What's that smell? Oh, it's me...

My 7 months in South America have marked an all-time low for personal hygiene. Because of the shower situation, I would rather stink. Yes, I remember a time when bathing was a pleasant, relaxing experience. When it was over, I felt warm and clean and refreshed. Now, when I emerge from the shower, I'm frustrated, freezing, and slightly singed. Let me explain how the showers work.

There are no such thing as hot and cold water taps. You get hot water by turning on an electric heater that is attached to a shower head. Because handling electricity while you're in the shower is brilliant. In order to have hot water, you have to keep the water pressure low, so the water has time to heat up before it hits you. Therefore, it's impossible to have both good water pressure and hot water at the same time.

This in itself isn't too horrible, but my current shower makes my previous shower look like a luxury bath. I turn the water on, then my electricity and wait for the water to get hot. By the time I step into the shower, it's usually so hot it's scalding. I try to adjust the water pressure, but when I touch the metal knob, it gives me an electrical shock. I grab a towel to turn the knob, which works until the towel gets wet. I turn the water pressure up. Within a few seconds, the water's too cold. I grab the towel to try to adjust it again. Occasionally, I can get it just right. However, the whole thing is wacky, and the water pressure, and thus the temperature, will fluxuate without me touching anything. Half the time, I just give up and get out before I'm finished.

One of the first things I noticed about the hotel room where the rest of my family is staying is the shower. It actually has a hot and cold tap. No electricity necessary. When they return from Machu Picchu tonight, I plan on heading over there for a nice, long, stress-free shower. I hope. (Now if only I were able to flush toilet paper down the toilet, I'd be living the life.)

No One Wants to Spend the Night in Lima, part 2

I've been waiting for quite some time to have visitors, and while that wait was made a bit longer due to airline screw-ups, it's finally over.

My parents and sister were suppose to arrive in Cusco around 7:30am on Saturday morning. They didn't get here until 2pm Sunday afternoon. Turns out, a certain American Airlines changed their flight schedule, and made it impossible to make their connection in Lima. Doesn't seem like it would be too much of a problem, considering there is a flight from Lima to Cusco every half hour, right? Not so much. It's a holiday weekend in July, and everyone and their mother, brother, sister, great-uncle, and fifth cousin twice removed is apparently coming to Cusco. Mom and Dad were schedule on a sure-thing for Sunday afternoon, but it was looking like Holli wasn't going to make it until Monday. After a lot of determination, (arriving at the airline office at 3:30am to get in line) begging, and a very nice ticket agent named Sissy(hmm, appropriate I guess, considering that's what Holli used to call me), Holli arrived in Cusco about an hour after the parentals. Ah, the joys of traveling.

This *slight* delay in arrival seriously screwed up my to-do plans. Salsa class? Out the window. Moray and Salinas? Maybe next time. Luckily, thanks to some heavy duty altitude sickness medication, we were able to set out and see some sights right away. Walking...very...slowly... of course. Now we know that 12,000 ft is something that can actually slow my mom down.

While I'm happy to have them here, I think they better make some sort of sacrifice to the travel gods, as their trip seems to be karmicly doomed. Besides having to spend the night in Lima (and if anyone ever decides to publish my travel adventures, the name of the book will be No one Wants to Spend the Night in Lima. Consider that trademarked, or copyrighted, or whatever.), we realized that their travel itinerary had also been changed without warning. So now they're in Machu Picchu today, while I am spending a perfectly good day off at home, and their tour of the Sacred Valley (which I am supposed to be joining them on) is on Thursday, when I have to work. And yesterday, on our city tour, it rained. It hasn't rained in Cusco for 3 months. The rain left the weather chilly and damp, the coldest day I can remember.

Despite the bad luck, we're having a good time. I took them to San Pedro, where there were multiple pig's heads waiting for them, and the woman behind them was using a huge cleaver, ala Lizzie Bordon. I introduced them to alpaca burgers, which they all agreed tasted like really good hamburgers, and cooked them dinner in my little apartment. (The theme of the evening seemed to be, Wow, can you believe Kelli cooked vegetables?)

We still plan on spending the night in Lima this weekend, but hopefully Lima will be better to all of us this time around.

An Open Letter to Peru

Dear Peru,

We've been together for 6 months now, and while I still have a few weeks to go before I make my way into Chile (I know, I know, you hate Chile. Get over it.), I wanted to say a proper goodbye, via an open letter on a little-read blog.

