued to stay at the family hostal and to take Spanish classes at Elelatina, the school where I also had a Storytelling workshop with the lovely Claudia Cuentas! The workshop was for women, and we explored our stories through our bodies and the stories our bodies need or want to tell. After two full nights of workshopping, we all performed our stories at the Delfus Bar in Miraflores, for a decently large audience. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I have come to be a bit more comfortable telling in Spanish, or perhaps I have just come to terms with a new manner of telling in which I don´t know all the words and I rely more on my movements, expressions, becoming more calm with pauses and being present with the audience. It´s sometimes fun to admit to the audience I don´t know the right word, and explore possibilities with them in the telling. Claudia´s workshop brought out many stories and ideas to work with, which I am excited to continue to develop and explore in my time here. The story I told at the bar was one about how my Hip turned into a grumpy old man, who eventually gets taught how to fly by a little bird, and as he flies he relaxes, becoming happier and happier, until he returns to the ground and has lost all his grumpiness and tension. It was a lot of fun to explore on stage. I ended up singing without planning to.
The next night I returned to that same bar to listen to another Storyteller, Roberto de Argentina, a comedian, an amazing performer, who told his personal story with passion and emotion to the audience. I understood about 60-70 % of his story, but was able to pick up on the emotions and appreciate his performance none the less. A very good example of a teller who can speak of very deep, intense and often sad experiences, at the same time bringing humor and cleverness to the experience.
My Spanish classes ended, and I moved back to Los Olivos to begin my own workshop with the elementary-highschool there. Over the weekend, Cecilia, Luccia and I went to Lunahuana for the night. A beautiful little town inland from the south of Lima, where a big River runs through and many wineries and bodegas are. We wine tasted, had borgoña wine which has such a strong flavor of the grapes it was really delicious and interesting. We met a group of Limeños who do outdoor education with a highschool and got to hear about all sorts of crazy stories of their experiences as guides and educators here in Peru. We had a fun ladies weekend, un descanso from work and the city.
This week began my workshop, on Monday I told the story of How the Night Sky was Created, to two fifth grade classes, one 6th grade, and the middle school class I am now working with on a longer term project. This week we have been discussing storytelling, story elements, and beginning to create our own story books of our own histories, all in English (since it is part of a English program for the school). Tomorrow is our last day, and I am hoping we will be able to finish our books and share them with the class. Yesterday we did some fun theater activities to get into our stories and today we began to put together our books.
I apologize for the lack of photos...it proves to be quite difficult to upload photos. I will try the next time to get a few up on here.
Until then, hope you are all well (all who are reading this).
The Tsunami warning here is still in effect, but it is really minimal. The areas that were most affected by the earthquake of Chile were much farther south. I´ll keep you posted of any developments in this area!
Alright, much love,
Celine
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