So a couple of weekends ago my roommates and I moved out of our host families´ houses and into our house in Habitat. I´m definitely sad to not be with my host family anymore...it was a really great experience. I feel so fortunate to have had almost an entire month with a Peruvian family that truly loved me and treated me like their 5th child. At the same time it is really nice to have some independence and privacy. It´s also nice to unpack and start to feel a little bit settled in our new home. The other day one of the neighborhood boys and I were chatting and he asked what we do for fun since we don´t have a TV in the house and I said we cook together, play games together, read and spend a lot of time talking! These activities have truly been wonderful! So much of the time that we would spend doing other things we just spend hanging out with each other! I am so grateful to have the other volunteers to be going through this experience with!
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| D-10...my home for 2 years! It´s not the prettiest thing, but the goal is to paint it this year! |
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| Dining Room/Kitchen/Living Room area |
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| The perilous steps leading to my bedroom |
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| Our top of the line ¨washer and dryer¨ |
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| Patio area...a bit of a mess right now! |
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| My room...in desperate need of some decorating! |
Christmas in Peru
So this was the first Christmas I´ve ever spent away from home, and it was really tough. I was really sad, especially on Christmas Eve. I had to leave Mass on account of crying. I was just really missing home! It´s so tough being away from home for the holidays, because the best part about the holidays is getting to spend time with loved ones, especially family. Therefore not being able to be with my family made it not seem quite like Christmas. Two of my housemate´s families were here however, which was wonderful to at least be around a family. It was really sad, but I did feel blessed to have a lot of wonderful people here in Peru to spend the holidays with. It was also interesting getting to experience Christmas in a different country. Here, Christmas Eve is when the big celebration happens, so we went to mass here in Habitat on the 24th, which was really beautiful by the way! At the end of Mass the congregation was addressed in several native languages with a special Christmas message. It was really lovely! After that we went around to give out Christmas baskets to some families here in Habitat and we sang them some Christmas carols. Then everyone split up to go to their host families to wait for Christmas. It seems to resemble our celebration of the New Year. Everyone waits anxiously for midnight and then at that time everyone hugs each other and wishes each other a Merry Christmas. Meanwhile the streets resemble a war zone with the amount of smoke and noise from all the firecrackers! After that we went into the house for a toast, to open gifts and finally to eat! We sat down to eat around 1 am, so of course it was a late night! Christmas day isn´t really celebrated as much as the night before, so we had a pretty tranquilo day of hanging out with the family. After mass that night we had some hot chocolate (despite the fact that it is summer here) and of course, the Peruvian staple- Paneton! This food is essentially fruit cake, and it is consumed in amazing quantities in this country! I decided that the more I eat it the less I like it. On a side note...nativity scenes here are HUGE....literally sometimes! I included some photos of some nativity scenes from a house that we visited that basically transforms their entire place into a bunch of different nativity scenes that represent various regions of Peru. This means that the nativity scene to represent the jungle included giant insects and monkies...and jungle Barbie and Ken hahaha they cracked me up!
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| Christmas Din with the volunteers and the families of two housemates that were visiting for the holidays. |
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| A nativity scene made to represent Tacna. |
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| A Barbie nativity scene! |
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| Christmas Mass |
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| Mis hermanos (brothers) |
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| My Peruvian parents and Mallory |
Cultural Stuff
Of course there are soo many interesting cultural things that I´m learning to get used to everyday! One thing that continues to be difficult is the language of course! I knew coming here would be challenging in terms of learning Spanish, but I underestimated how different it would be. The Spanish is relatively easy to understand, but they use soo many words that are different than what I learned. Here are a few examples of some different words:
Tacos- high heels
Palta (not aguacate)- avocado
poroto (not frijoles)- beans
chela (not cerveza)- beer
lapicero (not pluma or boligrafo)- pen
wa-wa - baby (in Quechua)
They also use a whole bunch of slang, which makes it especially challenging! I have no idea what the students say to me half the time, because they speak so quickly and use so much slang! These tricky Peruvians also like to switch the letters of words around or for example start to say one word and finish it with another word. Like a kid might say... mier (the first part of a swear word in Spanish) -coles (meaning Wednesday). I think after Mes de mision I´m going to be an expert at both Peruvian slang and swear words!
Speaking of Peruvian Spanish...one noticable trait is the usage of the diminutive. By adding -ita or -ito to the end of words it is made smaller so to speak. So you can use the diminutive if you´re referring to something that is indeed smaller or it kind of makes words kinder. So if you called your grandma vieja (old) it would be disrespectful, but if you said viejita it would be totally ok. As another example my host mom one day described a salad as una ensaladita con un poquito de tomatito y choclito y cebollita y lechugita haha
Peruvians really like their nicknames...which tend to be very blunt and often relate to the physical appearence of someone. For example if you were in the street and called out ¨Chato¨ (a nickname for someone short) who knows how many heads would turn haha Some of the nicknames are interesting and address things that in the US we do not talk about...like the nickname Gorda for example is super common...meaning fat. Or Negra (meaning black) for someone with darker skin or Chino (meaning Chinese). These would definitely be offensive names back at home, but here it´s so common. I´m not judging, but I guess I just wonder how a teenage girl´s self esteem would be if she´s constantly being called fat by everyone. hmmm...So I too have acquired some nicknames...One of which is Piolin, meaning Tweety in Spanish. Apparently my blonde hair and light skin makes me earn the name of a yellow bird. Another name is Flaca, meaning skinny or as my host sister calls me occassionaly...esqueleto con patas meaning basically a walking skeleton...they completely overestimate my skinniness. I´m sure with all the delicious food that nickname will fade in the next two years!!