In 6 months, we've had some good times and bad. Conquering the Inca Trail, finally laying eyes on Machu Picchu, exploring the Amazon, setting foot on floating islands of the world's highest lake, as well as being pick pocketed, almost being eaten by savage dogs more than once, then stepping in their fresh poo. Ah, Peru.

In 6 months, I've seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. And boy has there been some ugly. The public urination/deification for one. I've seen more adults relieve themselves more often than any one should have to. When I explained to my students that public urination/deification is actually illegal, they asked why? Why? Why? Because it's disgusting. Because it's unhygienic. Because it's unsanitary. You know that aromatic scent that makes you scrunch up your nose when the winds picks up? Yeah, that's the smell. Piss Alley got it's name for a reason. To the men: those kissing noises you make when a woman walks by? (you know who you are) are not okay. And don't tell me it's a cultural machismo thing, because the Peruvian women don't like it either. Just stop.

You are a land of contradictions. Of majestic remains from a powerful empire and extreme poverty. You beg for business, never relenting until we agree to buy something, then you never have the change to give back. You want business, but don't know what to do with it. You seem to work so hard, never taking a day off, yet there's a laziness beneath that just won't quite finish the job. If I needed a metaphor, I'd say you're like a dog. Warm and friendly, but then you lift up your leg and pee on my shoe. Actually, that's not quite accurate. You're like a dog that sits on my shoe and poops on it. A runny, diuretic kind of poop, because that's what happens when you drink the water here. Or eat at the wrong restaurant. Or eat a bad piece of fruit. Or a number of other things that I don't care to recall. Case in point: My family, who I was so excited to see this morning, is still in Lima, and will be spending the night there. Granted, this is really more the fault of an anonymous American corporation (that rhymes with merican dairlines), but these things just seem to happen here.

And while I've had some interesting trips to the bathroom, I'm still not giving up on you. I don't seem to care anymore if the girls at the orphanage kiss me with their snotty-nosed faces. Or, such as happened last week, if they sneeze directly on my hands and I have to wash someone else's sneeze off my hands. I've met more strangers here than I ever would at home, who greet me with a simple buenos tardes, senorita, while waiting to cross the street or sitting on a bench. As long as it's not accompanied by a 'wow', or a me gusta, or a crude kissing noise, I'm happy to practice my Spanish with them. Almost daily, I look around at the colonial buildings and the Andes rising up behind them, and I think to myself "I can't believe I live here."

I'd tell you never to change, Peru, but I don't think I need to. Viva El Peru.

Mission: Accomplished

Today is my last day teaching. Granted, I have to give exams and quizzes on Wednesday and Thursday, but since Monday and Tuesday are holidays to celebrate Peru's independence, I'm essentially done at 9pm tonight. And boy does it feel good.

During my first week, I was pretty sure I wasn't going to make it. I was pretty sure I was terrible (and I think I really was). I really didn't have a clue what I was doing, but somewhere along the line I figured out how to teach English and have fun at the same time. And, I'm pretty good at it. I can do so many things now that I couldn't do then. I can teach all 12 tenses, explain countable and uncountable nouns, I know the difference between "to say" and "to tell," the 11 different meanings of "to get" (had a dream about that once, it was kind of frightening), and everything else in between. In the 9th grade, I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to diagram a sentence (or figure out why we were made to diagram sentences, as it seems a pointless skill). Now, I know I would rock that 9th grade grammar test. Hey, the best way to learn something really is to teach it. Of course, this comes with a down side. I analyze grammar a bit too much now. I apologize in advance for correcting your grammar in my head. I will do my best to keep it in my head.

On a day-to-day basis, I didn't feel like I was accomplishing anything. I know that 75% of everything I've ever said has sounded like gibberish to most of my students, but I also know that I've actually taught them something. Take Alberto, my longest tenured student, for example. He's been in my class for 5 months (actually switched times so he could remain in my class). In those 5 months, he's improved by leaps and bounds. In the long run, that makes up for all the comma splices, the lack of subject-verb agreement, mis-pronunciation of past tense verbs, and everything else that makes me feel like pounding my head against the white board. That makes me happy.

Listen In

Overheard in my basic class:

*******
Me: When is your birthday?
Student: Windows?
Me: No, when is your birthday?
Student: Oh! Fine, teacher.

********

During a game of Simon Says:
Student: Touch your right ass.
(Everyone looks confused)
Student: Touch your right ass
Me: (Pointing to mine) Ass?
Student: NOOOOOO! (Points to his right eye. We obviously have some pronunciation issues.)

*********

Me: What do you eat when you're sick?
Student: The kitchen.
Another student: No, chicken soup.

