Peru Week 1: Peruvian Time & Death to The Ice Cream Man

 I pose this question: Can anyone tell me why a country that is 81% Roman Catholic, does not celebrate "Fat Tuesday" aka "Mardi Gras" i.e. the night before Lent where, "Catholics across the world are to give up a vice until Easter and because of this should spend more time eating and drinking everything filthy they can get their hands on the night before such day," does not celebrate it?  I am dumbfounded and if there happen to be any anthropologists, theologians, sociologists, or car mechanics out there that can answer this little question I promise you one Alpaca hat from Peru.

 

So, that little task out of the way and we are off with the story… I get to Peru late on "Fat Tuesday" and there is no "Fat" to speak of. There is however Peruvian time. By Peruvian time I mean this. My bags take an hour to get out of the plane and onto the baggage claim, the car service I had secured the day before did not show up and the money exchange could not exchange my money to make a phone call to the service. Some two hours later I make it to my hostel to "sleep"  though three hours of one guy hitting one two girls in the same room, in a different language, for the majority of the night.  Early the next morning I wake up, take my first shower in three days, get a map, a taxi, and head off to school, I arrive feeling more retarded and out of it than a sorority girl at a ruffy party. To top it off, the emails that I had been sending to the main office in Chili were not being communicated to the school in Peru. Thus, the school was at the same time worried that I had died and also not expecting me. They find the placement test; I take it and score just high enough to enter into course 1A. For those who are unfamiliar with placements tests. I was barely allowed into the school for as much Spanish as I got right and I suspect the administrators were surprised I knew the Spanish word for taxi, which consequently is actually "taxi". 

 

Four hours latter school ends, my brain and body hurt and the school has phoned my new "mother" Monica to pick me up. While I am not shopping for a new mother, when staying with a family in a different country, they transfer the family temporarily to you. So mother is mother, bother is brother and so forth. Luckily, I suspect they recognized my age and shinning personality so they placed me with a 53 year old woman who does TaiChi and Riki. She is very nice and reminds me a bit of an old pseudo-grandmother of mine. She has an older boyfriend named Pepe, whom drives a 76 Camero (yes in Peru, holy shit) and owns a used car lot. I am, if nothing else, amused.

 

Monica has a maid, Teresa, who brings her 13 year old son to work everyday (its summer break here so he is out of school). Teresa is here 5 days a week and whether I make my own bed or not, she will remake it tucking the sheets in so tight that for the first few times I got into bed I thought someone had short sheeted the bed. There is also a woman from Ecuador that is staying here with her 9 year old daughter. I am still trying to figure out the story behind them.

 

As I write this little tale I am sitting in the backyard at your standard plastic table and chairs. The yard is edged by a nice little garden with a few fruit trees and cactuses.  Monica usually has nice soft music playing and the doors and windows are always open. It's beautiful and tranquil here. All except for the ice cream men. These little devils ride around on pedal bikes passing by the house or in the neighborhood every five to ten minutes. They don't play the traditional American or Spanish music, rather, they have a horn that sounds like a bird has just fallen from the sky and is dying a painful death just a few feet from you. The first time I heard it I thought someone was in trouble. The second time I waited for the final painful breath. Finally when it didn't end I asked Monica what the hell was going on and she explained to me it was the ice cream man.

 

Later that day I saw one of the bastards. They ride and where all yellow. It's like the devil incarnate but rather than red and horns out of his head, he is yellow and has horns on his bike. I am going to kill one of them before I leave. Maybe not them, maybe instead I will find out where they all park their fleet of torturous ice cream bikes one night and attempt to disassemble all of them for good. I suspect if I actually did this, they would just send the little demons back to hell for a few more and then spend most of their afternoons outside my window until my ears began to bleed yellow.  My window does open and also faces the street, so in the afternoon, the few siestas that I have had, I have spent time contemplating different things to throw from my window in hopes of knocking one out. I am always open for suggestions if one should fall my way.  Chao.