Needless to say, we were very well-fed. Each morning, we woke up to  the sound of knocking on the tent and a voice offering, “Mate de coca, mate de coca?”

Day 3 was the longest but most beautiful day. We spent most of the day in the clouds, passing through the occasional natural stone tunnel, a beautiful pond, a couple of original Inka sites, and we stopped many times to ask ourselves whether we were dreaming. After lunch, we had to dance to some High School Musical and Backstreet Boys to get our energy back for the rest of the day. We were becoming a bit hysterical, giggling as we hobbled along down the last few stone staircases when we found ourselves at one of the most beautiful lookouts that we’d seen so far. We took some pictures, collapsed into the grass, and promptly found out that one of our guides was a massage therapist when she offered to crack our backs for us.

One of my favorite days of the trip so far was the Friday of a weekend trip to a small town called El Carmen, located in the province of Chincha. When we arrived, we ate a delicious lunch at the home of the Ballumbrosio family, a family well-known in Chincha for their dancing and music. The family is full of dancers, singers, violinists, and more, and we were lucky enough to have each of our meals in their home. After lunch, we went to the nearby Centro Cultural Amador Ballumbrosio where we received cajón lessons, and bumbled our way through lessons in traditional Afro-Peruvian dance, giggling and grinning the whole way.

The week prior to our trip to El Carmen, I personally had been feeling exhausted, having to be on my toes all the time as I navigate a new place and a new culture, and I know others of the group were feeling a similar way. During and after the dance and cajón lessons, I felt this energy, joy, and feeling of connectedness with the group that I hadn’t yet felt. That feeling continued into the evening when the Ballumbrosio family put on a show for us, full of song and dance. Near the end of the show, the dancers had us follow them out the door onto the street where we all danced in a circle around a bonfire with the stars above us. That dance was an experience that I truly cannot put into words. For me, there was something incredibly special about observing these important pieces of a different culture in an intimate way and, even though we were awkward at times, allowing ourselves to engage fully in the experience together. IMG_0342

-Hannah Beck

When I thought about spending three months in Peru, I had a lot of fears. I worried about learning a new language, learning how to use public transportation, and standing out as a tourist. Once I arrived, I realized that using public transportation is easy, standing out as a tourist is inevitable, and learning the language is the most challenging part of the trip. It is overwhelming, and very humbling, to experience living in an area where I required assistance to order food, get directions, and buy groceries, all while being immediately recognized as a foreigner. It became more difficult once I met my host family, who were, and are, determined to improve my Spanish through long conversations.

Despite all warnings of the adjustment period when spending so much time in another country, I hadn’t quite realized just how difficult it would be to completely change my routine and suddenly need to acquire several new skills. Now, almost two months later, I have settled into a routine that I would have found hard to believe when I first arrived in Peru. I am capable of holding conversations with my host family in Spanish, with lots of laughing and minimal translation required. I also spend a lot of time with my host family and have learned a lot about them. In particular, I have an incredibly sweet host mother, who likes to cook, do her own home improvement projects, and loves to travel. Side note: if you ever get the chance, she makes incredible food.  I have learned so much about different South American countries from her stories, and we enjoy comparing the differences between Peru and the United States when we have dinner together. For lunch, much of the group frequents a restaurant near our classroom, and I no longer need help ordering my food. I have a favorite snack that I buy at the local grocery store, and a favorite route to run on weekends. Now that I’ve finally settled into a routine, our group is splitting up and moving to different parts of Peru. Having done it once before, I’m excited to see what new challenges arise!

-Erin Clayton, Senior

Living with a host family during my time here in Lima has been one of the most rewarding experiences I have had here in Peru.  I live in the district of Chorrillos with my host mom, Mary.  My host sister, Luana, lived with us until she traveled to Spain one month ago.  My host mom and I enjoy watching movies together, laughing about random things, and talking about our days. We also enjoy going out to eat my favorite Peruvian dish, “lomo saltado”. My host mom has a big heart and has made me feel at home here in Lima.  I am going to miss her a lot when I leave Lima next week!

