It's best not to make fixed plans with Peruvians. Things tend to happen in their own time. Whereas in the states you are expected to keep appointments, here it is somewhat permissible to alter arrangements based on fleeting sentiments, depending on the priority level of the occasion. The only aspect of Peruvian life that does not ascribe to this lack of urgency is the public transportation system.
Of Peru's 28 million residents, 9 million call Lima their home. In a city of gas prices well over $5 a gallon, only the middle to upper classes can afford the luxury of having a vehicle. For this reason, the buses sell about 10 million rides every day. This offers the advantage of never needing a bus schedule, because at any given moment there are 4 or 5 individual buses to choose from, all vying for your bus fair of un nuevo sol--about 35 cents. So the combis are cheap, and you never spend more than 20 seconds at the bus stop, but you pay the price in the experience. Taking a combi is like riding a roller coaster without a seat belt.
It takes two men to operate a combi: the driver, of course, and the conductor. The driver operates his vehicle as if it was one of those magic cars from Harry Potter that can squeeze in the middle of two lanes of traffic and change stoplights. He knows exactly how wide his combi is, down to the centimeter, and merges accordingly. He is not afraid to use the superior size of his bus to intimidate smaller vehicles of lesser consequence. He rejects all culpability to other cars supposedly sharing the motorway: it is their responsibility to watch out for him. He blasts Michael Jackson on the sound system and occasionally taps the brakes in traffic to the beat of the music in order to alleviate boredom by using the rear-view mirror to watching his passengers slowly turn green.
The driver's compañero, the cobrador, guards the mouth of the beast. His official job is to operate the folding door, collect bus fare, and hand out tickets; however, his primary occupation is salesman extraordinaire. Whenever the combi lurches to a stop, whether it be an official, required bus stop, or a traffic light, or speed bump, or simply because bumper-to-bumper traffic has trapped the bus, he jumps off and immediately begins yelling at people in the street-- "To'oArequipaaaArequArequArequipaahastalVeintiochoArequipa
veintiochochochoParaderobajabajabajabajasubebajasubesubeVAMOOOOS!' Which barely means anything to native limeños, let alone little-miss college student from Lyme, CT. It's like trying to comprehend a Hispanic auctioneer. The only way to handle this situation is to approach the various cobradores shouting at you at the bus stop, look them straight in the face and ask them if they are going to where you want to go-- "¿Va a la Católica? Are you going to the University?" And occasionally, they will tell you yes, collect your bus fair, and then go nowhere NEAR where you are trying to go. It is absolutely necessary to have exact change for your bus fair, as the alternative is to fight the cobrador for your change--during which, if you engage in such an exchange, you are insistently plagued by the fact that you are making a complete idiot of yourself with your sub-par Spanish not only to someone who is paid to be an extroverted bully, but also in front of an audience of fellow combi passengers, for the equivalent of 10 cents. Occasionally, the cobrador will also take one look at my distinctly non-Hispanic facial features and demand a higher bus fair-- "No, no, señorita, it is always two soles from the University to Javier Prado"--when I know that it is only 1.20
So at long last, if you manage to find the right combi, have exact change in your pocket (because you should never take out a wallet on the combi), and your cobrador isn't a jerk who tries to rip you off, inevitably there are no seats available and you have to stand until somebody gets off. This experience is similar to surfing the subway in New York City, only ten times worse, because the combis are all standard, sooo LURCH--from neutral into first aaand then LURCH--from first into second aaand then LURCH--from second into third, and we are off to the races! Additionally I myself am an inch or two too tall for the combis, so I am simultaneously ducking and surfing. The combi drivers race each other to the corners, trying to get past as many stoplights as possible in thirty seconds before they all turn red. There is a third man in this equation, who sits at the stoplights with a clipboard and notes when the buses pass. He will reveal this information to the cobradores for a small fee, so that the bus drivers can drive even faster to catch up with their rivalries who are two minutes ahead. However, sometimes the cobrador of the bus two minutes ahead will pay this note-taker a little extra to tell subsequent conductors that his bus is ten minutes ahead, and therefore out of reach.
