Living the Dream

It was been exactly one month that I have lived here in Piura, three weeks in my apartment, and just a week shy of my second full month in Peru. I suppose, like anything, adjustment takes time. I don’t just mean the whole boiling water thing, I mean everything. Finally now, it seems that I will be getting my butt off this comfortable pleather futon I own!

This weekend was exciting! Beer on the balcony happened late Friday night, and Saturday was a full day of fun! I went for a run at high noon, which resulted in about 400 more freckles all over. Soon after I went out with the guys for some cebiche de pescado and a couple cold Cusquenas. Our group grew quickly from four to ten! We all came back here for a giant party in honor of the 26th birthday of one of the guys, Jorge. Luckily two more girls had joined us, so it wasn’t a total brofest! We celebrated eh hem…well. There are perks to being friends with a beer distributor.

The night played out as per usual and we drank our beers til we decided to order chifa, and we ordered our typical tallarin (noodles), chaufa (rice), and chicken. Luckily there were more than four of us to eat it this time! Eventually the night slowed, and we decided to head out to Queens, the big dance club! I was so excited! In my two months in Peru I had yet to go dancing!

Five of us made it out to Queens, and luckily there was a live concert that night from a pretty well-known band, Libido (http://www.libidonet.com/). It is rock and very enjoyable! Still though, I was thrilled when the dance music came on. I say I danced pretty darn well for a gringa, but Luis will say otherwise. I think he is just saying it to push my buttons, or just because even a good gringa isn’t even close to a mediocre Peruvian dancer.

It was a very late night, ended by a hamburger (I never thought I would eat meat like this, I hardly believe myself).

The next day I woke up to a disgusting apartment! Ah, this is life post-college. Messes you have to clean up yourself. Gone are the days of partying at frat houses, where they have freshman to clean up. Needless to say I didn’t touch it until after I went out for a bit more cebiche and then met my gringa friend Sarah at a hotel pool. Her and I lounged out in the sun and occasionally jumped into the great pool. The only deal is that we had to order some food, but only $10 worth. I spent $2 on the best frozen orange juice ever and bought a bottle of seltzer. Totally worth it!

It was the most expensive weekend I have had since I arrived here, but I had to admit that my month of frugality made this splurge WAY worth it! It was probably the best weekend I have had here so far. I am now completely tempted by the pool though on a regular basis!

I woke up today to my typical bread and jam. I wasn’t in the mood for instant coffee as the morning already felt scorching, so I squeezed a bit of fresh orange juice and watched a few episodes of How I Met Your Mother. After I found myself already bored, I thought I’d run another Google Search for volunteer opportunities here. My first one had been unsuccessful, which didn’t surprise me because Piura is not exactly a place that people line up to visit. Most volunteer work goes on in Lima and Cuzco.

The University I work for runs some things, but I wanted to separate the two, work and “play.” I also really wanted to work with foreigners. I know that sounds awful since I am living in Peru, but I want to meet a few more gringos. I have learned that it is super important to have other expat friends. I think it is just as important to have Peruvian friends, but my Saturday shindigs remind how hard that is all the time. 12 hours of Spanish at a party where everyone is talking at once can be both difficult and depressing…the first hours always kind of stab at me as a reminder that I am not home and not with my friends. As I hear them tell stories from high school, it only makes it harder, as it is so poignant that I am the outsider. Regardless, these nights always get better with a couple Pilsens.

Anyway, for that reason, I want a few more foreign friends. Ones to explore the beaches with and splurge on the pool with me. Volunteering is also super important to me. Peru has welcomed me with open arms and I know that this is one of the benefits of being from the USA. I can move anywhere, work anywhere, and not really have to stress over a visa. For this reason, I would like to say thank you. I also want to see more of Peru, get a feel for life outside the city, and learn about the culture by experiencing a different element.