-Anika Hurst, Junior

Garua!

Living in the Southern Hemisphere at the end of October means that we are transitioning into Spring!  Warm sunny days are slowly replacing the dense fog and humid cold of the city.  Most of our group is used to American winters.  We know what to expect and how to dress for the dry cold.  We rely on central heating to take the edge off.

Winter in Lima requires that we take a Limeña approach.  Extra blankets, layers and warm drinks have become the norm for most of us.  Small electric heaters are cheap and easy to find, but the electrical costs are prohibitive.  A family of four will spend $200 a month on electricity.  When a typical lunch costs around $3, spending double that on electricity per day is a lot.  Adding a small heater to your bill won’t go unnoticed.   While daytime temperatures are mostly fine, sunset freezes the air and our bodies.  On the coldest days, a dense fog hangs over the city all day.  Everybody talks about how London is foggy, wet and cold.  Lima gets 300 hours less sun than London annually with only about an hour of sunshine daily in winter!

Garua!  It sounds like a swear word, and maybe it should be.  Garua is a Spanish word meaning drizzle or mist.  It never rains in this desert city, but the air is always wet.  Apparently, the droplets are just so fine that they can’t form actual raindrops.  What a shame!  While Peruvians have figured out creative ways to create value using the fog (“Peru Fog Catchers Net Water Supplies”), we mostly just feel its cold dark presence.  American author, Herman Melville, said of Lima “it’s the strangest, saddest city thou cans’t see.”  We feel you Herman!  

Here’s a student’s perspective on the Lima winter:

Close your eyes and picture yourself standing in front of an old analog TV. You’re moving in between channels, but nothing’s on, so every time you twist the knob you’re greeted with another blank wall of static. So you keep searching, but again and again, you find nothing on, only static.

This is what it’s like to live in Lima, Peru’s capital city; it’s a cold place blanketed under a cover of smog or fog or just general grayness, enough that the days start to blend together ever so slightly until you’re not quite sure how long you’ve been here or how much longer you will be. But just like staring into that blank TV, that static slowly absorbs you just enough for you to find the tranquility underneath it all, and just enough so on the days where the sun peeks through the grayness for just a moment in the afternoons, you relish its warmth just a little more, like the faint dashes of color in the mess of black and white.

-Joe Whetzel

On September 7th, we visited Museo Larco in Lima. The first part of the museum featured a grid displaying the timeline crossed with geographical regions. It provided an image on which to begin the following historical venture. We then proceeded to walk chronologically through the art of Peru. We started in the pre-ceramic era of 8000 A.C. to 2000 A.C. During this time, there was no calefaction available to bake clay, and instead, they dried materials using the sun or used wood and stone. Caral, the oldest city in the Americas that we would visit a few weeks later, would provide a great example of the architecture and art of this period. After the start of ceramics and the formative era, we dove into what Ulla (our history professor) focused on the most: The Auge Era. This era contained the Mochica culture on the north coast, Lima culture on the central coast, Nazca culture on the south coast, and Huari, Cajamarca, Tiahuanaco, Recuay, and Santa in the Sierra. These regions featured their own architecture and arts. Most notably, there were Huaca de la Luna, Huaca Pucllana, Nazca Lines, and Tiahuanaco structures, respectively.

We immersed ourselves in artwork and pottery featuring birds, snakes, cats, and spiders. These creatures were turned into powerful anthropomorphic figures of gods when they were combined with each other. The bird represented the skies, heavens, and the land of the gods: Hanan Pacha. The cat represented the physical earth, the land of humans: Kay Pacha. The snake represented the underworld, the land of the dead: Uku Pacha. Also featured heavily in Peruvian art is the idea of the spiral, which represents the natural cycle of life. This spiral went through each of the three worlds and was considered to be powered by the duality of life. Juxtaposing figures such as night and day, light and dark, sun and moon, land and water, hot and cold, man and woman, etc. were what allowed life to exist and allowed for the cycle of birth and death on earth.

