Tessallate

On bravery and patience

May 26, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Pomac Forest Chiclayo Peru

It’s not that I’ve never experienced the challenging situations that living in another country present, but this time it’s more apparent than others. This time around I’m learning more about bravery and adaptability and the clashing of cultures.

Everyday requires bravery to do uncomfortable and hard things and patience to get through, so in honor of this I thought I’d share the top moments thus far:

1. Killing of the roaches. Ok so this one was mainly Michael, but I helped. For the first few weeks we would find roaches in our kitchen. We would get home at night, flip on the lights and they would be there waiting. After debating the best attack route we would spend hours trying to corner them and squash them. They are so fast and fearless and giant. Our can of Raid sits on the counter ready for when they show up next time.

life in Peru

2. Freezing showers. I know I sound like a spoiled American…but I really don’t like cold showers and I have to prep myself before I can brave the cold temperatures. These aren’t just lukewarm showers, they are straight up cold. To dull the shock of these here are the two solutions we’ve come up with:

  • Exercise before you shower. If you are sweaty and hot then the water feels more refreshing and less terrible. 
  • Boil water and keep it in a pitcher by the shower before you get in. Mix the boiling water with the freezing water to reach a desired temperature and then rinse off with that.

3. Speaking Spanish. Turns out, working and having to speak a different language while working is hard. It’s hard to communicate ideas and projects when you don’t know terminology or the right vocab. I know I sound like an idiot every time I try to tell a story or communicate something, so this is also a lesson in humility and patience.

4. Teaching. Unexpectedly, I’ve been asked to help teach English at the elementary school just a few times a week. I was kind of terrified at first since I’ve never really taught anything to small children. Luckily, kids are the most forgiving and they are mostly just fascinated that I’m white and blonde. They shower me with hugs, cheek kisses, origami, stickers, and apples (the cliche gift of teachers!).

5. The noise. Chiclayo is a noisy place. Around 5am everyday we get woken up by roosters outside of our window (I still have yet to find them, but when I do…). I didn’t know cities even had roosters. There is also constant noise with honking, sirens, and construction EVERYWHERE including on top of our house. This doesn’t bother me except when I’m sleeping and they are hammering and dropping bricks right above my head.

Luckily, I’m with some pretty great people with pretty great senses of humor. People that will laugh with me when we are served potatoes and rice for the 20th day in a row. Today we had a potato appetizer, rice/potato entre, and then a rice dessert. So we laughed, because if we didn’t laugh we might cry because of breaking points and long days of work and frustrations. But Arrested Development starts tonight and that’s enough to heal any wound.

Chiclayo Peru

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South of the equator

May 15, 2013 by 2 Comments

Sunset in Peru

It’s been two weeks in Peru and life’s going at warp speed. There’s so much to say and tell and show but I don’t know how. So I will post photos and tell you about a few crazy experiences.

After we arrived in Chiclayo and settled into our apartments, we started work right away. There are several different campuses so we are all split up in different places. I split my time between an elementary school where I help teach English and a high school where I work with IT and internet marketing.

Peru

The first week we were here they had a giant welcoming ceremony for all of us. We are the first American interns to come to Chiclayo so they like to parade us around. They’ve welcomed us with open arms and I think we are getting spoiled with all of the attention we are getting. Plus, not many tourists come to Chiclayo so the fact that we are white makes us quite a spectacle. I’ve never felt like a celebrity before, but I think this has to be what it’s like. I literally get mobbed everyday at the elementary school after I’ve been gifted apples, stickers, origami, pens, and Barbie pictures. The teacher will have to hold all of the kids back after they’ve attacked for 5 minutes and I have no hope of finding my way out alone.

English teaching in Peru

I think Michael likes all of the attention he is getting from the ladies ;)

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We’ve also been publicly embarrassed on several occasions when they make us dance in front of massive amounts of people. My favorite was when we drove up to a nightclub, walked in to a standing ovation by students and parents, and then sat down. Flashing lights of different colors were everywhere and tribal music began to play. We thought we would get to watch a cool tribal dance…no…turns out we were the ones doing the tribal dancing. So there we are, in a flashing nightclub, dancing terribly to tribal music, and all of the sudden clowns on stilts appeared. After 10 minutes of this, we were given some potatoes (because who doesn’t want a potato after working out?) and then escorted out. We didn’t know if this experience was real or a dream. I’m still confused.

To top the week off, we had a mother’s day feast of cow heart, utter, and tongue (which was a very nice gesture and we had to do our best to eat as much as we could). Never will I ever say “I’m so hungry I could eat a cow!”

