Comparison of Spanish Schools and Homestay in Buenos Aires, Guatemala, Ecuador and Peru

Postscript-  Comparison of Spanish Schools

I realize that one of the more useful things for many of you would be a brief comparison of the three Spanish schools I attended.  I did the homestay option at each and I can recommend all of them.  The specific family and the specific tutor are probably more important than the school.  I talked to one or two at each school that didn’t work out with their family or instructor.  That is one benefit of a larger program, you can ask to swap. 

I also chose cities to not be overbearingly hot.  I do not like the heat so I tried to pick places that were high up or far from the equator.  All of the cities I stayed in have their charm, and good food can be had in all of them.  I went for three stints of one month in latin America and didn’t get sick once.  Of course they didn’t have American style desserts in Latin America.  So, when I got home, I ate too much dessert and got sick my first week back.  A very 3^rd grade thing to do- but what can I say?  I do like dessert. 

Angies School Bogota

http://constructeca.com/angieschool.com/

Pros

Bogota is big.  There is a ton going on.  The couchsurfing.com meetings were a great place to meet people and practice the language.  I met lots of people that were really concerned about how foreigners experienced their city and they were very helpful.  I was able to find yoga classes and other activities.

Cons

All the big city issues apply.  At first the cops with rifles on every corner are a bit un-nerving, but you get used to them and are glad they are there.   Angie is a great tutor, she tailors things to your needs in real time, but that can slow lessons sometimes.  I also tend to respond a bit better to lessons that are more formatted. 

Terracentro Quito Ecuador

http://www.terracentrospanishschool.com/

Pros

Quito is an excellent city, coming in just below Buenos Aires.  Quito has lots of outdoor stuff nearby as well as the big city amenities.  I hiked and biked the volcanos, visited the equator, did the museum circuit.  I didn’t get to the jungle or the beach but they aren’t far away.  Terracentro was another small school with a bit more going on than Mundo Antiguo.  The cost was in between Guatemala and Argentina.  Sofia, who runs Terracentro, is great and seems to get excellent tutors.  I did my home stay option at Sofia’s family.  They had a separate garage apartment which was relatively quiet and private and was my best experience with facilities.  Overall Ecuador and Terracentro weren’t first on the list in any category but was second in most things making it an excellent value option.


Cons

I was only there for a week so I didn’t really address this.  It was easier for my tutor and I to spend time chatting than to drill on verbs, which is really what I needed.  I didn’t feel unsafe, but people I talked to in the city suggested I stay away from some places after 10 PM, places that were between the house and the city center.  I never felt unsafe, but that is probably a shortage of healthy fear on my part. 

Coined Buenos Aires Argentina

http://www.coined.com.ar/

Pros

Buenos Aires is an awesome city that you can spend a good while exploring.  From just a city standpoint, this was the best city to visit.  Coined did the best with organized events for students.  I spent more time with the woman who organized events than with any one tutor or teacher.  For many the group of 4-8 class may provide a nice social aspect to learning.  The group classes are less expensive.  I worked with around 5 instructors in my 3 weeks.  Several awesome and a couple that weren’t for me.

Cons

My class was mixed Brazilian, Swedish, and Japanese.  While the diversity was cool, the Brazilians were at my level on day 1, but after 2 weeks they were light years ahead due to the greater similarity with Portuguese.  Our instructor was more comfortable teaching more advanced stuff so she tended to cater to the Portuguese and the rest of us struggled.  Argentina is an expensive city compared to Cuzco or Antigua.  This school seems to be even more college kid oriented than the other two.  Which is probably a plus if you are college kid as opposed to a burgeoning old far like myself. 

