Thanksgiving... and I'm almost home

The first two weeks of November were insane with the Lord of Miracles, the chorus performances, a late-Saturday-night birthday party followed by Mass at 8:30 am, plus regular English classes, plus trying to find time in the evenings to record a song with the other chorus I'm in. I've been participating in a group of young people, sort of connected with the parish because it's some of the same people, that gets together on Sunday nights to sing. We were trying to enter a song in a competition and had to record it and send it in, which meant getting everybody together at the same place and same time, plus the instrumental accompaniment, during the week--almost impossible!... but somehow we got enough people there to put in all the parts, and made the recording and sent it in, and believe it or not we got chosen to go to the competition! We have to sing live on December 1st, and before that, we have to go record the song in an actual recording studio. The time I put into this group, and I do put substantial time into it, isn't exactly "service" on my part, but it is pretty sweet just for my personal enjoyment in being with my friends and getting to make music at a higher level. The group and the competition is exciting for everyone else as well because they've never done anything like this before... not to mention that the song is an original one composed by the director, in typical saya style with drums and zampoña and a flute-like thing called quena and three-part voices. Very cool and it totally deserves to be performed live. My only concern is that the voices and their tuning issues won't do it justice, because they usually don't.

So that's how the beginning of November flew by. Then this Tuesday, just as things had quieted down a little, our friend Jess from Maryland flew in to visit us! She and I had coordinated her visit since October as a surprise for Catherine. All the sisters knew about it. All I said that day to Catherine was, "I'm going to bring you a surprise... something you haven't been expecting." And when I walked in with Jess and asked Catherine to step out from her tutoring for a moment into the hall--priceless. Jess speaks Spanish very well, so she has had a great time meeting everyone from the parish and seeing the center of Lima a little.

Three gringas seeing the city from Cerro San Cristobal

...and our very decorative lunch.

That Thursday the three of us spent all day cooking a full-blown Thanksgiving dinner for the sisters and our friends. I learned to do turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin pie from scratch... some of it turned out kind of weird but it was all good! I was so unbelievably tickled to be eating turkey and stuffing and pumpkin pie and cranberry sauce (Jess brought it in cans from the US) on Thanksgiving! The holiday was a hit with the Peruvians. It was kind of nice having to explain why we do Thanksgiving, too, instead of just saying, Oh, it's Thanksgiving... ok, let's eat pumpkin pie. Before the meal everyone shared something they were thankful for--Catherine and I were of course thankful for all of the people there to share the day with us, but I was really touched at how all the Peruvians said they were thankful to us for inviting them, for choosing them to be with us on our special holiday, and for having met us this year. Of course, one has to make a few cultural concessions--instead of football on TV, there was dancing after dinner. :)

Turkey feet!!!!

Peruvians discovering Thanksgiving dinner

...and dancing afterwards.

And now there is UNDER FIVE WEEKS until I am getting on a plane to Washington, DC! Unbelievable.

The weather is warmer--sometimes I even go out in t-shirts--and sunnier, and it seems like that long, gray, stale, changeless winter of plodding, pointless English groups in the school and students who didn't come... has finally moved into something with more life and more possibility. It's amazing how much you can put up with cheerfully if the weather is nice. (It's very weird though to think that it's almost Advent and almost summer at the same time. Gah! Brain spazz.) I'm already planning my possibilities for next year... who I'll teach, fourth AND fifth grade choruses in the school, maybe getting into the Confirmation program... and am very happy to be coming back. In a way very characteristic of my Enneagram type (the nuns got me into the Enneagram this year), I just know in my gut that it's the right place for me to be next year. Call it, if you like, the blessing of finally realizing clearly (after many many months of being torn in two!) what my friend Naomi ironically but wisely said to me over a year ago: "Why are you going to Peru? Because God wants you to go to Peru."

I say this because there are times when it's the only conceivable explanation I can think of for why I am staying another year. Peru and I have a love-hate, love-frustration sort of relationship. I'm either crazy busy or painfully bored; I often feel utterly useless; my social life and my students and my projects have minds of their own and do not respond to my efforts to plan or control them in a structured way, but rather go their own way if and when the spirit moves them to do so. For an American raised on the idea that "if you can dream it, you can do it! Go out, work hard, organize, apply yourself, and make it happen!", this is excruciatingly frustrating. So many of the quotes we have read this year from Saint Julie, the foundress of the Sisters of Notre Dame, are about patience and waiting for God's time... and I'm trying, trying, trying to learn to do that.

It's especially rough when this is true of your friends, the people in your life... sometimes they show up to church choir, and sometimes they just don't and you don't see them for weeks... but then they come to your Thanksgiving dinner and want to take you out the next day to go dancing and you get an invitation the same weekend to go to another party. You can't force anything and you just have to sort of go with the flow. I might as well also share, since it's no secret to anyone around here, that this has been exactly the dynamic of the something that may or may not have existed between me and a certain guy here. There, not there. Extremely frustrating. So frustrating in fact that it has been almost a relief to discover recently, beyond all doubt, that it is definitely not there. So, ok. I'm just concentrating on finishing up my year. In Peru, the ideas are always big and marvelous, and every now and then (when you're least expecting it) they burst into reality in surprising, exuberant, beautiful ways... and the rest of the time, they fall flat. No han venido.--"They didn't come."

For all these reasons I can't wait to go home right after Christmas. After that, we'll start thinking about coming back in February.

The Pollitos perform

The week after the Lord of Miracles procession, my fourth grade chorus at Fe y Alegría performed twice. Friday was the concert at the school itself: The art teacher had organized an afternoon of theater with the secondary-school kids, where they performed skits they had written and directed themselves, and I coordinated with him to have the chorus perform on the same program. They had a red curtain strung up from the rafters of the auditorium and rows of chairs set up for the parents and students and teachers in the audience. My singers presented three songs: the Spanish version of Frére Jaque in a two-part round, a Christmas song I sang in middle school and translated into Spanish, and an upbeat church song in two parts. Unfortunately my two strongest singers were absent that day, so the tuning was not good. But they were trying really hard and did pretty good getting their entrances in the two-part sections. Everybody duly applauded and the kids were really proud of themselves. I congratulated them a lot because they really have worked amazingly hard this year, all those twice-a-week rehearsals when I'm yanking them out of their class or their break and they whine and say, Nooo, Señorita! and I say, You have to come or you can't sing any more!! and then they come and we sing do-mi-sol and practice listening and breathing and vowels and watching me for entrances... It's been a big committment for them and I am so proud of what they've accomplished. They couldn't sing at all when I started with them in March. At all! And even though the concert didn't represent their best, I have heard them do incredibly well in rehearsals, so I know what they're really capable of.

The day before that, however, was the real triumph for me and four of the kids. On Thursday we went to the Museum of Art in the center of Lima to participate in a city-wide school arts competition! I had to run around like a crazy person getting all the details worked out beforehand. There were forms to fill out and send in by email along with a picture of each kid, the school's and the principal's contact info, etc; there was musical accompaniment to work out with some older students; there were permission slips to make and print and get them to bring back signed; there were details to communicate to all the kids and their parents, which I wrote up in nice little information slips that nobody read--they all looked unimpressed at my little slips, glanced at them once if that, and then proceeded to ask me a zillion questions until I'd explained it orally to each and every one of them, one random question at a time. The vice-principal told me to make sure we had transportation, with the helpful advice that in the past they'd contacted a combi driver to take an instrumental group to perform; I called two taxi drivers and got it all arranged, only to have the other vice-principal have a heart attack at the cost and tell me to just walk them down to the park and take a couple of taxis like normal.

Then there was much angst and drama because the competition set a maximum of FIVE participating students, and there are eleven of them in the chorus, so I had to choose the five that would make the best small group and be able to sing in two parts at the competition. There were six girls that I thought might be the best ones but wasn't sure. I made the mistake of first telling five of them they would be going, but then going back to listen to the six of them in different combinations just to be sure. Finally I chose one that I hadn't chosen at first and had to tell one of the original five she couldn't go. It was pretty terrible of me but I felt like I had to do what was best for the sound of the group (and it did make a substantial difference). The poor thing who'd gotten her hopes up was crushed and said she wasn't going to sing in the chorus any more. It broke my heart, but all I could do was tell her, You have a wonderful voice, you're one of the best singers, it's just that your voice isn't as similar to all the rest, and we have to have similar voices in the group, that's all... (The truth, that the other girl sings more in tune, was not a wise thing to admit in this situation.) For about three weeks she didn't come to rehearsal despite my repeated, gentle invitations to come back whenever she wanted and that it would really be a shame for the group to lose her because she sings so well. Then one day, when we were getting ready for the concert--she came back, and after one rehearsal, she was back for good with a big smile! Little Leslie had the bravery to get over it and keep singing anyway. I am prouder of her than of any of the rest of them because she's had to something much more difficult than perform in front of a crowd.

