A day off

A week ago last Monday, there was no school for a teacher meeting, so Sister Teresa took me and Catherine to get our resident ID cards from the immigration office in Lima. We are now legal residents of Peru until March 2008. It was cool to see all the different kinds of people in the immigration office--some gringos like us, some Asian people, and some Peruvians there for their own passports and such. We took a colectivo, which is like a taxi car with a set route, into the center of the city because it was faster than a bus... and the driver was determined to get us there fast, because I counted no less than four lights which turned red just before he continued through them, and even in Peru I've never seen anybody inch between two lanes of traffic quite so daringly. Then he charged Teresa 3 soles for each of us, and when she asked when the price had gone up from 2.50 to 3, he handed her the extra 1.50 back immediately, very matter-of-factly, with no effort at argument and no air of shame for having tried to pull a fast one on the three white people. Ah, Peru.

After the immigration office, Teresa had other errands to run, so me and Catherine had a great lunch in this little corner restaurant of the type so typical here. There's a Menu of the Day written on a dry-erase board out front; you get to choose either a soup or an appetizer, and then you choose your main course from two to five options, and both courses plus a drink costs 5 soles, less than $2. These little places seem sketchy from the outside because they're so unofficial-looking, but the food is excellent! I had chicken with pinapple sauce, rice, and beans, and Catherine had goat (yes, goat) with cilantro sauce. My appetizer was avocado salad and hers was a chicken tamale. Mmmm, delicious.

After lunch we wanted to go to Metro, the supermarket that looks like any American Giant or Safeway, for some things we don't buy in the market in the pueblo. But right next to Metro is Ripley, the Peruvian version of Sears or Hecht's, and we had an urge to go shopping. I hadn't realized until we walked in how much I had been longing for something "normal," that is, similar to the world I knew for the first twenty-two-plus years of my life. We spent hours looking for sales, trying things on, and at the end I bought a sweater and jeans... I have never been so happy to be in a department store. Metro had the same effect--it was amazing to be shopping with a shopping cart, aisles, things in cans, Corn Flakes on the shelves, etc. I bought macaroni and cheese in a box as a special treat (the cheese was too expensive for us to buy enough of it to make our own macaroni, which was the original plan.) It's amazing the things that one misses being away--all the stupid little foods that are so common in America, like macaroni and cheese, and aren't even that great except that they're what you're used to. Bubble tea, Domino's pizza, the Bagel Bin in Ellicott City, and Shanghai Cafe are other cravings I've had. But what can you do... the ceviche with sweet potato or the sandwiches with avocado and lime are here to make up for it.