The Spanish Academy Antigua Guatemala

www.spanishacademyantiguena.com

Pros

This little city is built around Spanish instruction.  They do an excellent job.  The city, food, and the school are amazingly inexpensive.  This was my most effective learning experience.  They also have outings and social activities to bring the students together outside class.  This is especially important if you are the only student with your family as the instruction is all 1 on 1. The school does have a little break each day for group Spanish games.  That is important to break up the day, and the group activity is more fun than the intense 1 on 1 learning.  But the breaks for group Spanish games are not as effective learning time.  Antigua is the safest place in Guatemala.  The tourist police do a great job.  There isn’t the cultural variety of Buenos Aires, but the trek’s into the local Maya enclaves are interesting.  I stayed with 1-3 other students in a large house with a large family.  The house was more of a small apartment complex.  So the social aspect of the 1 on 1 instruction experience was still pretty good.  Those that lived solo with a family seemed a bit lonely, but people got together for the bar scene every night.  If you just want the most effective learning Spanish experience, come here and sign up for an extra hour a day and Saturday class like I did.  Although the immersion into the family wasn’t as deep as the other places, I did get to know them, and they structured their interaction around us to be more helpful with the Spanish.  Usually we got 30-90 minutes of labored chat after each meal.  And they did have to labor to speak with the gringos.

Cons

Antigua is a very small city.  You couldn’t expect this city of 50,000 people (and 80 spanish schools) to keep you engaged on its own for more than a day or two if you aren’t in class.  The city is an 8 block by 8 block grid.  You don’t have the museum scene of the other cities but the architecture is cool.  The night life is filled with English speaking Europeans.  Outside Antigua, especially going into Guatemala city it can be unsafe.  For  being small, Antigua has a touristy feel, but you wouldn’t want to stay for long in a small Guatemala city without touristy amenities.   There are some similarly named schools in the town, so be sure you are getting the one you have read about.

Mundo Antiguo Cuzco Peru

http://www.learnspanishinperu.net/

Pros

You get the small shop feel and attention.  The family I stayed with was the most upper class of the 3 locations.  The travel agency attached to the school is pretty handy for city tour and other things you may decide to do.  The Inca trail is awesome!  Machu Pichu is pretty cool too.  Cuzco is a fairly large city so there is much to see.  Since there was less social interaction with students, I interacted a lot with my family.  They were great.  I went to their office Christmas party, cooked a Turkey for Christmas and took it a few blocks over to Grandma’s house, babysat and had the kids try to talk with me, went shopping with them, visited their fathers house in the valley.  I was really a part of the family on this trip.  All the families were great, but these folks were really embracing.  The Incan history has more to look at here than the Maya history around Antigua. 

Cons

If your instructor isn’t as good for you, it is more difficult to get someone else.  Not that they wouldn’t try to swap you, but they have less roster, and it feels a bit more personal to say someone doesn’t work well for you.  You have to sort of seek out events, there isn’t a standing activities list for the week as at the other larger schools.  My family was farther from the city center so my experience was more suburban, granted suburban Peru was unique in and of itself.  There was less social outlet at this school than the others.  Some people had trouble with the altitude.  The family I stayed with was the most upper class of the 3 locations.

isaac davenport

Happy Trails

I have finished my first full time week back at work.  It is hard to say goodbye to my sabbatical.  At this point, my Spanish is much improved.  It is funny though… I think I speak better than I listen.  Of course people who know me may think “that is no surprise”. 

When I talk I get to choose the words I use.  English similar words are popular for me.  I can simplify the grammar to break my thoughts down into more simple sentences than I would in English.  I can speak slowly.  However, I lose all that control when others talk.  Usually I can’t overhear a conversation and understand it.  I can typically get general points such as the idea that they were discussing a car and something that was expensive, but I typically couldn’t recount to someone what I have overheard. 

So, to develop my ear, I am watching a movie or two a week in Spanish with the subtitles or closed caption in English turned on.  Murray and I watched The Princess Bride in Spanish last night.  Murray cried at the end.  I am typing up this final entry on the same big screen TV I used to watch the movie.  I am telling myself that as long as I don’t attach cable or an antenna to the display, I am not violating my no TV policy.

Murray and I have a trip to Barcelona planned for April.  So the adventure isn’t fully over.  Perhaps I will get another shot at a sabbatical in the future.  If you get the chance, I would recommend it to anyone.

Happy Trails-

Isaac.

Convenience isn’t convenience

In the states, I think we sometimes have that attitude of “modern conveniences, yes they are nice to have aren’t they.”  Being in Latin America has changed my perspective on this.  Frequently these conveniences are actually my time:  The ability to get a drink of water without having to boil it first;  The ability to get a net connection regularly in your home and not have to walk to an internet café; the ability to just have a lock smith come over and change your lock without having to replace the whole system. 