Anyway the competition went very well. I went with Catherine, two older boys who accompanied us on the guitar and zampoña, the four little girls (because one of them didn't show up at the last minute, despite the fact that her mom promised me on the phone that she would be there!), and a few moms to the Museum of Art. They have a big amphitheater and each little girl got her own microphone and there were microphones for the instruments and everything.

The kids were nervous, especially waiting backstage, but they did really well! It wasn't perfectly tuned and when they split into two parts they messed up a few times but we were all so happy with ourselves that it didn't matter.

In the picture above, from left to right: Rafael on the zampoña, Pedro (a blind kid with a great ear for music) on the guitar, Jacki, me, Claudia, Natali, and Keyssy. Alison didn't show up at the last minute but she and Leslie were there in spirit.

The Lord of Miracles

October is the month of the Lord of Miracles, the biggest devotional celebration I've seen here. Churches are decked in purple all month, and processions go out from tons of parishes, including the Cathedral of Lima, carrying the image of the Lord of Miracles. The story of the devotion goes like this:

In the 17th century, when slavery still existed in Peru, an African slave painted an image of the crucified Christ in Lima. It was called the Cristo de Pachacamía, Pachacamía being a place where slaves were bought and sold in the city. Tons of slaves went to this image to pray and call on God for help in their suffering. In the image of the crucified Jesus they found a God who understood the hell they were living and who could be there with them in all the ways they were dying every day. Eventually the devotion grew so popular that the local authorities considered it dangerous and ordered the image removed from the church where it hung in Lima. But when they tried to remove the image, an earthquake shook the city and destroyed the church, the surroundings, everything--except the wall on which the image hung. (The painting did in fact survive an earthquake in the 17th century.) For those who stop to think about the reason for the processions, therefore, the idea is that God intervened through a miracle to keep this image of herself present to the oppressed people of Lima, as a way to say, I am with you in your sufferings and I hear you when you cry out.


The festival itself, though, becomes something like Christmas in the US in that people gather for the pomp and ceremony of the processions themselves, and if you asked them why, would probably say, "It's the Lord of Miracles!". There are whole societies of devotees to the Lord of Miracles who dress in purple robes to carry the image around the city. In the center of Lima hundreds of thousands of people come to see the original painting get paraded around; in our neighborhood, probably several hundred came and went during the six-hour course of the procession. The image is mounted on a big wooden platform like an altar that has four wooden arms sticking out from the corners, two front and two back, and decorated with gorgeous flowers, balloons, lights, everything. It takes twelve people to lift the thing and carry it around. Three people get under each bar, which when the anda rests on the ground is about at elbow height, and the guy in charge hits a bell on the front and says, "Ready!" -- Ding! -- "Arriba!" and the twelve people stand up under the huge weight. Everyone applauds because this takes considerable effort. Once it's balanced on their shoulders they begin to sway back and forth, right, left, and with each sway they take a little step forward. And thus the Lord of Miracles advances slowly out of the church and down the street. There's a brass band walking behind him and when people see the procession, they come to walk along for a while and then go on their way. Every hundred meters, or about 20 minutes, the carriers put the anda down and a new group takes over.

Along with a couple of friends from the parish, I managed to get myself on the committee that organized this event. I'd never seen a real Latin American-style religious procession and I thought it'd be cool to see one from the inside, so to speak. Thanks to several colorful personalities, the organizational meeting was a 2.5-hour argument / complaint session about why things didn't work last year and what the president of the committee had to do about it. (Don't get me started on the Peruvian tendency to back off from committment, or to commit to something and then not show up, but then come back later and angrily criticize the work of the one or two people who have actually take any responsibility for getting whatever it is done.) But I did discover the kinds of things one has to think about in order to have a procession. The whole route has to be marked beforehand, at night, with stops every 100 meters where the carriers will switch off. At these stops the people often gather their religious pictures, rosaries, etc and arrange them on tables with flowers, making a nice sort of image for the anda to stop in front of for prayers and blessings. Sometimes the anda actually makes a little bow to these gatherings of people and items--the carriers in front stoop down and then stand straight again at the sound of the bell, very difficult to do, and everyone applauds. People also take advantage of the stops to bring their babies up to the anda so that the guy in charge can lift the baby up-down-left-right in the sign of the cross in front of the Lord of Miracles. This was funny when the director, Martín, was all stressing out about the time and moving the procession along and they kept passing him baby after baby.

Before the day of the procession you have to put out flyers to all the houses it's going to pass by, so they can be ready. We drafted the church choir to do this one night and the whole group of us ran up and down the neighborhood in the dark, walking in pairs and scurrying quickly past the unlighted sections, slipping papers under people's doors. Then somebody has to think about who's going to carry the thing and have refreshments available for the carriers when they finish; call the band and make sure they will actually show up (the first shift didn't, the second did); invite the mayor, the local functionaries, etc, none of whom actually come; argue with the committee president about why the priest says he can't say a Mass beforehand and yell at him to convince the priest to do so, etc. My job, supposedly, was to sign people up in groups to take turns as carriers. It was complete chaos because I was running around in the crowd looking for people of about the same height and asking them to take a turn, except there was no way I could remember the faces of group after group of twelve strangers dispersed throughout the crowd, much less tell each one when it was their turn, and they didn't all step forward when the lady with the megaphone took a break from the songs and Rosaries to call them. So Martín, the guy running the whole thing, was yelling at me to come up with people to carry and I had no idea where the other five people I'd asked had gone, and we ended up sort of shouting for volunteers each time the anda stopped. I was so stressed and begging my friends to help me, until Eymi told me, Relax, Kata, there's never any carriers. Every year we end up doing this.--It would have been real nice if somebody had told me that before. As usual my expectations were for everything we planned to actually function the way we planned it, thus stressing me out when this did not happen... but the Peruvians knew better. My mistake.

By the time it got dark I'd decided to resign myself to the chaos, ignore Martín's yelling (he's just one of those people who likes to yell), and enjoy the whole plodding, sprawling, noisy, glorious shebang. A few more of my friends showed up and in a spur-of-the-moment decision, once more lacking people to make up the next group of twelve, I jumped in with them to take a turn carrying. Finally I was out from under Martín's yelling and just had to listen for the bell, stand up!--shift the weight, balance it--steady!--and then just think about walking, swaying, right, left, pulling forward and trying to stand straight under the swaying weight of the anda on my shoulder. I was right in front on the same bar as my friends Victor and Alfredo (our girl friends took a turn later but very few Peruvian women are my size, so our group was mixed). It's really, really important for the three people on a bar to be the same height, because if not, the taller person can't stand up under the weight and it's painful for everybody. I think this may have been the case for me because I had a cramp in my back after about 10 minutes, when we switched sides to change shoulders. After my 20 minutes were up I stepped out gladly, feeling almost like I'd been swimming because the exhilerating tiredness of hard exercise was not in my arms or shoulders but in my whole body.

After this experience I was utterly astounded to see that about eight women from the community--all moms in their thirties or forties and all exactly the same height, 5 foot 0--jumped in to carry when a group of shorter people took over towards the end, and didn't leave for the next hour until the anda reached the church again. We kept asking them if they wanted relief and they said, No, no, we do this every year! We're good! Their faces were red and wet with sweat but they were smiling and determined. The groups of tall men in their purple robes had gone long ago, after very chivalrously and self-importantly taking the first four or five turns in a row; now the Lord of Miracles was left with his most fervent devotees, these short, average-looking, amazingly strong women from the pueblo, to carry him on the last long uphill stretch home. And that wasn't all. When they got to the door of the church I thought for sure they'd let the thing drop. But this is Peru: before retiring, the Lord of Miracles has to dance. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Right at the church door the band suddenly struck up a lively marinera, and I heard my friend Luis say to the carriers, Ok, I don't know how you all are going to do this, but we're gonna make this thing dance!, and the group of carriers started skipping around and turning from side to side so that the image was actually dancing the marinera. I was speechless. All I had energy left for myself was to go get the tray of hot chocolate and rolls for the band when the whole thing was over. (It was the best hot chocolate I have ever had--it tasted like Señora Sofía had put in cinnamon and honey and who knows what else.) One of the band players did a funny little eyebrow-lift thing whenever I looked at him. And that was the procession of the Lord of Miracles.