Luckily today I stumbled across an organization I hadn’t noticed before called Ayni. They teach English but also work on community development projects in a rural community about 30 minutes outside my city. Luckily though everyone lives here and commutes there daily, so all I have to do is join the crowd! I sent a few whirlwind e-mails and an application, and needless to say, they were happy to have a volunteer who was already living here in Piura! They have welcomed me on board. I will start tomorrow if e-mail is checked in time, or most likely Wednesday out in the community. I will go meet, explore, and see what the group is all about. They sound great, a lot of sustainable development work going on. I am hoping to really sync with them and commit for the whole year and help prepare myself for my masters, which is in Community Development and Planning. How perfect, right?

I can’t wait to have more to do! I will work there daily from 9-1, which gives me plenty of time to NOT sit on the couch! This weekend too I will head out to Trujillo to run my third half-marathon. I have been dying to visit Trujillo and really missing my racing, so I’m thrilled.

I’m learning quickly that moving abroad just takes a little patience, a little open mindedness, and a lot of initiative.

A Dull Description of Dog Days

It’s amazing how much I have settled into a routine despite my lack of a structured day. Every morning I wake up between 7 and 8 AM, almost always at 7 but I try to sleep a bit more. I may read in bed, one of the many books I pilfered from a local hostel, or I will get up right away. Typically I first put water onto boil on my electric cooktop. I can’t drink the tap water in Peru, but electricity is also expensive so this is a trade-off. Lately I boil a small pot and put it in a thermos to use for coffee, and a bigger pot which I then steep about 4 tea bags in and add to a jug of iced tea I’m trying to keep on hand at all time. I run out of water on a regular basis. I buy between a 2.5 liter and a 7 liter jugs often during the week, but in this hot climate it isn’t unusual for me to drink 2 or more liters a day. I get so frustrated running out of water, just as I get frustrated when I have nothing to drink but water. I pick up fresh veggies 2 or so times a week, but buying water AND soda or boxes of juice makes for a very heavy walk home so I try to avoid it. Hence this routine (and me adding “more Crystal Light” to my list of things for Mom to bring).

For  breakfast I tend to eat cereal and soy milk (dirt cheap at about 75 cents a box for soy milk, but cereal ranges in price depending on how gringo I want my breakfast to be). Somedays I make egg scrambles loaded with cilantro, tomato, onion, and whatever else I have. Somedays I just have the typical breakfast of bread and jam. It depends. My neighborhood is great, but there are not any stores that are that close, which has been a disappointment. I’m looking at a good 1+ trip if I want to walk to a store. I can take a cab, but I try and let walking be exercise and a way to save money.

Mornings are pretty low-key, generally spent on my computer, cleaning, or doing whatever work or planning I need to do. Lunch is a pretty substantial meal here but I prefer a sandwich or something light. Afterwards I try and do some pilates, I sit outside, or I nap. I also will run errands if I can or meet my friend Sarah. Anything to not sit around! By 4PM I need to head to teach English classes for a few hours. I do that for children between 3 and 14, and then I head home around 6 or 7 for a much cooler evening run and then dinner. As is gringo way, I prefer a bigger dinner to a bigger lunch.

It’s a somewhat dull life but I am getting accustomed to Peruvian life. Things like buying bread on a regular basis and boiling water for the thermos. How to buy what I need, how to cook with fewer resources, how to bake in a tiny toaster oven, and all of these things. I have decided that I want a larger oven, but I’m not too sure how I will get it up here with the staircase blocked off! I am getting used to instant coffee and will eventually get used to making my own juice (once I can figure out how to get enough fruit in here at once). My favorite meal to cook has been stir fry since veggies are so cheap!

I am excited to work more so my days can be beyond cooking, running, and a couple hours of work. I am trying to see this as my summer vacation though!

I have better stories to share later, but I surprise myself how I slowly and getting used to taking care of myself here.

At Least I Skipped the Stage of Drunk McDonalds…

I hardly have words for this announcement, but I will rephrase it as I phrased it before:

In the battle of Peru versus my 8 years of vegetarianism, Peru has won.

After too many meals of just rice and vegetables, a cookout with only pasta salad, and countless disapproving looks not only in Peru but throughout my travels: meat has won.

Since I arrived in Piura, I faced a surprising amount of meat with a shocking lack of fish and a tragic lack of beans. This left me picking around hunks of meat, looking wistfully at unique typical dishes.