Have I snapped?

Today, I made my advanced class write "I will indent every paragraph" ten times. Have I snapped? Not sure, but I do know that every day I tell them to indent, and every day they don't. I threatened them that if they don't indent tomorrow, they'll write 15 sentences, and so on and so on. Is it really so hard?

I am continually baffled by how minds work. This morning, while introducing a reading on the Titanic, I asked the class to tell me what they knew about the Titanic. One student asked, "the headache?" Huh? What on earth does a headache have to do with a giant ship sinking nearly 100 years ago? The ship wasn't named The Migraine. I'm stumped.

i write good

How do you teach a second language to people who don't really know their first language? This is what I've been struggling with for 6 months, and it's really starting to make me want to pull my hair out. I'm teaching probably the most educated population of Cusco. Therefore, I've come up with two words to describe the Peruvian education system: pretty crappy. (By the way, you should try explaining to a an ESL learner that "pretty" is used as emphasis and that the term "pretty ugly" makes perfect sense in English. That's a treat.)

My advanced class focuses on writing. The problem is, they can't write in Spanish, so they really don't have a prayer in English. To give you an idea of what I have to correct every week, I'm going to write the rest of this blog in the style of my students. They don't like to use punctuation which makes it very hard to read and where on earth am i supposed to know where to take a break when i'm reading it's all one long run on sentence and if there's anything i hate its a run on sentence have you every noticed how hard they are to read? really hard let me tell you and no matter how many times i tell this guy in my advanced class not to write with words like "gonna" and "wanna" he still insists and also insists on replacing the word "the" with "da" and "and" with "'n" and i finally had to tell him that i wouldn't correct his writing anymore if he was going to write like that and that he wouldn't pass his exam and he couldn't understand what the problem was and gave me some crap about saving time but it doesn't take you anymore time to write "the" than it does to write "da." He also wore a Mets jacket to class today so that certainly didn't endear him anymore to me. And how many times do i have to tell them to indent? Indent, indent, INDENT, it's not that hard, and if you're wondering why I don't indent on my blog posts it's because blogger doesn't allow the use of the tab button, which I find really annoying and I certainly don't want to have uneven margains and maybe we should all petition blogger to change this if for no other reason than to better the writing skills of Peruvians and so that I'm not such a hypocrite.

Whew. I can't write like that anymore, it's exhausting. And exhausting to read. My red pen is quickly running out of ink. (And I didn't even get started on the subject/verb agreement problems, but those will never go away.)

In other teaching news, my basic class is setting a record for stupidity every day. When I tell them no, they repeat the same answer, sometimes 3 or 4 times in a row. I guess they subscribe to the theory that if at first you don't succeed, try, try again. A lot of the problems I have with teaching them isn't always the English though. The other day, they asked what "sing" meant. So, like any good ESL teacher, I didn't tell, I did, and I sang for them. One of the students said "bailar?" For those of you who don't know Spanish, "bailar" means "to dance." Now, I may not be Celine Dion, but bad singing does not equal dancing. I wasn't moving. Plus, I had already demonstrated what dancing was. This isn't a problem with English, this is a problem with her head. I was relieved when the other students started laughing. At least it got through to somebody. Oh, vacation. How I need you.

Christmas in July

I didn't know it was possible for me to survive until the All-Star break without seeing a single inning of baseball, but that's exactly what happened. I couldn't stand it anymore. Plus, it was the All-Star game. All the best players in one game. It's like Christmas in July. I went to the Real McCoy, everyone's favorite gringo hangout, to ask if they could show the game in the evening. The owner told me he would be happy to show it if it was on, and he even checked the cable menu to make sure it would be on. I had a hard time getting through my last three classes, I was so giddy with excitment. As soon as my last class ended at 9pm, I dragged Ashley with me to see the game.

We arrived in the 6th inning. It was heaven. Just in time to see Chipper strike out in his last at-bat. I saw 6 whole innings. If you can do the math, then you've probably figured out I didn't make it to see the end in the 15th. It was after 11:30, and the fact that I had to teach the passive voice at 7am was looming large. We took off after the 12th. When I read the game ended on a sacrifice fly in the 15th, I was glad I didn't stay. What an anticlimatic way to end it.