We Got Books!

Two weekends ago, Sister Iris and I finally found a Saturday morning to go into the center of Lima and buy books for the school with the money donated by you, my friends and family. We had a total of $255 to spend, or over 750 soles, which goes pretty far when most books are between 15 and 35 soles! There's a street near the Plaza de Armas that has all these little bookstands one after the other, and at one point a whole market-like plaza of bookstands under a tent, selling an eclectic selection of everything from classic English literature (translated into Spanish of course) to modern Latin American writers to cookbooks to cheap romance paperbacks. Iris and I had a great time, two literature junkies browsing from one stand to another saying, This is great! Have you read that one? They have to have this! We got one copy of each of the following titles, except for the abridged Moby Dick and The Little Prince, which we got about ten of. All will now be available for the students to check out of the library.

My picks:

Pride and Prejudice

Moby Dick

The Lord of the Rings

The Canterbury Tales

Iris's picks:

The complete works of Isabel Allende (13 novels)

The complete works of Paulo Coehlo (10 novels)

Travesuras de la Niña Mala, Mario Vargas Llosa

The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Emilio, Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Libro de Buen Amor, Arcipreste de Hita

Novelas Ejemplares, Cervantes

De Profundis, Oscar Wilde

Cuentos de Amor, de Locura, y de Muerte, Horacio Quiroga

Elogio de la Locura, Erasmus de Rotterdam

Las Flores del Mal, Baudelaire

Rimas, Gustavo A. Bécquer


And with all this, plus our bus fares and a snack for the hardworking book-buyers, there is still about 70 soles left. Iris couldn't find any poetry by Gabriela Mistral, but we'll have to see if we can locate that or other Latin American poetry to spend the rest of our allowance on. Meanwhile the books are staying with us until they can be checked into the library, so I intend to enjoy The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende in my spare time... Thanks again to everyone and please know that although you will probably never meet the kids in Fe y Alegría, you can be certain that somewhere in Peru there will be more than one young person who falls in love with a certain book and has her life changed by it because of your help. If you've ever had that experience yourself you know what a blessing it is, so I will just say, thank you for helping to give that to the kids here, and may the Lord repay your kindness with tons of blessings!

...but my life is still awesome.

Since my last post was an angry rant on the things that annoy me about Peru, now we'll talk about some coolness.

October is a great month because I have a good amount of time left here this year, but not too long, and I'm looking forward both to coming home for SIX WEEKS! in January and then to coming back here. (It will be Carnevales again when I get back! When my guy friends here heard how strongly I reacted to Carnevales in February, they promised me with glee that they'll be waiting with waterguns, water cannons, buckets, etc for me to walk out of the airport. I've warned them that I'm bringing a water balloon with each of their names on it back from the US.) Plus, it is finally spring here! The sun is coming out almost every day and staying out for hours at a time, and it's drier, clearer, and warmer. I now go around in only 3 layers and none of them is a heavy sweater. Yesterday we took an hour-long walk down past the Pantanos de Villa, a very green wetland preserve, to the beach, and it was beautiful walking weather and a gorgeous afternoon on the shore! The sun was partly hidden behind clouds but it shone through palely and made the water silver. It amazes me that that much beauty has been so close by all year, but I never came to see it.

I'm working on signing my fourth-grade chorus up to participate in a city-wide school arts festival in the Museum of Art in Lima. They are so excited, but the contest's rules state that no more than five students can participate in the category of Vocal Arts--clearly it was not designed for real choirs. I've chosen out a small group to represent the whole. Typically of Peru, things like the transportation and what other adults are going with us and who will accompany them on the guitar have not been decided yet, but I suppose they will all fall into place. I also asked the art teacher when his end-of-the-year theater performance will be, because the principal suggested I combine my concert with that, and he said, "November 26th. Or if not, the 3rd or 4th of December." Then last Friday he said that it's been moved up to the 3rd or 4th of November, so we'll just have to sing what we have ready! The kids and I have become dear to each other, and some of the most committed ones have even begun policing the less interested, saying things like, "Señorita, she never comes when you say there's rehearsal, and when she does she talks the whole time! Señorita, she's not paying attention!" Every now and then they have moments of really good music-making; these come unexpectedly, like something pure and shining suddenly flashing out within a clumsy work of art you're struggling to form. It's amazing to me that they knew absolutely nothing about singing when they started. Even more amazing, I feel like I've hardly done anything with them--I've only been the vehicle for something greater than me to reach through to them, just like it reached through my middle-school choir director over ten years ago and began to enchant me. Last week I gave them a note and said, This is do. Where's mi? and they sang mi PERFECTLY!! I blew them kisses and practically jumped up and down with delight. Then I started teaching them a song I remember from those middle-school years when I fell in love with choral singing for life, and as they sang I had this powerful sense of being very, very near to that time and place far away when I first learned it. The same thing that happened for me then was happening for these kids now (I can see it in their faces! at least for some of them, the ones who are really interested) and my being the vehicle for it is a far, far greater blessing than I have ever deserved. I actually cried when they left the library (each one kissing me on the cheek to say goodbye). God is too good to me. I have to write to Mr. LeJeune again and tell him how great they're doing.

(Funny, isn't it, that something like teaching a group of kids to sing do and mi can fulfill you so deeply. It's like sharing a secret, a precious treasure... and for whatever reason, it fulfilled me when I learned it, and it fulfills me now to teach it.) The next rehearsal, of course, they were talking and pulling each other's hair and interrupting me and I don't know what else. So you just keep on doing what you're doing.

My English students are in their normal state of flux, some coming, some not, even some new ones at this late point in the year. Catherine and I are learning more Peruvian recipes; on Saturday we invited a group of friends over to teach us ají de gallina, and we taught them brownies in return. We had a great time, and afterwards we sat around chatting with the nuns about how this group of sweet, generous, friendly guys hadn't thought to offer to help us with the dishes, and what in the world we (women) were going to do with them. The thing is that their mothers don't demand help from them in the house. One of them said his mother refused to teach him to cook, because she'd made that mistake with his brother, and now, horror of horrors, his brother's wife doesn't want to cook for him because she knows he's capable of doing it himself. And this is his mother teaching him this! It's so obvious that the reason things don't change is because women don't demand it. I'm going to be good at demanding things.

I've started playing guitar for some of the Masses in the parish, mostly out of necessity, because Alfredo says he can't come on Wednesdays for the next month (monthly schedules again!). I don't really like it, but if no one else is going to, I'll do it. I really just don't enjoy being the one leading everything and having the whole church looking at me; I much prefer following one of the Peruvians and adding harmonies or playing the tambourine. But oh well.

On a future-oriented note, I'm leaning more and more toward pursuing a Master's in theology or religious studies when I get back to the US. An article in Teresa's English newspaper reminded me yesterday about one of the biggest reasons I'm glad to be here for another year: the religious-political climate in the US right now is almost insufferable for me. Politicians, especially President Bush, loading their speeches with religious rhetoric as if that will prove their piousness and guarantee the vote of the Christian right--the fact that, in the eyes of the media and in the popular imagination, churchgoing voters concern themselves with teaching Creationism and abstinence-only sex education and prohibiting gay marriage while supporting the President's tendency to violently invade other countries--the expectation, even among my educated Catholic friends at Maryland, that because I came to church every Sunday I must have been rejoicing when John Kerry lost in 2004--the scathing parodies of "religion" and "the religious right" by people like Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert, which are all too accurate and at the same time completely ignorant of what faith really is... it's enough to make your head explode. Ironically, religion is much less of a political issue here, where no one has heard of the idea of separation of church and state and there are huge public statues of Jesus and Mary in parks. It's just something that's there, public, present, and people can do whatever they want with it or nothing at all. So while I am not planning to become a nun any time soon, I'm having a great time hanging out with them in a place where my faith can breathe freely, so to speak. It's much better for my health and sanity at this time.