Thus is the exciting world of the Limeñan public transportation system.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Art Exhibits--cool things I've seen in museums
images from http://www.bienalmercosul.art.br/7bienalmercosul/en/jose-carlos-martinat
More information can be found at the same link
Juan Javier Salazar, Lima 1955
Algo va'pasar
Carpeta Arte al Paso
1980
image from http://culturales-circuito.blogspot.com/2009_04_01_archive.html
Cantuta
1995
Image from http://sientemag.com/tag/cantuta
This art project commemorates the death of 9 university students during Peru's 20 years of terrorism (1980-2000).
The La Cantuta Massacre, in which a university professor and nine students from La Cantuta University in Lima were abducted by a military death squad and "disappeared," took place in Peru on 18 July 1992 during the presidency of Alberto Fujimori. The Incident occurred two days after the Shining Path's Tarata bombing, which left over 40 dead in Lima Province.
The incident was among the crimes noted in the conviction of Fujimori, on April 7, 2009, on charges of human rights abuses. (Copied from http://en.wikipedia.or/wiki/Alberto_Fujimori's_arrest_and_trial where you can find more information about this history).
The cantuta is a type of plant that produces blooms in the form of the red shapes depicted in the photograph. It is the national flower of Peru. The Inca Legend associated with la cantuta reveals the profoundness of this exhibition and the connections between the symbolism of this project, the name of the university, and the message it conveys with regards to the country's 20 years of sorrow (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantuta ).
ALSO I saw one of these guys in the street today. They are absolutely amazing, I highly recommend you check out this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dY1Lr-yGtd8&feature=related
There were a whole bunch of other art exhibits, photos and paintings that I wanted to post, but couldn't find them online. For something so vast, the internet can be highly disappointing.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Los particulares
Before I get all excited about the craziness of Lima, I should explain the structure of my program and the details of my living situation. Officially this semester, I am a student of Butler, a university in Indianapolis that provides comprehensive study-abroad programs in a multitude of countries. Students from any college in the US can apply to these IFSA Butler programs (Institute for Study Abroad), which is a great service since even just living--let alone studying--in another country is a complete pain in the neck, to put it mildly. In this program, two of my classes are required and will be with the other thirteen American exchange students: Advanced Spanish Grammar, and Peruvian Social Reality. We choose two other classes to take at La Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru, a private Catholic university here in Lima. One of the PUCP professors will teach Spanish grammar: we met her at our first class today and she asked us to call her "La Roca," which means "The Rock." She seems a little crazy but her boundless enthusiasm betrays her love for her job, and it is obvious that she is excited to be teaching us.
Right now we are engaged in two weeks of orientation headed by our program director, Laura (pronounced LAOU-ra), who is the absolute embodiment of loveliness. She interacts with our age group wonderfully, with the perfect combination of firmness and informal friendliness--but God forbid I should speak English in her presence. She calls all of us "gente linda," which means "beautiful people."
The program places us with host families to further highlight the immersion experience. All of the host families live in the two most pleasant districts of Lima, Miraflores (which literally translates as "look at the flowers") and San Isidro. The majority of students live in Miraflores, right next to the ocean: I live in San Isidro, the neighboring district, with an older couple named Lis and Pepe Chavez de Ponce. They are one of the only host families that has a house--most of the others live in apartments. The three boys all live on the fifth floor of the same apartment building in Miraflores. Laura thought that they might like each others' support, since they are so outnumbered by us girls, and would seem that they certainly have grown rather tight-knit from their close proximity. Por esa razón, we call them "the bromance," a term of endearment with which they don't seem too thrilled. I have been spending a lot of time with Elisa, the only other student in San Isidro, who lives only three blocks from me. Although San Isidro is a very safe district, and we live right next to a police station, it is always safer to walk in numbers, and we have explored the immediate area extensively together. We also take the bus together to the IFSA office in Miraflores every day. Taking the bus--or "la combi"--might sound like a simple enough task, but in reality it is probably the most difficult part of our day, and definitely a large enough subject for its own separate blog post.
