Before I get into the fun stuff, first off I guess I’ll explain my classes and the university here. I’m going to be taking 2 strictly Católica courses in art history: Visual Artes, which focuses mainly on French painting between the end of the 19th and the middle 20th centuries, and the History of Graphic Art, in which I actually have to create graphic designs. The classes are taught all in Spanish, and it’s definitely intimidating being surrounded by Peruvians while I try to make out what the professor is saying. My notes end up coming out in a weird mix of Spanglish that only I can decipher. Both of the teachers are really nice though and know I’m a foreign student (I’m the only one in each class I think) so at least they won’t just think I’m that dumb girl that never speaks up in class (way too scared right now). In addition to the Católica courses I’m also going to be taking 2 program courses offered at Católica in English for UVA students specifically, because they both seem so interesting: Peruvian Social Reality (basically an ethnographic overview of Peruvian culture) and Ethics and Film, which seems really interesting and fun. During the month of April I will take a class in the morning every day at the language institute to get Spanish credit for 314.
The campus is located a short bus ride away or about a 30 minute walk from our house in Pueblo Libre. It is gated off from the rest of the city and you cannot enter without proof that you belong there. Inside it kind of looks like a tropical resort because there are white buildings with outdoor hallways and stairways and nice landscaping with tropical plants. There are also fountains outside which I saw some students wading in and hanging out in between classes. There’s still that same really “college” feel that we have at UVA because so many students are sitting out at all times under trees or in the grass, talking or reading. Sometimes it feels a little magical on campus because it’s so pristine and beautiful and cut off from the rest of the city even though its gates are surrounded by a metropolis. For example, I saw a couple of deer grazing on the main lawn the other day. Apparently there are about 5 deer that live inside the campus walls in the wooded/grassy areas – how they got in there in the first place God only knows. One horribly frustrating thing about the system here at PUCP is how you get readings for classes. People don’t really buy books, instead you’re assigned readings that you have to check out of the library and take to these little photocopy booth/rooms where disgruntled women copy your readings for 10 cents a page. The lines can get really awful waiting to get your readings photocopied and Peruvians have no concept of lines or waiting your turn so I usually end up getting screwed and waiting forever while other people jump in front of me.
More about daily life here: meals. For breakfast I always have a bowl of mixed fruits, some combination of grapes, pineapple, mango, papaya, tuna, cantaloupe, watermelon, and banana, juice, a piece of bread with butter and jelly and every once in a while a scrambled egg. Lunch is usually chicken and rice or some other type of meat dish and rice, sometimes with a salad to start off. But the salads here are very different, they don’t use lettuce, it’s usually a few slices of tomato, cucumber and maybe avocado covered in lemon juice and salt. Dinner is very similar to lunch, except with a soup to start off and topped off with desert at the end of something like jello or flan. Breakfast is usually whenever we wake up, lunch between 1 and 2 and dinner around 8 or 8:30 or even later on weekends.
Last night was Rubie’s 21st birthday so we all got together (us ten plus Paco and Margarita) at Rubie’s and Ann’s house, where their host mother, Carmen had laid out a fine spread of finger foods. We ate, popped open a few bottles of champagne, made yummy pisco sours (thanks to Margarita), had cake and played signs. We girls had also secretly baked a chocolate cake American style earlier in the day for her birthday because Peruvian cakes are often a little odd tasting and/or kind of dry. It was great fun and we even got to teach Paco and Margarita how to play signs (the best game ever). Around midnight we headed out in cabs to El Tizón, a small, slightly grungy bar with a hipster vibe decorated with adds for bands and posters all over the walls. When we walked in and Third Eye Blind was blasting through the speakers, I was completely sold. That night we all learned the hard way that pisco puro (straight shots of pisco) is never a good idea. We danced for hours to random American tunes (including Sublime!) and some funky jungle track that went on forever. With no AC, the dance floor was an absolute sweatbox and everyone was dripping wet the whole night but it was so much fun! We got back home at 5am and I fell asleep to the sound of birds chirping outside my window.
I woke up at 8am to the sensation of my bed shaking and the sound of car alarms going off outside – it was an earthquake! I knew instinctively what was happening; I even think I knew before I woke up because my dream changed into what was actually happening. I also knew that Lima experienced earthquakes/tremors somewhat frequently so it wasn’t that surprising, and the tremor wasn’t that intense, everything was just shaking around. I was still half asleep so I just lay there thinking it might be nice if the house ended up being seismically secure, then rolled out of bed to make sure I hadn’t just imagined it. Our host parents checked on Julia and me to make sure we were ok and not freaked out by it. Apparently there was a slight tremor last night at 1:30am also, but we must have been dancing in Tizón and didn’t feel it. So anyway, that’s the first time I’ve ever experienced and earthquake but maybe not the last.