There are other things that aren’t what we would think of conveniences which I miss.  Take for instance the gym I joined.  They had hours of 6-12, 3-9, on their brochure.  They crossed those out and had written in 7-12, 4-9.  I showed up and 4:10 one day and they were closed.  When I asked about that, I was instructed that I should come after 4:15. 

There were a whole string of events like this.  A cab driver who said he had change for a large bill and didn’t.  We drove all over Lima looking for a restaurant that would change my 100 soles ($38) bill.  There was the tour guide who said that Machu Picchu was designed in miniature in a stone model held at the Inca Museum, it wasn’t.  I went to a bank main office who said they couldn’t take AMEX, but their branch office down the street could, they couldn’t.  In the western world, for all the disinformation out there, we are still far more careful about what we tell people and what we appear to be confident of than in the Latin world.  I talked to other western travelers who also found this to be true.

Aside from the frustration, there are other things I want to do with my time.  Each of these events represents a small theft of the time that makes up my life.  I am a pretty patient person, in my own not so humble opinion.  If I lived in Latin America, I might have to rethink that policy.

Isaac with espanol instructor Jimmy above Cusco.  The red tiles remind me of the CU campus.

Isaac - Cusco

A playground area on the edge of Cusco, looks great, smells slimy

Kids

As great as the kids are, being around a 3 year old , and a 6 year old for a month  made me think, “gee not having kids around is nice.” This was even with a housekeeper and parents to watch after them.  The older kid is smart and rather willful.  She takes advantage of people where she can.  I am not used to 6 year olds that don’t quickly move into line when I use the “tough adult voice”.  The first time was when I was trying to figure out Spanish subtitles for DVDs.  For developing my ear, I wanted to buy a bunch of Spanish language DVD movies with English subtitles.  I put in a Spanish version of Lady and the tramp and couldn’t get the English subtitles going.  So I was going to try another movie, but the 6 year old had started watching and wouldn’t give me the remote.  I come from a background where outright fear of adult males is the norm so the situation was a bit baffling at first.  You can’t exactly use force on other people’s kids.   I suspect that her parent’s had use the “scary parent” voice so many times and not come through that she safely assumes adults are usually bluffing.  I had another incident where I was fixing the DVD player in the other room and she had climbed up on the armoire to manipulate the television.  When I tried to pull her off, she wouldn’t let go and was at risk of toppling a large, heavy, old style tube based TV down onto us.  Perplexing. 

I fear for Triny the new nanny.  She is 16 and from the sticks in Peru.  I get the sense she hasn’t experienced the full benefit of a high school education.  She is very nice, very naïve, and to be put up against this 6 year old (who is about to turn 7) for the next few years seems like a recipe for moose turd pie, if not a recipe for disaster. 

One thing in my favor is that the 6 year old was better at communicating with me than Triny- even though Triny spoke Spanish as a second language after Quechan.   The Quechan normally speak Spanish slower which makes it easier for me.  But the 6 year old quickly figured out where my vocabulary and grammatical abilities started and ended and liked to remind Triny that she needed to speak slowly for Isaac. 

At times I would talk to the 6 year old and you could forget she was 6, but later she would throw a tantrum or get hysterical over bouncing a ball in the house.  At Christmas eve, she was given a roman candle.  In Peru, roman candles are 5’ long and last for 5 minutes.  She would start to lose interest and the fireballs would start heading on lower trajectories, which made it more exciting for the rest of us as she was getting more bored holding up the long stick into the sky.

The fam 1

The fam 2

Is there a locksmith in the house?

This is hard for me to fathom, but I lost the house key to the host family’s place three times in two weeks.  The first two times were wrestling with change in my pocket for cab drivers.  In the second incident, I lost by wallet as well.  The third time is a complete mystery as I opened the door at ten that night and in the morning, between the front door and my room, I could not find my key.

Normally in the states, you would have a locksmith come out and change the pins in the cylinder and that would be that.  But in Peru, you can’t trust the locksmiths.  So the way you do it is you buy a new lock box, take the keys out and the locksmith never opens the tumblers so he can’t come back with a copy.  Only their security system, with intercom and phone and remote open button is a Chinese model that no one sells just the lock box for.  So I spent $300 replacing the entire system for them.

I could have tried to find two locksmiths, one to take the box in and out and one to change the tumblers at his shop so he wouldn’t know where to use a key copy if he made one.  But the logistics, time investment and logistical failure risk were high enough it wasn’t worth it. 