Third-wave culture shock

Between all the trips that I take so many pictures of, I feel I'm not really capturing the day-to-day life I live around here. At this point, more than 3/4 finished with the year, Peru is a weird double reality for me of "normal" things that I do so often I feel used to them, and things that seem to shock me more deeply as time goes on, as if digging deeper into this culture I periodically run into the taproot of certain behaviors or customs that bother me, and am shocked or frustrated or outraged to see how deep their roots really go.

Responsibility and the idea of honoring committments is a big issue for both me and Catherine right now. Peruvians just don't seem to take things as seriously as we would expect them to. We are sick and tired of arriving for our classes and hearing No han venido ("they didn't come") or todavía no llegan ("they're not here yet"). Students or adults, you have to know the person individually to be able to judge whether they are the kind of person who can be counted on to show up to what they say they're going to do when they say they're going to do it. Some Peruvians are capable of this and some just are not. A few weeks ago our English class at night in the parish pushed us over the limit when the first person walked in at 7:15 to a 7:00 class; we cancelled class that night and said that from now on nobody comes in after 7:10. But more frustrating than the actual lateness (which was not that bad, relatively speaking; with many of my music classes in the school, the kids come waltzing in at 3:40 and seem to think that counts as getting there at 3) is the attitude behind it. Our adult English students don't get the idea that for the class to move ahead, the same group of people has to be there at the same time consistently. They will vanish for two, three, four, six weeks at a time, and then randomly see me on the street one day and say, "Hey Catalina, is there English class this week?" blissfully ignoring the fact that they have missed whole verb tenses and will be lost if they try to come back. Nor do they understand why we get upset at this. One of them got very indignant when we cancelled class because of the group's lateness, protesting, "You never said anything about getting here by 7:15!" To me this is unbelievable. They know the class starts at 7 and we have asked them to be punctual. But rather than being there to get everything we teach, their idea seems to be that they show up for whatever classes or parts of the class they feel like coming to, and pick up a little English here, a little there, as if they were visitors in the classroom... except that this mentality is shared by every student in the room. They aren't taking the class, they're auditing it--taking as much or as little as they please of what we are offering without having to commit to anything themselves. And that is frustrating and leaves us feeling taken advantage of.


I audited a class my last semester in college because I wanted to hear the discussion but didn't have time to write the papers. I learned a little, but not nearly as much as I would have if I'd done all the assignments. I didn't get any credit for it either. That's the way it goes! Hanging around an English class at your leisure without ever committing to actually showing up won't teach you much and it certainly won't earn you any credit. To me it is inconceivable that they can flout this basic principle of learning so casually and then get offended when we refuse to teach them any longer. But it seems to be a cultural thing here. From what I've seen, lots of Peruvians get involved in things, participate wildly for a month or maybe two, and then get bored and walk away when something new grabs their attention. An example of how they fall away: One of our good friends stopped coming to the English class, and when we asked him why, he said, "I can't, I have dance class during that time." Not I've decided to switch from English to dance, but I can't, I'm busy on Tuesday and Thursday nights, indignant that I was reprimanding him, as if to say I had no right to expect him to be there. The new thing gets priority. We started with almost 20 students in our parish class and are now down to 4, or 5, or 6, depending on whose attendance you consider consistent enough to count as being in the class.


People's supposedly fixed schedules change monthly because of this committment ADD. The two main English institutes in Peru, ICPNA and the Británico, structure their classes accordingly: each level is five days a week, two hours a day, for one month. You can take one month of intensive English, do something else the next month, then go back to the next English level, if you remember anything. That works for them because they're big institutes with a ton of teachers, but Catherine and I are individual tutors, and when our students simply vanish and don't call to say what's up, we are left with nothing to do, sometimes waiting around in our house for the better part of an afternoon for people who don't come. This is why we get a little angry at the people who vanish for weeks at a time and then come back later asking what time we can teach them, because their work changed and now they want to do English again. I had one prospective student who never even showed up to her first lesson, nor did she call to explain why; I heard nothing from her for two months, and then yesterday she called me asking, not if I could teach her, but what time she could come by, because now she's studying English again and needs extra help. I told her pointedly that I can't because I'm busy with students who come every week. This is not quite true but I wasn't about to take on the headache of dealing with her unreliability.


The Peruvian way of giving orders and making demands is also frustrating when you realize, yes, as unbelievable as it seems, it really is like that. I have yet to figure out how a culture so concerned with polite speech and formulas like "Señorita Catalina, buenos días" can teach people to shamelessly ask you for things that are completely outside the realm of what our relationship entails, professionally and/or personally. I have to think this through more thoroughly later, because it's midnight now... but again it has to do with me feeling taken advantage of, like the terms of my relationships with people here are not mutually understood. And I'm sure that in fact they are not.


And of course, as long as we're talking about deep-down, irreconcilable culture shock, there's the harassment on the street. It still amazes me how the students can learn so little English in the school (because they are taught to memorize phrases instead of using the language creatively), but all come out knowing how to say "Oh my God," "Hello baby," "I love you," "Very beautiful," or sometimes "F*** you," any of which you may hear shouted after you if you walk by a group of idle men by yourself. Today I was coming back from the market at 3 pm and some confused guy started yelling after me, "Good night! Good night! Buenas tardes! Hello, good night!" Sometimes I go for weeks without hearing much of this, and then all of a sudden I hear it every time I go out for a few days. I've gotten very, very good at pretending people do not exist when in fact it would be ridiculous to think I didn't hear them. But such is life.

The rest of Tambogrande, and being back in Lima to stay

After the day of Marleney's vows, I spent most of my week in Tambogrande with a few new friends. Sister BJ was the other visitor in the Tambogrande convent that week--she is from Arizona but is staying in Peru for 5 weeks to see if she would like to come for a few years and work here. She speaks a little Spanish but needs classes, and so one of Sister Meg's English students, Maria, came to tutor her. Maria brought her brother Carlos, who also studies English, and the four of us hung out most afternoons speaking Spanglish and wandering around Tambogrande in the cooler part of the day.

Carlos is an amazing visual artist, and I was blown away by the paintings he'd done when they invited us to their house. (Theirs was a pretty decent house--unlike some of the houses farther out from the center of town, it had real walls with drywall on them, concrete floor, a computer in the front room. I didn't see whether it has a back wall or whether the rooms farther in open onto the garden like most of the houses do here.) He also has a motorcycle, and so a few days after my back-of-the-truck experience, I went for my first ride on the back of a moto, hanging onto a guy, no helmet, zipping down the little rural streets with the wind in my face. It was great! In the traffic circle at the edge of town we had to dodge a herd of about 20 sheep. When we rejoined Sister BJ and Maria, we went up to the mirador, a lookout point at the top of the highest hill in town that is crowned with an enormous statue of Jesus. Apparently sometimes you can go up inside Jesus like the Statue of Liberty and look out, but that stairwell was locked, so we just hung out at his feet and looked out over the town as the sun set.

(The view westward from the mirador with BJ and Maria taking pictures of the sunset.)

On Saturday night I went to the wedding of Sister Miriam's cousin Corina. It was great because I had met Corina before when she came to Lima, and I'm good friends with Corina's little sister Matilde, who works in Lima not far from our neighborhood. There were three couples getting married in the same Mass, but Corina and her fiance were the best-looking of the three. :) There were no bridesmaids or goom's men, only a few little nieces dressed up in white dresses to be the "little angels" accompanying the bride. The party started off with the newlyweds dancing the Blue Danube Waltz at least six or seven times: first together, then with the "godparents" of the wedding (Peruvians have godparents for everything, not just baptism), then with his mother and her father, then with any family members that wanted to come up and dance a few measures with them. Then they got all the single women together for the bride to toss her bouquet. There were only five of us, and guess who caught it! ... The bouquet came flying straight at me and I couldn't dodge without looking silly. So they played the Blue Danube Waltz one more time and I had to dance with Corina's new husband while she danced with her "godfather." Apparently I will also be the next person from among those five single girls to get married. I'm sure this was all very confusing to the people there who thought I was a nun.

the beautiful bride and groom

the cousins, Miriam and Matilde

It was a great party with tons of dancing and we didn't leave till 2 am.