These motifs were then extended deeply into the erotic arts. The cycle of life was quite literally continued by the combination of the opposing figures of woman and man. Sex held no taboo, but rather a deep reference in their culture. There are countless artistic expressions highlighting the cultural significance of the act. It was viewed as something beautiful and celebratory. The Pre-Colombian cultures even embraced anal sex as a way of reversing the spiral. There were considered certain days when this was important because, on these days, the dead would come up to the human realm, and the gods would descend into the underworld to tend to it. It is fascinating how these ancient cultures, in certain ways, feel more progressive than America now, where “Conservative Christian” culture still has many effects on our younger generation. We are a generation that has experienced purity culture’s damages as well as witnessing nowadays as there are arguments in our politics over marriage rights and contraceptives and much more. This freedom of expression within the realm of art and sex and bodies is something beautiful and pure, and sadly something that feels very far away from where we are today.

-Jaylen Flesher

First Impressions…

Cross-cultural programs are notoriously busy!  We are taking a full load of college courses while navigating a gigantic city (think NYC with 10x less infrastructure) with traffic patterns that aren’t really patterns at all.  Everyone and everything needs to be filtered through Spanish, and the history and customs and politics and every other thing is foreign.  It’s work!  It’s new and stressful.  

Amidst all the stress and challenges of our new milieu, we are thankful that we have each other and the regular faces of the program – our leaders (Celia and Kris), our Spanish teachers, our topical lecturers.  And of course there are our families!  Families form the bedrock of our cultural learning here.  We go home to them every night, we talk about church, homelife, politics and customs with them.  They worry about our well-being and they are patient with our language.  They are so patient with our language! 

Even with all the support that we have from family and others, it still feels strange, and fitting in sometimes feels impossible.  Here’s a student’s perspective on ‘fitting in’:

I spent the first several days here in Peru wanting to blend in as much as possible. I considered dying my hair darker so that I wouldn’t be as recognizable as someone from the United States: I would think constantly about how I could blend in: can I look more Peruvian? How are these women dressing? How do they wear their hair? How do they interact with other people on the bus, in the streets, or in the market? I have noticed a lot of activewear and tennis shoes. Women here are wearing flare-leg pants or straight-leg jeans. Often they have long straight dark hair that is cut all to the same length. I was hyper-aware of my taper-leg skinny jeans and my lighter + layered hair, which I often have pulled back into a ponytail. I don’t blend in at all really, except for mimicking how Peruvian women act. Still, I laugh too loud when I walk with friends and hesitate too much when I am trying to figure out whether the cashier is asking for cash or card or if I want a receipt. I have been finding myself wishing I wasn’t so obviously from the United States. It’s exhausting, I wish I could navigate better; I wish I could speak better Spanish; I wish I could look more Peruvian. I keep falling short in ways that I feel are intrinsically part of me. I feel frustrated when I spend half an hour, my maps rerouting, turning in circles trying to find a park when I can usually rely on my sense of direction to get me where I need to go. I feel inadequate as a communicator when I have miscommunicated important information because I am still learning Spanish. These, and dozens of other parts of myself that I hold dear feel like they are crumbling. I can only hope that there is some light, somewhere, that is revealed when I strip down all of the attributes and skills, and ways I used to understand who I am. 

This past Sunday, I knew I was going to church with my host family. I was already experiencing some stress regarding the 3-hour long service that was awaiting me. I braided my hair, put on my skirt and corresponding shirt, sweater, etc. I was ready. I wanted to show my host mom a) that I was ready to do this thing that she cared about and b) that I owned clothes other than the two pairs of jeans that I’ve worn every day since I had arrived. Fifteen minutes before we were to leave, she knocked on my door. I could tell from the moment she opened her mouth that she was uncomfortable. I wasn’t dressed formally enough for church. I was stunned. She had just told me that jeans were more formal than the skirt I had chosen. I broke in that moment more than I had at any other point in this trip. Some deep-seated feeling of inadequacy flushed through me. I knew that I didn’t understand, and it hurt. Who am I without my communication and navigation skills, and who am I without my ability to understand? Frankly, I am unsure.

-Maggie Garber