I managed to not beat myself up over this mental lapse for too long.  But it does make me wonder:  “Am I getting old?”  “Am I now completely reliant on my habits and systems to deal with day to day life details?”  It has been 20 years since I lost my wallet or keys.  I have put them through the laundry a few times, but the situation has been really frustrating.  And I pride myself on not falling into the frustration trap.  Traveling without ready access to cash is a real pain.  Even though only 2 out of every 100 merchants accepts AMEX in Peru, I must say AMEX has great customer service.  I don’t think our local credit union has much experience in dealing with foreign travel in their card department.

The funny thing is that the wallet I lost was an early Christmas gift from Murray’s sister before I left.  At least Murray doesn’t have to ask me what to get for a valentines day.

Going way back

A couple of things on this trip took me back to my youth.  Not a place I normally like to go, I am quite happy being and adult.  The first had to do with the beds.  Neither was very comfortable; they were worn and concave.  So I took one of the thin foam mattresses and put it on the floor.  This worked well, but I found that with the solid ground just below me I could easily cut off the circulation to my arm if the weight of my head or body were on it.  This time I just rolled over in the night.  This used to happen to me in a bunk bed I had that was too small.  When I was a teenager I would have a recurring nightmare that a boa constrictor was in my bed.  I would wake up in a panic only to go into a second panic to find out it was not a snake but my arm which had no feeling and would not move.  This always corrected itself in a few minutes, but it always took a while to get back to sleep after that.

The other even was trying the local delicacy, Cuy, which is fried Guiney pig.  It had an herb I didn’t like, but the meat, what little there was, was actually good.  It was much better than the squirrel I was forced to cook and eat after a friend and I made our first mammalian kill with a sling shot at a scout camp long ago. 

Cuy and Sarah, quiet the dish.

Not a lot of meat - I didn't realize you were supposed to eat the skin, like at KFC

surreality

Beach at Mirah Flores

So I had two surreal events on the trip home.  I had a 10 hour layover in Lima and headed for Mira Flores.  From a high shopping center you could look down on the beach, but I felt compelled to hike down and around to get the water.  One reason the beach was better from 100 meters up was you didn’t get the smell up there.  But the sunset was beautiful.  It was only interrupted by the sound of a dozen giggling and screaming catholic nuns.

I was sitting there in front of the changing yellow and orange colors when I heard what sounded like a group of school girls running toward the water, getting wet, screaming and running back up the bank.  They were throwing rocks out into the sea to see who could throw the farthest and laughing like it was the new Richard Prior stand up act.  I mean, I am glad that nuns can have such a good time now and then, but it was a strange intrusion into my zen sunset at the beach moment.

The next surreal experience came while I was cleaning up from 7 hours of urban hiking.  I was in a state of half undress in front of the sinks when a pudgy, indigenous guy asked if I worked out.  I admitted that I did, but not very often.  He said I had big arms.  I told him it was mostly genetics.  Then he asked if he could touch them.  I didn’t do the macho flex, so when he touched my arm, it was just a bag of liquid.  I didn’t get a “this is gay” vibe from him.  It was more “I wonder if I worked out a lot if my arms would look like that?”  Then he asked if I had 6 pack abs.  I said no and showed him the good.  He poked them with a tentative finger to see what was fat, and what was muscle. 

I am probably in better shape today than I have been in a while since I have had limited access to deserts other than those I baked for the family.  I do get to the gym more regularly while on these vacations.  Still, I NEVER get the “That guy is buff” response from people.  Perhaps it was the sleeveless under shirt which is a little tight now (my last clean one), or the paramilitary looking nylon “adventure pants” I got in Peru for my hiking trip.  But still, surreal, all in all.

The small "not scary" part of Lima with the American Chain Restaurants

Inca Trail and Machu Picchu Pics

I have been in some primitive showers at sleazebag hotels, but...




A cloudy day up top

 

My new friends Eduardo, Anna, Joe, Isaac, Hildagard, Anonymous German Spy, Marcelo, Marcel, Thomas

There is a waterfall and a 2000' drop behind me

Machu Picchu is cool, and by virtue of being next to it, I too am cool...