So we’ve done service projects on the outskirts of town, taught, danced, eaten (I mean we have really eaten…so much food), went to the beach, learned to enjoy potatoes for every meal, eaten crazy weird things, spoken broken Spanish, and kissed too many cheeks to count. All this and we’ve still got the whole summer ahead of us.

Chiclayo, Peru

Chiclayo, Peru

Peru beaches

 Chiclayo, Peru

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The language barrier

May 10, 2013 by 2 Comments

After arriving in Chiclayo, I soon realized that I was done for. My Spanish skills seemed non-existent and I couldn’t manage to put together a fully coherent sentence when trying to communicate. But Tessa, I thought you spoke Spainsh, you are asking yourself. Yeah…well I did…a long time ago. And I thought I maybe still did. But turns out if you don’t practice, you really do loose abilities and talents. So, we are starting from square one.

After my first day of feeling overwhelmed, frustrated, and exhausted from trying to work with the IT guys in Spanish, I’m trying to get creative with this. Google translate is single handedly saving my life.

My favorite language barrier/translation experience happened when we were still in Lima after getting picked up by a few representatives of the school we are working at. I looked up and found this sign:

Lima Peru

Of course, I had to share this gem with others and soon we were all giggling to ourselves. We asked one of our Peruvian friends how they would pronounce that sign in Spanish…and it’s exactly how we would in English. At this point we were laughing even harder, which made all of the Peruvians confused. We then had to explain what this word means in English, which was also entertaining.

Moral of the story: Even though language barriers can be frustrating, they can also be hilarious and bonding.

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Getting lost in Lima

May 7, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Lima, Peru

Peru is a trip. Seriously though, I feel like I was dunked under water, held there for a while, and now I’m flailing my limbs around and trying to breathe in as much air as possible. But more on that later.

We flew into Lima on Tuesday night and taxied over to our hostel in Miraflores. Sidenote, we found the hostel on Airbnb.com, which is the best. Go use it. Our host, Emma, was the kindest lady and stayed up so late just chatting with us and showing us around the apartment. The next morning we were greeted by the loud voices of the other travelers in the  hostel as we tried to sleep in. After pulling ourselves out of bed we chatted with the solo-traveler Mike who gave us a map and told us how to get to downtown Lima by bus. We took his advice and explored the city center, wandered down streets, and grabbed some ice cream. On our way home we got lost but then found by a pack of Peruvian grandmas. They told us they would tell us where to go, but then insisted we get in their car so they could just take us there. They seemed harmless, so we obliged and made it back safely and even found a churro truck on the way.

Lima, peru

That night, after cleaning up in the one bathroom that the travelers all share with the family, we grabbed dinner at a food court overlooking the ocean in Miraflores. We spent the next day hanging out with Emma and her husband who drove us to the Lima Temple and ate some good Chifa (a hilarious combination of chinese and peruvian food) with us. We then explored some pre-Inca ruins and met an Indian travel agent friend.

Miraflores, Lima, Peru

Miraflores Peru

We met up with the rest of the BYU clan the next day and ate breakfast and explored more of the city with them. Little did we know what we had gotten ourselves into for the rest of this summer. We hopped on an overnight bus that evening and spent the night driving up the coast to Chiclayo where we live now. Lima was definitely a vacation to what Chiclayo has brought upon us, but I’ll save that for the next post.

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Lima, Peru

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Here’s lookin’ at you, Peru

April 23, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Peru, Machu Pichu

Summertime is made for adventure, and what’s more adventurous than moving south of the equator? That’s what Michael and I told ourselves as we purchased tickets that would land us in Chiclayo, Peru for the summer. This all came about in a really nonchalant way with Michael toying with the idea of doing an internship there, meeting with some people, getting a grant, and then…what we are really going? Yep, we are going. In one week. (Cue panic attack for everything we have to get done before then)

Basically, we are still fuzzy on some of the details, but we are moving there for the summer to work at a local University in the city. We will be helping with marketing, SEO, eco-tourism, and English courses. Unfortunately for me, my Spanish skills are really rusting seeing as the last time I used Spanish was in Spain…3 years ago. But, the cool thing about this internship is that we are really going to be pushing this University and it’s resources to the next level. They are excited and we are really excited and I guess that’s the  most you can ask for.

So, here’s to adventure and unknowns. And to prove how adventurous we really are, we bought Chacos, because what says adventure more than a pair of Chacos? Watch out Peru, our strappy sandle feet are about to trapse all over you.

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