Very shortly afterwards I was woken up by the sisters' neighbor Simón. Simón is a citizen of Tambogrande who does a radio broadcast every morning... except it's not on the radio. The man has a megaphone and speakers in his front yard which he uses to talk and play music like a radio jockey, loud enough for half the town to hear, every day from 6 to 7 am. He calls the show "Segundo Simón" (Second Simon). He puts on music that sounds like it's coming off a grainy 1940's gramophone, talks over it, tells the weather for the day, and shares his thoughts for the day on the state of today's youth, the local government and its individual functionaries, how to be a good Catholic, or whatever else comes into his head. He's not particularly insightful. He is, however, possessed of a loudspeaker and convinced that everyone in the area can benefit from hearing his voice for an hour every morning.

The sisters have to do their morning prayer at 5:30 because it's impossible to do it once he gets going. Apparently people have tried to shut him up in the past, but there are really no enforcable laws about noise in Tambogrande or even in Lima. Peruvians are way more comfortable with noise than Americans; they really just don't have our concept that "my neighbors have to respect my peace and quiet." Example: Waino Sundays, in which a group devoted to a particular saint has its parties near our house here in Tupac and plays very loud, very repetitive, very high-pitched yippy music from late morning until after midnight. Or that time in Cusco when a "procession" went by our hostel at 4 in the morning, i.e. a group of people with an image of some saint or other troops by with a couple of brass instruments playing the same melody over and over and somebody enthusiastically whacking a drum. Don't get me wrong, processions and devotions to saints are a really neat part of the culture here; often a group will come into Sunday Mass with a beautifully decorated statue of the Virgin Mary carried between four people, and the devotees themselves all dressed up in traditional Andean outfits, and then go outside to do traditional dancing (they play big string instruments that look like a cross between a harp and a violin) before heading off down the street in their procession. I always stay to watch a bit. The only part I don't like is the fireworks, which are not actually fireworks since they don't set off any lights, they just go up and make a big BANG that sounds like a gun. The noise is part of the celebration.

...so anyway, Peruvians like noise, and Simón was my alarm clock, because I was getting up that morning to go with Maria to visit her cousin in the nearby city of Paita. Paita is a little town right on the ocean and it's cooler there than in Tambogrande because of the constant breeze off the water. The day and a half I spent there was a weird experience of very common, everyday Peruvian life. The town and its beach reminded me of Ocean City, Maryland and its boardwalk carnival, except smaller and kind of boring. There was a Ferris wheel and arcades and a moon bounce and shoot-the-clown games along the beach, and dirty streets with cheap trinket stores just behind, and the Peruvians all thought it was great, especially the Ferris wheel, which they called a "rollercoaster" and squealed with terror when it went fast. I was not impressed, but I enjoyed seeing the pelicans and a sea lion when we took a ride in a boat on the bay.

In the evening there was a cumbia concert, and since Janet from TV was going to be there, Maria's cousin and her husband just had to go. It turned out that Janet from TV isn't even a cumbia singer, she's just the personality that stands there "animating" the crowd and organizing the thing. The cumbia groups were pretty good, actually very good, but the attention mostly went to the dancers, four girls in little pink bikini outfits who came out and shook their behinds in front of the cameras. It was pretty tasteless. Maria, me, and Maria's cousin's daughter--a smart, sweet little 11-year-old named Yessenia who gave me a pair of earrings she made--were all exhausted by 11 pm, but Yessi's parents were loving the cumbia and Janet and the whole show, so finally at midnight or so they let the two 20-somethings take their daughter home in a mototaxi and go to bed, and they stayed until 2 am. They were really nice people but I think they had no idea what to think of me. They had never met a foreigner before, and they kept talking about how all the gringos come from abroad to stay in their summer homes at the nearby resort towns, because that's the extent of their familiarity with white people. I think they were confused too about my religious/lay status. But they took me into their home very generously and invited me back in the summer when it's beach weather.

(Possibly the best part of all this was watching a bunch of guys trying to set up before the cumbia show. They had a huge cylinder-shaped advertisement balloon without enough air in it that said CLARO in huge letters, and they were pulling on ropes and jumping up to push it and poking it with poles to get it to stand up. Every time it almost righted itself, it would slowly flop back over on top of their heads again like a big fat worm. It was hilarious. By the time we got there there was a good crowd watching them. The owner of the nearby cafe said they'd been doing it for three hours already, at which point I gave up all hope. They never did get it fixed.)

My only other adventure in Tambogrande was going with Sister BJ to visit the nearby convent of the School Sisters of Notre Dame. BJ and I took a colectivo and a mototaxi through the countryside to where Sister Lucy and her congregation live at the edge of the mountains. Their house was full of plants, cactus, desert flowers, with a huge almond tree in the center courtyard. We climbed up the nearest hill with Sister Lucy and looked out over the valley. Everything was green because of the canals irrigating the land, but the mountains themselves were desert and their trees all looked dead and dry. Sister Lucy told us a story about a volunteer who came from Germany to work with them and ended up becoming a nun... I could see the appeal, when she talked about coming up to those desert mountains to pray, with the green valley below... There's a U2 song about all this, I think.

me and Sister Lucy




from the mountain near the School Sisters of Notre Dame


My trip ended well and I am now back in Lima. It's good to be back where everyone you know is. (I say that now... I can only imagine what coming back to the US in December will be like!...) And the weather here is changing! It's a little warmer, so showering is not so painful, and yesterday I actually woke up to sunshine that lasted all day until afternoon. (Today was cloudy again, but the clammy humidity of winter is gone and with it a lot of the chill.) Since I've decided I'd like to be more involved in the parish next year, I am checking out opportunities there as well as continuing with my English and music classes. Today I had my first rehearsal with the Pollitos in a while, and they were so cute! I missed them! They are learning to watch my conducting and use their head voice a little. I'm working on getting them entered in a city-wide school arts festival at the Museum of Art in Lima, but I found out today that I can only take 5 singers. It seems there aren't many real choirs that participate in these things. The group as a whole will have to wait until our concert at the school in December.

Earlier this week I told one of my students he can't come back any more. He had been bringing me little gifts and telling me I'm an angel and saying if he had a girlfriend, he'd want her to be like me, etc., for quite a while. Every time he started up like this I would be quite clear that I wanted a purely professional tutoring relationship with him, and he would say, "Oh yes of course, I understand that, I respect you, but you know these flowers are just a little sign of my admiration for you, as a teacher... I understand you have other friends, but I know you and Catherine go out dancing with them, and it makes me sad that we don't have the same kind of confidence and friendship as you do with them..." I was putting up with it and putting up with it until he wrote me an email in which he said, "I want to thank you because even though you know what you mean to me, you still give me English classes. Any other girl would have kicked me out of her classes and her life" by now. This made me really furious. It was as if he'd said "thank you for being too weak to give me what I deserve." So I gave it to him, in a very angry reply email that told him I'd had it with him and that he was not to come back to my house for classes or anything else. Apparently I scared him off because he hasn't come back for his Tuesday tutoring with Catherine either. Yesss, verbal-electronic slap in the face does its job! I felt so great after letting some of that righteous anger flame off... very powerful and very light of heart... I laughed a lot that day.

And so with just over 2 1/2 months left of this year, life is good--except for my latest weird/gross health issue: I seem to have picked up a flea in Tambogrande and can't figure out how to get rid of it. Figures. Catherine says it's no worse than having lice or parasites, but somehow to me this is way more gross... maybe because lice and parasites didn't give me little red itchy bites on my stomach!... Teresa says you have to actually look through your bedding and clothing to find the tiny jumping flea, and then trap it with a wet bar of soap. I tried this and it is 0% possible. (I saw nothing to trap.) On my list of Peruvian randomness, next to riding in the back of a pickup truck between a nun and a cross-dresser, is hunting fleas in my bed with wet soap. My life is insane.

Tambogrande again

(The bridge from Tambogrande to the outlying caserio of Locutos. The bridge is made of sticks and packed dirt and they build it from scratch every year when the river goes down. When the river is high, in the summer, it sweeps the bridge away and the people cross over in rafts made of inflated tires and pulled by somebody swimming. At least this is what they tell me.)

I'm in Tambogrande once more. It's sunny and warm and beautiful!!! That 14-hour overnight bus ride seems like it took me from Lima winter to Bethany Beach in the summer, except less humid, more breezy, and deliciously cool at night. "Winter" in Tambogrande means you sleep with a light blanket, go around in your jeans and t-shirt in the morning and evening, and lie around doing nothing from 2 to 4 pm because it gets HOT. The last time I came here, in March, it was the end of summer and the HOT was all the time, barely even cooling off enough at night to let you sleep. It's not humid like it is in Maryland, but I'm sure it passes 100 degrees Farenheit every day (right now it might get up to 80 or 90), and you just feel like you're baking in a still hot oven.

