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.
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