Today, a slab of chicken was put down in front of me (though it was known that I don’t eat meat), and I took this to be a sign that it was time to stop being a self-idealized high school Phish-loving traveler, and eating a damn piece of meat so I could 1) enjoy a full meal and stop feeling the need to snack of random processed crap and 2) stop seeming so rude denying food all the time.

I’m tired of having to explain myself, I already feel foreign enough without clutching onto this gringolandia phenomenon instead. As a frequent traveler, an anthropologist-in-training, and a graduate of a Food and Culture course, it’s becoming far too apparent that I am missing out on cultural experiences and rituals by denying one of the most important components of a country: its food.

Further, the eventual rationalization for my negation of meat, was the disgusting practices of the meat industry in the United States and its treatment of not ANIMALS but our FOOD. What we put in our stomach spends 1000 miles soaking in the grit of I-81. This is gross. In Peru, the animal was most likely (not always, but most likely), killed within the past 48 hours and hails from a farm that is probably within 100 miles. This suits me a bit better.

So, if I am going to live in Peru and legally become a Peruvian resident, I might as well actually get to know Peru for what it truly is.

And that my friends is the story of how I started trying to eat meat again.

Growing up is so lame.

The Truth About Being a Young Ex-Pat

I’m going to go ahead and put everyone straight now.

Moving abroad is NOT the same as traveling abroad or studying abroad. It is not the same as the Peace Corps nor it is the same as any other volunteer program. It is a reality. And for a 21 year-old fresh off the farm and onto the butcher block of the real world, this is shocking.

I came to Peru with something along the lines of $1000 in my pocket and a plan of three weeks of traveling before settling into a job that provided me with an apartment and a small paycheck. Me, being the moron I am, decided to quit this job that gave me an apartment, and stay in another city in Northern Peru (Piura) while I waited on my work visa for my university teaching job that is scheduled to start in August.

This meant approximately two months of doing nothing, translate: NO INCOME. It means that I had to rent my own apartment, totally unfurnished, and just figure it the heck out. I was instructed that private lessons would be easy to come by (this has been sort of true, I have about 4-a-week so far…but I’m questing after 4-a-day),  so I figured income would work itself out. Naive college kid: strike one.

I put two months rent down, plus the first month of utilities, and pretty much said bye to my savings. That being said, I moved into an apartment with no bed, no stove, no fridge, no couch, no nothing. I really said bye to my savings once I got myself acquainted with a kitchen.

Regardless, these things don’t concern me. My rent is paid, I’m eating too much probably and I’ve surviving. My private lessons will get me by on the grocery front, and next month I’m working a translating job in Lima with a nice paycheck. Money is not so much my stress (as I avoid my bank statements).

My stress has been what it means to move abroad. I have made a conclusive list for all you future ex-pats that also happen to be recent college grads. Here it goes:

THE LIST OF WHAT IT REALLY MEANS TO LIVE ABROAD

Living abroad means…

• That you need to find a job, pay bills, and create a daily routine. If you are young, chuck out the books about being an expat. These books were written by people far older than me, who have a fixed income.
• Your dreams of traveling all over the country…not going to happen right away.
• You will need to worry about how to get hundreds of ants out of your kitchen and oust the albino lizard from your bedroom.
• You at some point will be fixing a sink.
• You will have…digestive discomfort…on the day of your own housewarming party.
• You will need to clean. All the time.
• You will only have salt that you bought at the salt flats in Southern Peru. You will keep forgetting to buy real salt.
• You will never have what you need in the kitchen, and will constantly be on your way to the grocery store…unfortunately via taxi.
• You will bake three dozen homemade chocolate chip cookies…six at a time in your toaster oven.
• You will have to buy  refrigerator. This will make you feel oddly grown up.
• You will at some point have to attend both a wedding and a funeral. Never will you feel more foreign in your life.
• You will experience cultural differences so subtle, you will not even understand that is why you are confused, or fighting.
• You will grow-up in ways your classmates get to avoid til their late-20s.