Life here is like being in a perpetual Spanish class, all day every day. I have already noticed an improvement in my comprehension, but I still have to focus very closely on anyone who is speaking to me and look directly at their face in order to understand. And for some reason, as soon as anyone asks me a question that requires an immediate and direct answer, I can't seem to understand anything they say. On the first day, I could only manage exclamatory answers-- ¡qué bonito! ¡qué lindo, qué bueno, qué loco! (how pretty! how beautiful, how good, how crazy!) I have since progressed to full sentences but can't quite conjugate verbs correctly on the spot. When in doubt, I try to get the person (first, second, third, singular or plural) right and just hurriedly conjugate in the present, even if it is the wrong tense--or, with irregular verbs, I just use the infinitive and throw in a pronoun for good measure. It's difficult because I can't even just stick to "is" because there are two different Spanish verbs for the English verb "to be" that cannot be used interchangeably and depend on the context of the sentence. And, of course, any Spanish that I've learned in the classroom is rendered 70% useless by slang, which varies not only from country to country and region to region but even between districts within the same city and, within those communities, between generations, classes, and groups of people. Surfers have a different dialect from skateboarders, for example, and combi drivers have their own language that is completely incomprehensible even to lifelong limeños (people who live in Lima). In any case, when I first arrived it was completely draining to listen to Spanish all the time and I could only effectively communicate in English. It is still thoroughly exhausting to listen to Spanish, and I still can't speak it, but now, additionally, switching between listening to Spanish and speaking English has become way too tiring. I believe I will sit quietly and conjugate extremely simple sentences with Elisa until the supposed two weeks of culture shock has passed.
Right now we are engaged in two weeks of orientation headed by our program director, Laura (pronounced LAOU-ra), who is the absolute embodiment of loveliness. She interacts with our age group wonderfully, with the perfect combination of firmness and informal friendliness--but God forbid I should speak English in her presence. She calls all of us "gente linda," which means "beautiful people."
The program places us with host families to further highlight the immersion experience. All of the host families live in the two most pleasant districts of Lima, Miraflores (which literally translates as "look at the flowers") and San Isidro. The majority of students live in Miraflores, right next to the ocean: I live in San Isidro, the neighboring district, with an older couple named Lis and Pepe Chavez de Ponce. They are one of the only host families that has a house--most of the others live in apartments. The three boys all live on the fifth floor of the same apartment building in Miraflores. Laura thought that they might like each others' support, since they are so outnumbered by us girls, and would seem that they certainly have grown rather tight-knit from their close proximity. Por esa razón, we call them "the bromance," a term of endearment with which they don't seem too thrilled. I have been spending a lot of time with Elisa, the only other student in San Isidro, who lives only three blocks from me. Although San Isidro is a very safe district, and we live right next to a police station, it is always safer to walk in numbers, and we have explored the immediate area extensively together. We also take the bus together to the IFSA office in Miraflores every day. Taking the bus--or "la combi"--might sound like a simple enough task, but in reality it is probably the most difficult part of our day, and definitely a large enough subject for its own separate blog post.
