Today I decided I'm going to be a theologian or religious studies teacher. I'm going to be this because I think academia, which I've known for a long time is a good fit for my abilities and interests, could actually be a ticket for me to live between the US and Peru. Universities talk to each other. They share resources and swap professors. My hope is that I will be able to find a degree program, or a Fulbright grant, or something, that will let me spend significant amounts of time in Lima while still "advancing" my academic career in US terms.
It works on several levels. Peru is the birthplace of liberation theology as well as of its founder, Gustavo Gutierrez (whom, if I move quick and am really lucky, I may actually still be able to catch in some course or other in Lima before he gets real old and stops teaching.) So as a theology student I'd have excellent reasons to be there. And as a person, I have excellent reasons to want to be BOTH there and at home. It's not just that it hurts terribly to think about saying goodbye forever to all the people who became my world and my community there. It's also that Peru woke me up to life in ways I'd never been woken up before. In Peru I lived in a big city for the first time, traveled to great places, saw poverty firsthand, visited old sick people in their non-house shacks and was a better person for it, learned to dance, lived in a foreign language, learned not to care when people looked at me funny. I even used bathrooms that were not really bathrooms at all. (I'm sorry to be gross, but in a sense, there's something that's really LIVING about being able to say that.)
I have a feeling that studying/researching/teaching in Peru would keep me in touch with the "real life factor" that I found myself more attuned to there than at home. But at the same time, I don't want to give up my own background and culture and just move there. My hope--no--my GOAL is to be able to be a theologian in both worlds.
God, I'm exhausted. Making decisions is so draining.
Now I just have to go find out how to do this... after I take a nap.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Firecrackers, bonfires, and YELLOW
A short week after Christmas, it was New Year's, celebrated with a sleepover at Eloisa's house, MORE cooking--eating out is not so much a thing with these people, it's much more about the group experience of cooking and eating together in someone's home... amazing!--and funny noses.
About Peruvian New Year's: it was one of the things I missed last year and really wanted to see, and I was not disappointed. Like Christmas, it's celebrated with a huge dinner at midnight. Unlike Christmas, families make scarecrow-like "dolls" out of old clothes and stuff bags with newspaper for their heads, and burn them bonfire-style on the street at midnight. It's supposed to symbolize burning the old year and old things in preparation for the new. (It's also a little freaky to walk around on December 31st and see these weirdly grinning scarecrows tied upright on people's roofs.) The sisters made one of these and burned it, but I wasn't there for the burning because I went to Eloisa's, and we didn't do one there.
I thought the firecrackers were bad at Christmas, but at New Year's it truly sounded like the whole zone was being bombed. There were little shooting-light ones that took off like anti-aircraft missles from the ground and made screaming noises like the laser shots in Star Wars, one after the other like gunfire. There were all kinds of whizzing lights and flowery exploding lights and some that just went BANG without lights at all... it's less of a visual show than US fireworks and more of a big chaotic chance for the entire neighborhood to go BANGBANGBANGBANGBANG at once. Between that and the ashes of burned effigy dolls smoking outside every house on the streets, Tupac truly looked like a war zone by 1 am.
The other big tradition of New Year's in Lima is YELLOW. Yellow is New Year's color, and for about the last three days of December the market explodes with vendors selling yellow decorations, beads, headbands, funny glasses, you name it--but especially yellow underwear. I don't know how many thousands of pairs of yellow underwear must have been on display on December 31st in that market. It's tradition to give yellow underwear as a present to friends for good luck. Magdalena and I went to buy a pair for everybody in the two communities, and certain nuns, I won't name names, were even seen wearing said underwear on their heads that night. :) I tried to be tactful in avoiding the granny-style panties that Magda was picking out for everyone, and choosing out my own reasonably cute pair... but unfortunately it was one size fits all, and as I'm much bigger than your average Peruvian woman, the underwear remains more of a souvenir than a part of my wardrobe.