Now, the thing about this list, is that you can close you eyes and realize you are “in Peru buying a refrigerator!” You are “in Peru killing ants!” You are “in Peru and trying to make rent!” There is a certain glory in all of this. That you are in Peru, living, just like anyone else would. Every morning I wake-up and have breakfast like every other one of my friends…but my Frosted Flakes are Zucaritas and I’m eating them in Peru. Everyday I sit on my balcony and read….but I am sunburnt because I am so close to the equator (in Peru). Everyday I watch the sunset…but my sun sets behind palm trees full of coconuts. Everyday I take a shower…but my showers are freezing cold because they are in Peru.

You see how it is? Life is shockingly normal when you live like this. Nothing like the ex-pats I studied in Panama that were often twice my age. To be this kind of ex-pat, well, you’re really just speaking another language as you do the same stuff everyone else does. Sure, my life is bound to get more exciting (not that I haven’t enjoyed the 700 pages and two books I’ve read this week) once I have money to go to the beach on the weekends, but this is what it is for now.

Moving is moving…though my moving meant a fridge strapped to a motorcycle. Paying bills is paying bills…though mine are undeniably much cheaper. Life is life wherever you are, and I think I’m okay with that

 

Dog Days

It was one of those days today. Those days that I think I will someday name, but it’s too soon to tell what that will be. One of those days where I finally understand the irritation my boyfriend sometimes exuded as he sat at his desk in Piura and we talked.

It was really. fucking. hot.

Excuse my language.

Seriously though. I woke up at 8AM and relaxed watching Friends re-runs with little else better to do. Around 10 I finally moved, showered, and threw on black Express editor pants, a tuxedo-style-thought-it-would-be-cool Calvin Klein number, and fall-back Nine West peep toe heels (a respectable 3 inches).

Three ways I know I’m not in college anymore:
1). I’m wearing heels and I’m not on a date or trying to look smokin’.
2). Black, waist-slung pants.
3). I AM IN PERU AND I’M WEARING CALVIN KLEIN.

These are far cries from my days of backpacker-grunge.  I remember the days of traveling when we wore clothes dingy enough to throw out, now I’m buying rolls at a bakery for breakfast and hailing a cab in heels. My own custom version of the real world and city life.

The big difference between my real world and everyone else’s is that I speak Spanish to do it and, I repeat, IT’S REALLY FUCKING HOT.

Anyway, I dressed like that for one of my final rounds of interviews for a university teaching job. I am under the impression I have this job, just no one has TOLD me yet. Tomorrow I teach a class as one last test to pass. If all goes well, I sign paperwork and become a university teacher and a Peruvian resident all in the same day (well, beginning in September). It’s a major life change, and I will be signing my life away until July of 2012.

Like I said before, I now understand why my boyfriend gets a bit cranky. With no tangible oasis of refuge from this heat, I found myself dreaming of winter and days of ski instructing. As I walked down the roads having traded clunky ski boots for slingbacks, and bulky layers for layers of sweat, I wondered again how I felt about being committed to Peru for 13 months. No winter, no relief, no days of hot chocolate followed by Winter Lagers. Frankly, it breaks every inch of my heart.

Consequently, it has been a rough day. With both of us dreaming of cooler temperatures we stayed inside as we attempted to digest a giant plate of not-ceviche (but something like it) by sleeping it off. As quiet surrounded me, I realized that this is what it’s like to graduate. Working full time and making decisions.

What I am doing in Peru, though infinitely more exciting, is little different than many of my friends. All those who joined the 9-5 taskforce are doing precisely what I am doing (just in air conditioned offices). Those who moved away for a job are just as lonely (or lonelier) as I am, and are probably in the same routine as I am of re-runs and food. Like myself, they probably dream of summers past where lakehouses, cold beers, and kiddie pools were standards alongside lucrative part-time jobs (when you’re not paying bills or rent).

These will be my hard days. The days where I long for what I don’t have, but cling tight to what I do have. What I have is a job in an exciting place, soon-to-be residency in a foreign country, a steady paycheck, and stories to last a lifetime. What I have is my first apartment being in Peru, love for fans and nighttime, and a chance at a relationship that I once-upon-a-time thought never would exist on a daily basis.

Don’t confuse my longing with discontent. I just call it one of those days…