The locals talk proudly about how those who aren't used to the calor fuerte of the North usually can't take it. They build their houses with high roofs, make them of brick or bamboo instead of wood, and some of the more rural ones don't even have doors and windows that close, just openings in the walls... and even the walls aren't all there; most houses have a few rooms in front and then a back room that opens straight out under a woven-bamboo roof onto a garden, with flowers, trees, chickens, etc. The gardens are not at all neat but profusely alive. This helps me understand a little why so many Peruvians who move to Lima and build houses in the pueblos jovenes don't put back walls on them. The house is not meant to seal you off from the outdoors. (What a concept!... and it works great here... just not in Lima.) In the heat I also see why the women, no matter what their age or what they look like, are much more comfortable than North American women with wearing stretchy skirts and midriff-baring tanks. It's less formal and more comfortable here in the rural North of Peru.

On Sunday we all went to Sister Marleney's final vows, a beautiful, happy celebration at a Mass in the countryside where Marleney teaches in a Fe y Alegría school. The school was in the middle of nowhere down these dirt roads that wind through a half-desert landscape. There are trees and the occasional stream and sometimes whole fields of vibrantly green rice plants, but the ground is sandy and dry. The Mass was under a white pavilion run with green ribbons and decorated with tons of sunflowers, the symbol of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. It was hot.

Before Marleney professed her vows, the priest gave her the microphone and asked her to talk to everyone about how she got to be here. Her testimony was really moving. She talked about the "human ties" that led her from one step to another in her journey toward becoming a Sister of Notre Dame; she said she didn't want to even hear about religious life at first, but little by little, sometimes fighting with God, she discovered that "this is my happiness." The priest asked her if she'd ever been in love and to talk about what love means to her. She said yes, of course; she's a woman, a complete person, and yes she had had a boyfriend years ago, and she is happy now that he is married with kids while she has found her happiness here. "Love, to me, is to give yourself completely and be left with nothing, but at the same time to receive everything. I know that for the rest of my life I will be thirsting for this God, and I am here to give myself over to Him completely, not 'until death do us part' but until death unites us."

I was sitting in the front row with the rest of the sisters and I'm sure everyone there thought I was a nun too. It was kind of awkward to be the only non-Peruvian without an ND cross around her neck, but I tried to make myself useful as a photographer. After the ceremony the whole crowd of at least 200 people wanted to hug Marleney, and while some waited in line the others ate the beans and rice and goat that quickly appeared in the hands of the caterers. There was folkloric dancing by the kids in the school and a neighbor of the sisters sang musica criolla for everybody to dance to.

To get back to Tambogrande, the sisters' truck went first with those who were leaving that night for Lima. Juana Jaqueline and I didn't want to wait for the second trip, so we hopped in with another family... in the back on the truck bed! I got to be one of those Latin Americans you see going by all crowded together in the back of a truck, standing up to fit more people, like a bunch of horses or something being transported home. So ghetto and so very typical around here. We even stopped to pick up more guests who'd started home on foot--the people on the truck bed started whacking the top of the vehicle to get it to stop, their friends hopped up, and they whacked again to say go ahead. It was great. The sisters later said they saw us flying by while they waited at the bus station, and they knew it was us because they picked out my hair right away.

And so I have now ridden in the back of a truck down dirt highways in rural Peru, in my nice clothes, squished between a nun and a cross-dressing Peruvian named Karen (he got out of the car before we took this picture.) This just about makes my year.

Next year

So, it's official: I am renewing my service committment with Notre Dame Mission Volunteers for 2008.

I took a retreat this weekend to think about it, and I had a very relaxing day and a half of reading, sleeping, playing the guitar, praying the Liturgy of the Hours with the retreat house community, and napping outside in the sun. The retreat house I went to is in sunny pretty Chaclacayo, and it had lots of green grass, hanging flowers, pretty gardens, a white-walled house with tiled arches to wander through and pictures of the Virgin Mary in front of the ocean (la Virgen del Carmen). I was so worn out from trying to make this decision that I couldn't tell what I wanted any more, so instead of trying to decide I mostly just relaxed. By the end of the weekend I didn't come to a clear "answer," but I did have more of a sense of peace about it all, so I came back on the buses to Lima thinking that I would decide my fate based on whether or not they can find another volunteer to replace Catherine next year. Staying "alone" still felt too daunting, especially after a long weekend of solitude.

But I got back at night and dropped in on the chorus rehearsal in the parish, and it felt like home! In the end it wasn't the retreat, but the coming back afterwards, that convinced me that I belong here for another year. I also had another conversation with Sister Miriam, a professional counsellor but also a good friend, which really helped, especially in terms of thinking of new possibilities for my work next year that would "give me more life" and less frustration. (No more English groups!!--more parish involvement--working with all my friends in the Confirmation program... so exciting!) So last night in chorus rehearsal I let everybody know and got hugged/strangled by half of them. Then we stayed there until 10 pm singing and laughing at the circus-like antics of Luis Alberto and Dante (everybody was really high-energy for some reason!) and I was absolutely dead this morning when I had to get up at 6:30 to teach at 8. Also, my stomach was acting up in such a way as to suggest I may have parasites again. Ah, Peru.

So: if anyone knows anyone who is female, 21 or over, speaks Spanish, and is interested in helping out in a poor but vibrant parish and school in Lima for 2008, please let her know about Notre Dame Mission Volunteers! (Information available at www.ndmva.org, international service sites.) The opportunities for volunteer work are really limitless, any kinds of talents or interests can be put to good use. Being Catholic is not a requirement, but one has to be willing to live in an overwhelmingly Catholic country and help out a bunch of (very cool) nuns in their work.

Thanks for all your support and prayers! I will be home for six weeks from Christmas to early February, and I can't wait to see everybody!

Two-Thirds-of-a-Year Reflections

Wow, it's September.

In school terms, there's still a whole "semester" to go, but it feels like we have no time left at all. Somewhere around late July I got really busy, and August flew by in a blink after we got back from vacation. I'm still working with the small groups on English in the school, and at long last we have actually moved on from "to be," describing people, and questions like "Where are you from?" and "How old are you?", to starting the present tense and describing what you do every day. Some of the groups remember nothing of what I did with them the last time I saw them (back in May). Others pick it back up with a quick review and move on eagerly. So I suppose we are actually getting a little done in these groups.

[Cute story: One of their exercises is based on a picture of my sister Annie that mom sent me. I wrote a few paragraphs of, "Hi, my name is Annie and I'm from Maryland. I'm 17 years old. I have a brother and two sisters..." using "to be" and "to have" to talk about oneself and one's family. The students have to read it and understand it and try to write one of their own. One of the guys was very impressed with this American girl he was reading about and asked me, "Miss, do you know her? Can I get her email? What's her phone number?", telling his buddies how cute she was, etc. Then at the end, I defined the word oldest for them and said, What does it say about Annie's oldest sister?... and Annie's admirer turned beet red and moaned, "Sorry! Sorry!" when someone finally figured out that she was my sister. It was great. I said I would pass on his compliments.]

Besides the groups, I have a lot of private tutoring students for English, which is great because they are adults and they actually show up. Although even there, there are always adventures, particularly with the guy students. One of them keeps bugging me and Catherine to go dancing or go to lunch with him and his friend, insisting that he wants to be "better friends" with us, and bringing me little gifts like earrings and "little rocks" (his bad English translation of "piedritas," little plastic-looking "stones" that one could string on a necklace). Just what I wanted. Not so much interested in English, that one. Next time I am going to tell him straight up that I do not want to be his friend... he's getting on my nerves. Another of my students came over last week and did grammar obediently for half an hour, and then when I was in the middle of a sentence he interrupted me in Spanish with, "Do you know the origins of the Catholic Church?" He is very disturbed about his religion right now. He also thinks that the Internet is a reliable source of information. "But it says on the Internet that Jesus used to be called Cupid and Mary was Aphrodite! Do you believe everything you read on the Internet? Why not?" Teresa very generously agreed to talk to him about religion (and the Internet). Who knows if he will keep coming to English class. But my female students are delightful. Besides Sister Miriam, my favorite student is a 27-year-old woman named Olga who lives nearby with her mother. She went to college to be a history teacher, but she can't find a job right now, so she has time and interest to study English. She is so sweet and really knows how to learn, being accustomed to studying. She always makes my day when she comes over.