Life here is like being in a perpetual Spanish class, all day every day. I have already noticed an improvement in my comprehension, but I still have to focus very closely on anyone who is speaking to me and look directly at their face in order to understand. And for some reason, as soon as anyone asks me a question that requires an immediate and direct answer, I can't seem to understand anything they say. On the first day, I could only manage exclamatory answers-- ¡qué bonito! ¡qué lindo, qué bueno, qué loco! (how pretty! how beautiful, how good, how crazy!) I have since progressed to full sentences but can't quite conjugate verbs correctly on the spot. When in doubt, I try to get the person (first, second, third, singular or plural) right and just hurriedly conjugate in the present, even if it is the wrong tense--or, with irregular verbs, I just use the infinitive and throw in a pronoun for good measure. It's difficult because I can't even just stick to "is" because there are two different Spanish verbs for the English verb "to be" that cannot be used interchangeably and depend on the context of the sentence. And, of course, any Spanish that I've learned in the classroom is rendered 70% useless by slang, which varies not only from country to country and region to region but even between districts within the same city and, within those communities, between generations, classes, and groups of people. Surfers have a different dialect from skateboarders, for example, and combi drivers have their own language that is completely incomprehensible even to lifelong limeños (people who live in Lima). In any case, when I first arrived it was completely draining to listen to Spanish all the time and I could only effectively communicate in English. It is still thoroughly exhausting to listen to Spanish, and I still can't speak it, but now, additionally, switching between listening to Spanish and speaking English has become way too tiring. I believe I will sit quietly and conjugate extremely simple sentences with Elisa until the supposed two weeks of culture shock has passed.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Pisco sours
I suppose most people feel this way upon first viewing their new home, but Lima must be the most beautiful city in the world. After a horrendous twenty five and a half hours of traveling, and a total of two days with no sleep, all I had time to take in on the first day was the spectacular colors characteristic of most Latin American countries, and the smell. Lima does not smell like American cities. Ocean air, mist, every food you can think of, and flowers saturate the heavy, fog-laden air for a completely unexpected sensory experience. The second thing I noticed was the traffic.
I am amazed that there are any side-view mirrors left on these cars. The driving is the definition of insanity. Streets labeled "One Way" usually adhere to their definition, but not necessarily. Spacious sidewalks provide convenient parking or, when there are no such obstructions, an additional traffic lane for especially anxious drivers. Cars do not stop at four-way intersections unless there is a significant and visible stream of perpendicular traffic; pedestrians only merit a mild tap on the brake pedal and a series of short bursts on the horn. Lanes have little meaning, and those merging onto the highways and the already moving traffic cannot seem to agree on who has the responsibility to yield.
The first evening I spent in a youth hostel with the other program students. We are fourteen in number: three chicos, eleven chicas. Five of us banded together and walked down to the beach for what happened to be my first (legal) drink: pisco sours, the "drink of Lima." It consists of pisco, a fairly strong grape brandy, flavored with lemon juice and various flavor syrups and topped with an inch of foaming, beaten egg whites. They are pretty tasty but two or three would definitely compromise most people, which can be problematic: since they are so popular, they often have very good prices. After our round of drinks last night, we went to dinner in an open air restaurant and were served another round on the house with our purchase of dinner. I didn't finish mine. As soon as we returned to the hotel I passed out, which unfortunately I must do now as another day of completely exhausting language immersion and culture shock is fast approaching.
I am amazed that there are any side-view mirrors left on these cars. The driving is the definition of insanity. Streets labeled "One Way" usually adhere to their definition, but not necessarily. Spacious sidewalks provide convenient parking or, when there are no such obstructions, an additional traffic lane for especially anxious drivers. Cars do not stop at four-way intersections unless there is a significant and visible stream of perpendicular traffic; pedestrians only merit a mild tap on the brake pedal and a series of short bursts on the horn. Lanes have little meaning, and those merging onto the highways and the already moving traffic cannot seem to agree on who has the responsibility to yield.
The first evening I spent in a youth hostel with the other program students. We are fourteen in number: three chicos, eleven chicas. Five of us banded together and walked down to the beach for what happened to be my first (legal) drink: pisco sours, the "drink of Lima." It consists of pisco, a fairly strong grape brandy, flavored with lemon juice and various flavor syrups and topped with an inch of foaming, beaten egg whites. They are pretty tasty but two or three would definitely compromise most people, which can be problematic: since they are so popular, they often have very good prices. After our round of drinks last night, we went to dinner in an open air restaurant and were served another round on the house with our purchase of dinner. I didn't finish mine. As soon as we returned to the hotel I passed out, which unfortunately I must do now as another day of completely exhausting language immersion and culture shock is fast approaching.
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