• Using the All-Star game to determine home field advantage is stupid. Home field advantage in baseball is too important to be determined by what is meant to be a fun exhibition. The team with the best record should have home field advantage. Bud Selig says this isn't possible, but if the teams involved aren't determined until a few days in advance anyway, what's the problem?
• Dan Uggla didn't exactly prove himself worthy to be there. 3 errors! 2 of which loaded up the bases with no one out. Kudos to Aaron Cook for getting out of that jam.
• I thought for sure the game was over in the 11th when Michael Young singled with a runner on second. Nate McClouth's throw home to nail Dioner Navarro was a thing of beauty. Probably the best moment in Pirates history since 1992.
• I didn't get to see Brian McCann get into the game, although he attempted to apply the tag to the winning run. I know he was the third catcher, but he shouldn't have been. He should have been the starter.
  

Fancy seeing you here

It really is a small world after all. For the last two weeks, my college roommate Heather has been in town. Heather and I lived together during our senior year at UD. We had a lot of good times together, which mainly included belly dancing and cooking Mexican themed dinners(not at the same time). From belly dancing in Delaware, to salsa dancing in Peru. Heather is a grad student at Johns Hopkins, and has a 10 month internship on the northern coast of Peru. Who knew we would both be living in Peru one day? She just happened to be visiting Cusco for two weeks before heading north.

We met up for lunch her first week here. It was so strange to see her here in Cusco. (She said the same thing to me, but hey, I was here first.) However, it was soooo nice to see a familiar face. It made me even more anxious to see the fam in two weeks. We got caught up, swapped stories and gossip, reminisced, and went salsa dancing Friday night, before she had to fly out on Saturday morning. Great to see you, Heather.

To market, To market

One of my favorite things to do in Cusco (or at least it was before I hit the mother-lode of burn out effect and decided I couldn't be bothered to do such a thing) is to do my shopping at the central market. I hit up the Mega (Peru's version of Kroger, or Pathmark, or whatever your regional grocery store chain is) for things like cereal and milk, but for everything fresh, the only place to go is San Pedro Market. The place is huge, with aisles and aisles of vendors selling every kind of food you can possibly imagine. Well, every kind of food available in Peru. Peter Pan peanut butter remains elusive.

The produce is so much fresher there than at the grocery store, where it's clear that it's been sitting out for far too long. I spend a good bit of time in one of the fruit aisles, buying strawberries, kiwi, apples, bananas, and plantains to fry up. It's the only place I can buy peanuts and raisins that cost a bit less than an arm and a leg, so that I can make my own trail mix. Before hiking the Inca Trail, my regular nut lady wasn't working, so I switched nut ladies. The new nut lady can see me coming from a mile away. I buy fresh cheese and avocado and tomatoes for my cheese, avocado, and tomato sandwiches, fresh flowers for my apartment, and every kind of fruit juice you can imagine, made right there for you. (sin agua, of course, for us gringos.)

Beyond the fresh produce is a huge room of the Peruvian version of lunch counters. Old timers climb up onto rickety stools for their daily portions of soup, ceviche, or rice and potatoes.

As great as the market is for fruits and flowers, it is vitally important for those of us raised in a culture of refrigerated meat that we never EVER buy meat there. Why? Because it is sitting on a table, sans refrigeration, simply collecting flies. The meat ladies stand behind their counters, slicing up various dead animals, while occasionally swatting at insects swarming around their meat. If I'm lucky, there will be a nice big pig's head to greet me as I walk into the market. I'm not sure what one is supposed to do with an entire pig's head, and I'm not sure that I want to know.

100th Post!

It's my 100th Post! 100 posts of fabulous blogosity. (Some more fabulous than others.) I feel like I should have some sort of retrospective clip post, like they do on tv shows when they're too lazy to write a new episode, or have some sort of top 10 blog moments. That might be overdoing it, no? The first person to comment on the 100th Post receives a major award! In fact, everyone who comments on this post may receive a major award, just as a thank you for sticking with it through 100 posts. Thanks to my tens of loyal readers out there.

Sixteen = 33 in Peru

After teaching for a few months, I had gotten pretty comfortable with the curriculum and material, and assumed I would cruise through my final month in my pre-intermediate and intermediate level comfort zone. So I was pretty shocked and peeved when I got my schedule and saw that my favorite Intermediate II class had been dropped and in it's place was BASICO 1. I don't like Basico. I taught Basico my first two months, and it didn't go so well. (Remember Hitler?) They don't get my jokes. They seem to think I'm going to use Spanish to teach them. They either smile and nod when they clearly don't know what is happening, or they stare at me as if I'm from another planet. I don't know which one is worse, but they both make me want to bang my head off the wall.