The path is hard, the path is beautiful

Machu Picchu

I leave at 6 in the morning tomorrow, Saturday.  If you don't see a wrap up for this Peru trip by the end of next week, look for my body below the slipper rainy slopes of the Inca Trail.  Hopefully the rain gods will allow a few pics I can post.  If I see a rainbow, I will try not to leave my mouth open as I take a pic.  The Incans believed it was harmful to your health, according to my tour guide.  This is the guide that showed us the temple outside Cusco where they did the animal and human sacrifice.  It seemed like it was OK somehow since it was just the noble class that got sacrificed and only during times of terrible weather, war or turbulence.  The common people were not sacrificed, or so she said.  They only used some babies of the noble families and virgins of high birth from the local women’s temple.  I expect nowadays only virginity is sacrificed on the platform in that little carved cave/shrine as opposed to virgins.

Sociological Observations in the Peruvian City of Cusco

I went into the local McDonalds new years eve and noticed that the name (SSID) for the local wifi advertised was “You fat beast McDs is bad for you”.  I had not seen SSIDs used as social advertising before.  The really funny part was that the network wouldn’t connect and I couldn’t check my email.  A Peru experience in more ways than one.

In other countries you experience crosswalk performers looking for spare change, jugglers and the like.  Here in Peru the phenomena has reached a new low.  And by that I mean height.  Three times this week I saw grade school kids doing cartwheels in front of the cars and then running by asking for spare change.  I suppose comfort with danger starts early in this place. 

The other thing I notice is the age of the cabs here.  By that I don’t mean the model years, they probably aren’t more than 6 years old.  This isn’t Cuba, but the phrase bucket of bolts comes to mind.  My dad always had an actual literal bucket of bolts around the garage for fixing random things.  Thirty pounds of random steel.  I acutely recall the sound it made when I would drag it over to where he was working and drop it down on the cement garage floor.  This bucket of bolts sound is the sound the 6 year old cabs (by Daihatsu and Kia) make as they tromp over the choppy Cusco streets.

There is also a different aesthetic expectation when eating.  I notice that many of the smaller kiosks, especially street kiosks, for food have toilet paper for napkins.  They actually work better than the wax paper they tend to give you in Argentina.  Some places even have  a little toilet paper holder built in to hold the TP/Napkins.  As long as they are two ply, I am good.  I guess that is why I never get asked for decorating tips…

Cocaine

People in S. America always want to know if you have a girlfriend, (novia), and for how long.  When I say 16 years, I get even more curiosity than in the states.  Today I talked to a friend who has been married for a couple of months.  When I asked him how the married life was treating him, he said “Its great; I should try it some time”. 

I suppose I think of marriage kind of like cocaine: I know many people enjoy it; I know it destroys many people; I suspect I have experienced something similar in a lower dose.  I know most people are hoping their marriage will be habit forming, There are probably other similarities, but it seems like I should move on to thinking about something else.

Pics From New Years and the Pisac Ruins



The Edge of the Market in Pisac



Ruins in Pisac.  I look like I ate a bug, but there are no bugs at this altitude.

Peach Cobbler Doesn't Have Great Aesthetic Appeal, but the locals dig it.  With a big spoon (cuchara)

It gets harder to make new friends as you get older, so I went and found some young people to hang with.

You Turkey You

Well I must say Christmas eve with the family was a blast.  Cuzco is crazy about fireworks.  After our group lit some off ourselves, we went up to the roof around midnight when things really went nuts.  In a municipal display the explosions and lights are all localized.  With this, they were coming from all sides, sustained for an hour.  I believe that having incendiaries zip by your head at close range better simulates the homage to war that our founding fathers intended with such festivities.  I haven’t really had that kind of child like adrenalin rush for that long in a while.  There were some parts of the Monarch trail on the downhill but they were brief and a focused solo experience. 

Of course my heart goes out to the handful of kids that lost fingers this year.  And to the kids that lost fingers last year and prompted the new law outlawing fireworks which seems to be unenforced.  There was a Dutch-Belgian student, girl at the dinner as well.  The chaos caused her to reflect on just how many regulations on life existed in Belgium vs. Peru.  I don’t think she concluded that one extreme was significantly better than the other which I mark as progress for a young liberal.

