Teaching and Living in Piura, Peru 08/09

Well, I will be teaching 3 English classes: 2 Intermediate I classes, and 1 Upper I class. I´m looking forward to meeting my students and getting started. I have my lesson plans for the first week all ready and this weekend I just want to rest and relax.

Tomorrow Catherine and I are going with our ¨house companions¨to a place called Chiclayo about 3 hours south of Piura. It´s supposed to be a beautiful town with an amazing history museum - or so says the History professor from Barcelona who´s living with us - and some really good shopping And next weekend we´ve already made plans to go to Mancora which is a beach resort town about 2 hours away with amazing beaches and where it´s always sunny, so I´m looking forward to getting a nice start on my tan next weekend So when all of you are pasty-white in the middle of a North American winter I´ll come home with an amazing, glowing tan It´s okay - you can be jealous

The only hitch this week has been my non-functioning laptop. On the first day we were in the office, I hooked it up to the internet and the cord accidently got wrapped around my foot, so when I got up, the whole laptop crashed to the ground. Nothing seemed to be wrong with it, but the internet doesn´t work, or if it does, it´s so slow that it might as well not be working. So the tech people have been sending someone new every day to take a look at it. And in broken English and my limited Spanish we´ve established the fact that it´s a hardware problem. So next week, someone´s going to take it apart for me and try to fix it. I´m so glad that there are computer geeks in every culture

I just arrived in Piura. I think I´m going to like it here. The lady that Catherine and I will be staying with is a very nice 55-60ish woman who looks like she´s done this a lot over the years. It looks like a boarding house. Catherine and I are sharing a room. So if we really like it at this house, we know that a room will be opening up in a month and maybe one of us can move into that room. The house is beautiful with brightly colored walls and tiled floors, artwork on the walls and sitting areas in both the front and back porches of the house. We´re staying with 5 other women right now. We´ve met 3 of them. The other two are gone on vacation right now, so we´ll probably meet them by next weekend when classes start. At least 2 of the other women are teachers at the university, so that makes it easier to get answers to questions right away. My Spanish is returning more quickly than I expected. Which is nice, but I still have a very long way to go. I´m writing from an internet cafe about 20 feet from the front door of the house that we´re staying in, there´s a beautiful park across the street and it´s a balmy 78 degrees with a nice breeze blowing. Piura has lots of trees and the area that we´re staying in is rich and very safe. We´ve been told several times that when November/December rolls around, it´s going to be VERY hot, but being winter right now, it´s pretty nice out. Flying into Piura reminded me a lot of the terrain in Arizona and New Mexico area. Piura´s pretty big, and looks like an oasis as you´re flying over all these arid, scrub-brushed mountains and hills. The city itself is on a plain and we´ve been told that there´s a beach only 1 hour away. There´s a resort town only 2.5 hours´ bus ride from here, so we´ll probably spend a couple weekends there - hopefully at least my birthday weekend
Gotta go, my sole is almost up!

I arrived in Lima on Wednesday and Catherine and her friend Aldo were there to greet me. They were real troopers, there at 5:20am and my flight was 2 hours delayed because a door wouldn´t seal before we took off. I slept most of the flight and didn´t even notice the screaming kids until we landed and I woke up a little bit. I spent most of the first day sleeping off my jet lag and we all piled into a taxi and headed over to Aldo´s girlfriend´s house (Jessica) to drink Pisco Sours - the national drink- and dance a little salsa. It was the first real test to see how much spanish I really remembered since Jessica and her family don´t speak English at all. Some of it came back, but I couldn´t remember a lot of easy vocabulary that I should have. I know that my grammar is terrible, but I can usually make myself understood.

The other day we caught a bus - literally they barely stop and you have to get on before they take off again - to another part of the city to see a very old Franciscan monestary and the oldest catacombes in Peru. The monestary was beautiful with tons of artwork and gardens. When I post pictures, you´ll see that I´m wearing my sweatshirt in every picture. They aren´t taken on the same day, it´s just cold here - about 55-60 degrees and overcast most of the time - and the catacombs were no exception. Afterwards we sampled churrizos from a roadside stand and walked through the Plaza de Armas and the Plaza de San Martin and an outdoor shopping mall and a couple more churches before hopping another bus back to Aldo´s apartment.

Some funny things about Lima. It never rains here, it rains in the mountains and the city gets its water from the run-off coming down the mountains. The mountains are on one side of the city and the Pacific Ocean is on the other side. The seafood here is amazing. I tried Cebiche today - raw fish cooked by acids in the lemon, garlic, lime, onions, picante (hot sauce), and pepper. It´s really good despite the way it sounds. Peruvian food is amazing. The cost of living here is also amazingly cheap. The dollar to sole exchange rate is s/ 2.80 and most of the food, clothing, and transportation is the same price in soles as it would be in dollars - only it´s almost 3x cheaper. Money goes so much further here. Also, Catherine and I bought cell phones recently. I bought a brand new motorola cell phone for the equivelant of $30 and could have bought an iPhone for $178 - take that Faustin!

The only thing they don´t have here is Walmart. . . sorry Mom

For those of you who don't know the story of how I got involved in moving to Peru for a year, here it is! In January/February, Catherine Leonard and I were talking about traveling and how much we both wanted to see the world and get out of the states for a while. Catherine mentioned that she was considering going to Peru to teach English at a University in Piura run by the Catholic lay-order of Opeus Dei. She had had an interview and had been accepted. She suggested that I apply, so I did and was given an interview, was accepted and mailed my visa paperwork by April.

It was an easy process to put in motion, but a hard decision to follow through with. I'm going to be leaving a lot behind here in the states. Not the least of which are Brahim and my family. Without their love and support, and Brahim's constant reassurances that everything would be alright, I think I might have cracked by now. It's getting really tough at this point because I know that there is a possibility that I will not see my grandparents again - whom I love dearly. There's also a lot of uncertainty surrounding my return in a year. Will I find a job? Where will I live? What will I do/be doing with Commissioned by Christ in the meantime? etc. etc. God has blessed me. He keeps reassuring me. He will provide and I simply need to have faith. If you pray, please pray for me. And for Catherine too.

I must go take care of a few more things. Re-pack my bags, and work out details of how I will be getting home to Pennsylvania tomorrow.