Plus, you have to work really hard to teach Basico. I'm not up for that. I'm burned out. I can't be bothered to buy food, let alone eat it. I just ate crackers for lunch. I make my classes do stretches and jumping jacks before class. I started that to energize my 6pm class, who was among the living dead last week, then I realized it really helped me. So now if they don't answer my questions, they do jumping jacks until they do.

The first two days of class, I had three students. One was clearly not really a beginner. She could speak to me in full sentences. I love her. I rely on her. I hope she doesn't wise up and move up to another level. Another showed up 20 minutes late, didn't have a book, and wouldn't write anything down, even when the other two told him he had better. The third is right smack dab in the middle. A few new students showed up on Thursday. I taught them numbers. One woman saw the number sixteen and wrote 33. 17, maybe. 60, maybe. 33? Oh, help.

Yesterday, even more new students showed up. Missing a week of class is bad enough, but a week of basic? You're screwed. They all came up to me after class to tell me that they had missed the first week. No kidding. I pointed them to the tutor, but they wanted to keep talking. One girl informed me that she was mostly deaf, so she can't hear me when I talk in class. Oh goody. (I've had a blind student before who had to have everything read to him.) They were still talking to me 3 at a time when my jovenes started coming in the room, so I literally had to shoo them away, using shooing motions with my hands to get them to leave. (Although I can't wait until next week, when I teach them to sing Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes. I LOVE that!) Only 13 days left!

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Today's my dad's birthday, so be sure to wish him a Happy Birthday. I won't tell you how old he is, but I'm sure it's equal to the number of hairs on his head. HA! What's a dad's birthday without a bald joke? Love you, dad. Have a good one.

Happy Birthday, America!

Yesterday, while all of you were going to picnics and bbqs, parades, fireworks, and watching a tripleheader on ESPN, I was doing my usual routine of waking up at the butt crack of dawn and teaching 7 classes spread out over 14 hours, which would have been a much better day if my 8pm and final class had grasped the concept of the past perfect progressive tense a little better than they did. (It's really not that bad. I get TWO days off at the end of the month to celebrate Peruvian independence.)

The teachers of Maximo organized a North American Independence Day BBQ, since Canada Day was on Tuesday. (Our teaching staff is made up of half Americans, slightly less than half British, and two Canadians and an Australian for good measure.) For some reason, not many of the British teachers came. They didn't seem to like our jokes about throwing them down the well or tarring and feathering. You know, after 300 years, they still don't have a sense of humor about that.

Anyway, we (and by "we" I mean American Rob and the Australian) grilled up every kind of meat. It was like paradise. I ate a burger AND some pork. The plan was to have fireworks, but the only thing anyone could find was the firecrackers you light and throw, only the Peruvian versions have a wick so short you have to get rid of it awfully fast- which is why I let other people do the igniting. I like all my fingers, even if some of them can be described as "bulbous."

Happy 4th of July, everyone.

Travels with my Sister

While I'm looking forward to my adventures in traveling South America, I am a bit saddened that I won't be joined by my sister Holli on this trip. My sister just happens to be my favorite travel partner, but this time around, she won't be able to join me. She's a grad student, so I'm sure you can figure out the reasons.

We've had a few backpacking adventures in the past, around the British Isles and Scandanavia, and every time people figure out we're sisters, they always say something along the lines of, "You're sisters? And you, like, get along?" Well, yeah, we do, but sometimes, we don't. When traveling with someone, you spend 24 hours a day with them for the duration of your trip. You're bound to argue. Arguing with a friend can be awkward and weird, because you're not used to it. Holli and I are well-practiced at the argument. We've been doing it for 23 years. And when it's over, we don't feel the need to discuss it or try to figure out if we should continue the relationship, because we're sisters. We're still going to be sisters at the end of the trip, until the end of time, really, so we may as well just get over it and move on. I mean, if you're going to be stuck being someone's sister, you may as well have fun. No one else can make fun of your parents. (Only because we love you, of course.)

So who am I going to take embarassing photos of on this trip? I certainly don't want to take goofy pictures of myself. And if I feel like a good laugh, I won't be able to say, "Hey, do you remember the time mom played the finger cymbals?" or simply "Sandy!" to the person next to me. They won't understand why that's so funny. Or if my money belt is officially wet, I can't tell anyone, for fear they'll think I'm a freak. Holli already thinks I'm a freak, and neither of us really care. Surely my artistic renditions of each stop along the way won't be nearly as good.

So I'll start off on my own, meeting new people along the way, I'm sure. I'll meet up with Maribeth in September, then Ashley in October, but it just won't be the same. So, Holli, where are we going next?