We talked a bunch of politics in English, which probably wasn’t so polite to the majority non-English speaking Peruanas at the table.  Her ideal was for solidarity in the world between the haves and have not’s.  It frustrates her that small differences in Belgium cause such large problems.  I tried to explain the difference in ease of making a decision and executing it yourself, making a decision for say a room full of Navidad revelers as to which fireworks to light when and executing, getting a consensus or even majority in a city to decide on something like how much tax increase can we afford to get the freaking trash off our streets, vs. entire countries pulling together. 

This brings us up to where she started which was why can’t Europe and Asia get it together to help Africa as though they were three people in a bar where the rich and middle class guy should buy a drink for the poor guy.  Not to say there aren’t huge benefits possible from a more integrated international policy.  But there are also grave dangers in the creation of such a large brother to look after things.  But my arguments were long winded and she seemed to always jump back to “but there are people really suffering out there” before I could make too much headway.

I cooked the turkey, and decided to make my signature garlic mashed potatoes with one of the thousands of unnamable local pata varieties.  And if you are going to do that, you have to make gravy (salsa carne) as well.  What I didn’t know was that all of this food was to be transported to grandma’s house for all the aunts and uncles and cousins.  Fortunately I have a huge ego so when there were some grumblings that I used an apple to moisten the turkey instead of making stuffing I took refuge in that multiple people said the turkey was very moist compared to previous dry years. 

I guess turkey for Christmas is a new phenomenon in Peru and this time they had an actual American to lead the way.  Time for the “USA, USA, USA” chant.  Of course, they could just be polite people that can’t believe Valery would abdicate cooking the thanksgiving dinner to a gringo but couldn’t bring themselves to complain too much.  It is always hard to tell.  The carving process was entertaining.  They offered the big knife to me, but where I come from the stranger in the house doesn’t cut the turkey, even if he cooked it.  So I passed it back and the eldest uncle set in.  He went horizontal to the spine whereas I usually go parallel.  He used another knife as a sort of hammer to get through the bone.  It was quiet entertaining.  And I must admit more efficient than the process I use.  Normally I am left with a carcass with lots of bits of meat around.  He essentially took the whole top off like the ragtop on a mustang.  We could have sat little Barbie dolls inside around my apple and drove the bottom half of the turkey around the living room like a toy when he was done.

I would say I am a well trained gringo at this point.  I made my signature apple pie, a semi-successful chocolate cake from a recipe in Spanish with a 6 year old for help.  (We weren’t really able to whip enough air into the egg to make the sort of chocolate angel food cake I believe the Spanish language recipe was looking for).  I am also on the hook to make a peach cobbler tomorrow.  After each meal, they say “Buen Probacho”.  You might expect it is similar to the Bon Appetite the French use before the meal.  But I get the impression Buen Probacho is closer to “I hope you don’t get diarrhea”.  So far I haven’t heard the ominous chorus of flushes after anything I have prepared so I think I am doing well.  “Gringito” they call me.  I think that means they have me well trained. 

New years eve, before I head out for the big fireworks chaos in the main plaza sin the rug rats.  Should be fun if I can keep the vomitar off me zapatas and the fuegos artificial, that they throw, out of the back of my jacket. 

Pics

This is my most deluxe room yet, how do I know?  It has a painting ot 2Pac on the wall.

What do you give the man with everything for Xmas?  An Andean pimp hat of course!

Plaza de Armas is the place to be for tourists in Cusco.  I have a family to go home to so I don't spend much time there.  It is better that way.

If Americans are so smart why didn't we think of vast amounts of fireworks Christmas Eve?  I had that "I am in a war zone" sensation with the encendiaries zipping past my head.  I haven't had that feeling of excitement in a long time.  I try not to think about the dozen kids losing fingers around the city....

Isaac prepares a gringo Xmas dinner for not just the family but extended family.  Thank goodness for my trusty outsized ego as Grandma downs my personal potatoes and gravy recipie and asks where the stuffing is.... (I don't do stuffing)

Another Country, Another Family

So far I have continued to have excellent luck with host families.  I also haven’t made any friends with native English speaking students.  The school I attend is small and I appear to be the only afternoon student.  I also live somewhat away from the trendy gringo area around plaza de armas.  It is amazing how people just open up their home and their lives for strangers in this homestay language school paradigm.  It is a voyeuristic journey.  I just hang out in the living room a lot and talk to the kids, try to follow the adults talking and they make frequent attempt to engage me with my limited Spanish.  I go shopping with them and to office Christmas parties and play soccer with the father and his neighborhood buddies. 