About Peruvian New Year's: it was one of the things I missed last year and really wanted to see, and I was not disappointed. Like Christmas, it's celebrated with a huge dinner at midnight. Unlike Christmas, families make scarecrow-like "dolls" out of old clothes and stuff bags with newspaper for their heads, and burn them bonfire-style on the street at midnight. It's supposed to symbolize burning the old year and old things in preparation for the new. (It's also a little freaky to walk around on December 31st and see these weirdly grinning scarecrows tied upright on people's roofs.) The sisters made one of these and burned it, but I wasn't there for the burning because I went to Eloisa's, and we didn't do one there.
I thought the firecrackers were bad at Christmas, but at New Year's it truly sounded like the whole zone was being bombed. There were little shooting-light ones that took off like anti-aircraft missles from the ground and made screaming noises like the laser shots in Star Wars, one after the other like gunfire. There were all kinds of whizzing lights and flowery exploding lights and some that just went BANG without lights at all... it's less of a visual show than US fireworks and more of a big chaotic chance for the entire neighborhood to go BANGBANGBANGBANGBANG at once. Between that and the ashes of burned effigy dolls smoking outside every house on the streets, Tupac truly looked like a war zone by 1 am.
The other big tradition of New Year's in Lima is YELLOW. Yellow is New Year's color, and for about the last three days of December the market explodes with vendors selling yellow decorations, beads, headbands, funny glasses, you name it--but especially yellow underwear. I don't know how many thousands of pairs of yellow underwear must have been on display on December 31st in that market. It's tradition to give yellow underwear as a present to friends for good luck. Magdalena and I went to buy a pair for everybody in the two communities, and certain nuns, I won't name names, were even seen wearing said underwear on their heads that night. :) I tried to be tactful in avoiding the granny-style panties that Magda was picking out for everyone, and choosing out my own reasonably cute pair... but unfortunately it was one size fits all, and as I'm much bigger than your average Peruvian woman, the underwear remains more of a souvenir than a part of my wardrobe.
Christmas and the beach
It's March and my adjustment to the US is going... okay. Today I almost cried in church when they started talking about Easter, since Easter was such a special part of my experience of Peru. The isolation of living with my parents in the suburbs kills me. But as I "look around" and try to figure out my life plans, I'm doing several things at once. Teaching ESL at CASA of Maryland; looking sporadically for a full-time job; arranging to teach voice lessons at my local Music & Arts center; even maybe waitressing in the near future. I was going to go to bartending school but that's on hold for the moment.
And now to post about the great friends-gatherings I had at the end of my stay in Lima!
In December there was Christmas. In Peru everyone stays up on December 24th to celebrate Christmas at midnight, and all the partying is over by Christmas morning, so on Christmas Day nobody does anything. Since I didn't have family to celebrate with, I invited everyone to my house on Christmas Day to make a sort of repeat of Thanksgiving dinner. 15 cooks is a lot of cooks, but the sisters let us have the house in Delicias all to ourselves, because they're awesome.
Aren't my friends gorgeous? :)
This is the convent living room transformed into a dining room!
After eating we took a walk down to the beach, except they wouldn't let us in to the private beach area, so we had to come back. I got sent back at high speed on a bus because we realized we'd left our apple pie in the oven! Miraculously, neither it or the convent had burned up.
.
After Christmas we turned around and went to the beach two days later! This was another mega-day of shopping for food (the night before), cooking at my house (the convent in Delicias), and then going about 30 minutes to the south of Lima to a non-polluted beach.
And now to post about the great friends-gatherings I had at the end of my stay in Lima!
In December there was Christmas. In Peru everyone stays up on December 24th to celebrate Christmas at midnight, and all the partying is over by Christmas morning, so on Christmas Day nobody does anything. Since I didn't have family to celebrate with, I invited everyone to my house on Christmas Day to make a sort of repeat of Thanksgiving dinner. 15 cooks is a lot of cooks, but the sisters let us have the house in Delicias all to ourselves, because they're awesome.
Aren't my friends gorgeous? :)
This is the convent living room transformed into a dining room!
After eating we took a walk down to the beach, except they wouldn't let us in to the private beach area, so we had to come back. I got sent back at high speed on a bus because we realized we'd left our apple pie in the oven! Miraculously, neither it or the convent had burned up.
.
After Christmas we turned around and went to the beach two days later! This was another mega-day of shopping for food (the night before), cooking at my house (the convent in Delicias), and then going about 30 minutes to the south of Lima to a non-polluted beach.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