I am still working with my fourth grade chorus and loving them more every week. The other week I got them singing a song I learned from my friends in the parish that has two parts on the refrain. It's simple, and they didn't do it really in tune, but I just thought as I listened to them, My God--they're singing in two parts!! When I started with them in March they couldn't sing at all! And my most recent job is teaching my friend Miguel voice lessons. He is really into classical music and Italian opera, and he has a great voice, he just needs a little ear training and music-reading and tips on technique. It is so much fun! I was nervous about teaching voice lessons because I've never done it before, but when he started singing I realized immediately that I had tips to give him, so it's all good. It's so amazing to find someone who appreciates the beauty of classical music around here--I hadn't realized how much I missed CSPAC and the music world of Maryland. And his lessons encourage me to practice my own singing, and when I do I am almost surprised at how beautiful and fun it is. My voice, like the rest of me, is growing and maturing here even as I take a break from the lessons I had in college... almost without my noticing, it's becoming freer and fuller and less self-conscious. Amazing.

In two weeks I'm taking a trip to Tambogrande to be there for Sister Marleney's vows and the wedding of Sister Miriam's cousin, whom I met earlier in the year. (It's going to be warm there!! Although I can tell it's starting to move toward spring here, thank God.) Very exciting.

And so life is going along swimmingly here. And recently that insistent something inside of me that has been pushing me this whole time towards staying another year... has reasserted itself. I've already told NDMV that I'm going home, but they haven't found anyone to replace me yet... and just this weekend, a plan has unfolded in my head that seems simple and natural. It's scary in more ways than one, but it takes away my anguished feeling of being torn in two between Peru and the US. And it runs thus: This year from now till December, I study for the GREs. (Catherine will be nice enough to bring my prep book back from my house when she visits the US for her sister's wedding.) Then I spend a good month (or 6 weeks?!) at home in January, take the GRE's, talk to my profs at Maryland about grad schools to research, meet my new baby cousins, spend time with everybody, etc. Then I come back to Peru. From February to September, in between my teaching here, I can read (at the suggestion of my teachers) things that will help me prepare to study for a PhD in English, concentrating on spirituality in literature. I can do my graduate applications from here starting this time next year, and in 2009, assuming I get in somewhere, I will have over 6 months to live at home before starting my grad program. ...And the little voice inside me, the one that said "What if I stayed?!" even back in March when nothing was working--that small but undeniable urging quiets down. It's an idea that brings the two worlds together a bit. It gives me purpose and direction in my American life, keeping me in touch and moving toward a career in that world, but lets me spend my time in Peru in the meanwhile, with the culture and the people that have become dear to me this year. (And doing something good, too, now that I'm familiar with the system and can continue my projects.)

Of course all the other voices inside me are saying, "What are you, insane?!" But really I think I have been wanting to want to stay another year ever since I got here, and now I may actually be ready to take that seriously. I need to talk to the sisters about it. (I've already talked to my parents about the possibility... they took it extremely well.) I would like to take a retreat to really mull it over. Today I went to lie down for a nap, and the neighbors started up their Waino again, and I just burst out laughing and crying at once over how unbelievably annoying that stupid music is, and how they're going to do it for the next twelve hours nonstop, and keep me from sleeping, and at the same time how it's so fabulously Peruvian just like everything else that drives me crazy and makes me love this place, and was I really going to spend a whole nother year here?!, amazed at how I was unable to say no even during a Waino Sunday to the insistent something inside me that says Stay and will not be argued with. Just then my friend Matilde came in and listened to me spill all my thoughts about all this, and gave me hugs, and said she thought my plan was a good one. She is Miriam's cousin and is far away from her family like I am, working in Lima to make money to go to college. We don't see each other that often, but she and Consuelo's sister Eliana are like younger sisters here to me and Catherine. They are really sweet girls.

I'm not committing yet. But there you have all my thoughts. I would appreciate any good-decision-making vibes or prayers. Thanks.

Earthquake

I was sitting at the kitchen table a few Wednesdays ago, eating dinner with Catherine and Teresa, when the floor started to shake. Catherine and I looked at each other; the shaking got stronger. It felt like being on a ride at an amusement park where you have to walk across a floor that vibrates and wobbles under you. We got up, uncertain of what to do--neither of us had ever been in an earthquake before, but we recognized what it was, and I went and stood in the kitchen doorway because I had a vague recollection that that's what people should do in earthquakes. "Teresa, what do we do?" asked Catherine. Teresa, preoccupied by the shaking that showed no sign of stopping, jumped up and scooted straight out the front door without answering, and stood in the open space across the road. Iris had come out of her room when the tremor didn't stop after a few seconds, and the three of us went outside together, leaving the door wide open behind us.

For another minute the ground didn't stop moving. Everything had stopped: dogs were barking, people were leaving their houses with the doors swinging open. It was night and the yellow street lights of Villa El Salvador were marching away over the hills in long lines. I saw the clouds lit up by lightning twice; later I found out that lightning is almost never seen in Lima, and people were terrified by it. A man drove by in a taxi and stuck his head out to ask, "Sister, what's going on? Is there an earthquake?"--it seems that the suspension in cars can prevent people from feeling tremors. Iris was pacing around looking worried. "This is the worst one we've ever had," she said. Catherine and I just nodded--for all we knew, this was normal for Peru.

There was no damage to our house except a few pictures that fell off the walls. Most of the houses in the area were fine too, as was the school, although the bookshelves in the English classroom had toppled over and dumped a huge mound of textbooks onto the floor. The aftershocks recurred during the next few days, including once when I was teaching in the auditorium. We hurried outside and joined the rest of the school on the blacktop, but by the time we got there it was over.

It was an odd experience, but it didn't seem too dangerous at the time. I couldn't really understand why all the Peruvians were so panicky. I gathered that slight tremors are indeed normal around here and usually pass in a few seconds, leaving little to no damage; and yet in the days that followed, some people told me they had thought it was the end of the world, others that they grabbed their children and started praying for their lives, others that they were sleeping fully dressed with keys in hand so they could run outside during the night... I didn't get why everyone was freaking out so much until the reports started coming in of the terrible damage in Pisco and Ica, cities about 100 miles south of Lima near the epicenter of the quake.

Many of the houses there, especially in the rural areas, are made of mud bricks, and they just crumbled. A church in Pisco collapsed on a funeral Mass, killing hundreds of people who were inside. One of our friends from Chaclacayo, Ever, went down to Pisco the day after the earthquake with a group from his work, since he does social work for the government and knows something about first aid. He said it was utter chaos. People were fighting over water, there were bodies all around the main square, there was no food to be had and Ever had to pay 5 soles for a tiny can of tuna and crackers, and tuna and crackers was what he ate for three days while he was working there. A week later, drinking tea in our calm, undamaged house, he told us the story in a quiet voice with a haunted look in his eyes. He said he vomited twice at what he saw while working to excavate the living and the dead from the ruins of the church. Later, however, he decided that he preferred pulling out the dead to trying to attend to the homeless and hungry survivors, because the first slow trickle of supplies sent in was not enough, and the crowds just attacked the cars as they came. There was no way to get down and hand things out calmly unless the military was there. But when the soldiers were there, he said--and at this Ever burst out laughing, so far past stressed that this was hilarious--a kid came up to ask for bread, and one of the soldiers replied, "You want pan? Here, have some of this! PAN! PAN!" and mimed shooting his gun so that the kid ran away. And on top of all this, at one point someone started yelling that the sea was coming in in a tsunami. Pisco is right by the beach. Apparently the water did come up two blocks into the town, but it never reached the main square.

Catherine's first reaction on hearing this story: "If you go down again, let me know, because I'd like to go help." I was floored. In my head I asked, "Did you hear what he's been saying for the past hour?!" I suppose I'm just more cautious or fearful than she is, but Ever's stories about sleeping in a tent with no blanket (he gave his sleeping bag to a homeless mother) and not finding enough food or water for himself, let alone anyone else, and the crowds fighting for supplies, did not exactly inspire me to jump up and go there. I feel unsafe enough in our own neighborhood of Delicias/Tupac, where we get our guy friends to walk us around at night and don't take taxis by ourselves after dark and have to endure various levels of whistles, catcalls, and verbal harrassment just walking down the street... I would simply be too scared for my physical safety to go somewhere basically chaotic like Pisco was after the earthquake. But Catherine reasoned quite sensibly that since some time had passed, there were aid organizations going down that she could go with as a volunteer. (She was right, as we learned from the news in the next week.) She hasn't gone yet, however, because our friends kept saying they would go and then not doing it after all.

Our parish collected clothes and food items to send south... and that's been it as far as the earthquake around here. But we know there is an incredible amount of rebuilding to be done, and that thousands of people are still homeless. If you want to support the relief efforts, you can donate to the American Red Cross's work in Peru at http://american.redcross.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ntld_peru&JServSessionIdr006=o5vhiluha1.app194a.
Thanks on behalf of the people who have lost everything and will benefit from your help.

...oh, and speaking of help: The money donated by my readers to get books for the Fe y Alegría library is here! Sister Iris now has $255 to get some good literature for her students. Thanks so much to all who donated and I will keep you updated on what the money is used for!

Machu Picchu

Catherine, Chrissy, and I left Cusco at 4 pm with the two taxi drivers and headed up out of the city into the highlands. We were still mad at our drivers for upping the price on us at the last minute, but they were very attentive and anxious to be of service, telling us the names of all the small towns, pointing out the fields where the people grow potatoes and telling us how they harvest only once a year and keep the potatoes dried to eat all year round. I had bought a new, larger memory card for my camera (the old one only held 24 photos!), and in response to Josue's assurances of "anything you need, anything at all, just ask," I asked if he had scissors to open it. He didn't. The next thing I knew they were pulling over next to a little ramshackle house on the edge of Cusco, and Josué runs in and comes back out with a blunt steak knife, with which he proceeds to free my digital memory card of its plastic. Classic Peru moment.


The drive to Ollantaytambo was beautiful. We went first over long highways rising and falling with the curves of the hills, and then down a long switchback descent into the Sacred Valley itself, to the small city of Urubamba. The mountains are not gradual in the Sacred Valley; Urubamba is on flat land perhaps a few miles wide, with steep, bare rock mountains towering straight up on either side. Their shadows fall early on the valley in the evening, and it seems like dusk in the town while the daylight still shines on the mountains themselves. We passed through Urubamba and wound through more hills, following the river now, to Ollantaytambo. It was getting dark when we got there and the stars were coming out. The train station was a ticket box next to two sets of doors where people could pass through to the train tracks--one door for Peruvians, the other for tourists. The two groups sit on different sections of the train and pay (so I hear) vastly different prices, just as they do for Machu Picchu. In the yellow lamplight we waited in line with our backpacks, watching the crowds mill around with all their stuff in between the little puestas selling everything from chapstick to chullos to fried-egg-and-cheese sandwiches cooked on the spot over tiny gas flames. When the train arrived, the Peruvians returning to Ollantaytambo came out the doors running and literally raced each other up the hill, I suppose to get places on the buses and taxis congregated farther up with their drivers standing outside yelling "Cusco! Urubamba! Cusco! Taxi to Cusco!"

It was too dark to see anything out the train windows. As soon as we stepped off the train in Aguas Calientes, we were swept up in the river of tourists pouring up the hill and found ourselves in the central plaza. We made plans with some people we'd met on the train to meet at the plaza at 5 am to hike up the mountain and be at Machu Picchu at dawn; then we made our way up the brightly lit main street to our hostel. Aguas Calientes is made up almost entirely of hotels and restaurants, as 90% of its population is tourists. As we scrambled up the hill, I looked up long enough to see the mountains, or the shadows of the mountains, blotting out the sky and the stars on all sides like enormous waves in a dream. We felt them rather than saw them--the awesome, unseen presence of the mystery of the place, towering just beyond the little lights of the town.

We found the hostel, but when we gave our names, the guy looked away and said, "No, that wasn't for the 29th, I had you down for the 19th." Translation: they hadn't kept our reservations. At this point it was 10:00 and Chrissy was fading fast. Suddenly a random Peruvian lady was at our side saying she had lodging for 25 soles per person; we shrugged and followed her. Her hostel was off the main road, noisy, but clean enough. It was warmer here than in Cusco, and humid, and we could hear the river close by as we fell into bed.

The next morning, instead of feeling better, Chrissy had diarrhea and nausea and didn't want to get out of bed. Our visitors were dropping like flies! We hated to leave her. Would she be better later? Catherine and I took turns going out to get Gatorade and other foodstuffs, and I got to see Aguas Calientes in the early morning.

Finally at 9:30 we had to face the facts. We paid the hostel lady extra to let Chrissy stay in bed during the day, and Catherine and I set out, the only ones still on our feet, to the sacred summit.

The tourism industry around Machu Picchu reminds one of Disney World. It has taken over the city of Cusco and created the town of Aguas Calientes. But once you get up to the ruins, all of that falls behind; you leave it below in the valley. The bus from Aguas Calientes follows the river around the base of a mountain--the mountains go straight up like tapering fingers, practically piled on top of each other, so that it's no wonder nobody got through to discover Machu Picchu for years--and then starts the switchback climb. We watched the river get smaller and smaller below us, and then we were there at the entrance...

We took a walk up toward Inti Punku, the Sun Gate, but I was too tired to make it all the way. On the path we met some llamas and offered them chocolate, which they were not interested in.

Catherine sat down to write a letter to her boyfriend, and I drank in the view.

The ruins were impressive, but I have to say the mountains were more so, and most amazing of all was the light. I felt I had gone from glasses to contacts or gotten an adjustment to my prescription, it was that sharp and brilliant and clear. I thought, whatever the hardships of the people who lived here long ago, they knew nothing of smog or of Lima fog. Their wars and their sacrifices and their sicknesses and feasts were all lived out under infinite skies, always in the presence of majesty and beauty. Up on these mountains, all you have to do is wait and walk, and one after another these amazing sights open up to fulfill you. In Lima I had been so starved for a glimpse of sun and space and beauty, and here was all that beyond anything I had thought of...

We wandered through the ruins, listened in on tours, and tried to pet the llamas frollicking on the lawn. We were only up there for about two hours before I got dehydrated and had to go.

Incas were short!


(The llama and I both blinked.)

On the way down the mountain, as I drank my Gatorade on the bus, there was a local boy dressed in traditional clothes who ran down the hiking path to wave at the bus at every switchback, yelling a long, singsongy phrase in Quechua. It was charming and all the tourists were looking for him by the end and waving back... but then it turned a little sad when, at the foot of the mountain, he climbed on the bus and called in the same beautiful, high voice, clear as the air of his home-- "Thank you very muuuuuuuuuch! Muchas graaaciaaaaaaaaaas!" and went around collecting tips from the tourists.

...So that was Machu Picchu.

That night we went back to Cusco the same way we came. Tuesday was our last day in Cusco, and it was a day of frustrating decisions because I'd been leaving my mom and sister behind the whole week, and now they didn't want to go on to Arequipa like we planned, because Marissa just needed to get home asap to recuperate. In the end they decided to return to Lima for the two days before their international flight. Catherine wanted to go on to Arequipa, and I chose to go with her mostly because I didn't want her traveling alone, but also because part of me really just needed to leave all the sick people behind and have a few days of vacation not worrying about anyone else. So we got on an overnight bus to Arequipa. Mom and Marissa would have one more day in Cusco in which to go on a tour of the Sacred Valley, which made me feel better because at least they'd have seen something.

But, in keeping with the rest of our vacation, Arequipa did not go as planned either and we ended up spending a total of 15 hours there. It has a very pretty plaza, on which we enjoyed a nice breakfast after our overnight bus ride... very quiet and restful after the stress of Cusco.

We saw the cathedral (much simpler than Cusco's but beautiful) and went to Mass, then went back to our hostel and slept. In the afternoon we went to a tourist agency and arranged a tour of nearby Colca Canyon, the deepest canyon in the world. But the tour was not to be. At lunch I started crying because my family was in Peru and I was not with them, and twenty minutes later Catherine was sick to her stomach. So we gave up and changed our bus tickets to return to Lima that night. And I had two days of hanging out in Delicias with Mom and Marissa before taking them back to the airport on Saturday night.