I must say that while I snowboard at 11,000 feet, playing soccer at 11,000 feet is another story.  I had to slow down after 15 minutes and only lasted around 50 minutes.  Of course I play soccer (futbal) a few times a decade so I was limited in cardiovascular and footwork ability.  Team sports are great though, you try harder not to be “that guy” that lags everyone else in the game.  The same applies in bike riding, which is why I tend to ride with people at least 20 years older than myself.

But it is amazing how quickly you fell a part of the household.  I even felt a little guilty I didn’t make the 6 year old daughters Christmas paegent.  The afternoon class goes from 3-7PM.  Households are different here as well.  The kids just have a longer leash than American kids do.  It may have been my limited Spanish, but I found myself alone at the house one day when the 2 year old started crying.  I knew that mom had gone out, but so I had I for a couple quick errands.  But, with aunts and uncles in the same complex within shouting distance I suppose it isn’t as big a deal to leave a kid napping at the house for a while.  You also see moms rushing into the street after kids in the states, but there just seems to be more of it here in Peru.  Perhaps these kids will grow up with a better sense of self reliance than their American peers.  I could just imagine workers at an American Christmas party suing emotional damage because the company invited the kids to party, gave them presents, but didn’t provide child care to keep them out of the street.

I suppose since I have earned some street cred as a responsible adult as they have mentioned since that they will be out and could I listen for the kids upstairs, which turned out to require a small excursion when the power went out and the DVD she was watching, along with lights went off all around.  But this family is highly functional.  They laugh a lot and in general just seem to enjoy themselves most of the time.  I also saw dad checking out mom’s ass as she bent over to pick something up.  Good signs for this family abound.

English and Spanish Happily Coexist in Peru

A couple more oddities in print from the land of Peru- the first one might interpret as equipment for a gym for the homeless.  But looking at the logo, I expect they are using the British version of the word.  This is a bad omen for those in the homeland working toward the wider acceptance of the ‘Merckan language. At the house of the family I am staying with, they have a curious tea.  I looked and salt peter was not in the ingredients. 

Happily they do have apples- manzanas, sugar-azucar, flour-harina, butter- mantequilla, cinnamon-canela.  So I was able to make my personal apple pie recipe.  Somehow it came out with a latin feel.  The ingredients were each a bit different than you find in the states.

My brother

My girlfriend Murray suggested I remove this posting from my blog.  So I moved it.  Hopefully I will score some points for taking her advice.  I thought it was amusing and interesting all at the same time.  So below is a link.  I suspect my other 3 readers don't share her delicate sensibility.  Actually I have heard of sensibilities but am not sure exactly how they work.  At any rate, if you have some, do not click below.


http://thepartialsabbatical.blogspot.com/p/recognize-my-brother.html

The people you meet on the plane

Murray told me "You don't have to talk about my insecurities on your blog." But she also didn't say I couldn't. So let's begin with the women I have met on the plane rides starting this leg of the trip.

I often meet interesting people on planes. So, as we ambled around the tarmac getting ready to leave Denver, I considered an opening statement for the guy to my left with the unruly red hair and librarian style glasses as he read his graphic novel. The young woman on my right beat me to it. "I can't believe it is 31 degrees in Atlanta!" She complained, moving her hands over the bare olive arms that stuck out the bottom of her t shirt to illustrate her wardrobe insufficiency.  Later I would find that Gloria was quite proud of the pull ups she could do with those arms.  To be honest, in the hundreds of trips I have made to dozens of gyms, I have never seen a woman perform more than 2 unassisted pull ups.

She fidgeted with some overpriced air port lip balm.  Compulsive?  I asked.  She looked at me quizzically.  I noticed after you put the lid back on the lip balm you lined up the markings on the seal.  No, I’m cool she said and twisted the cap to a random angle.  She fidgeted for a while longer with the lip balm before shifting the lid back into alignment and admitting “I may be a little OCD.”  I suppose it takes one to know one.  I explained I was only compulsive but not obsessive.  “However my girlfriend is obsessive but not compulsive so we are an OCD couple.”  “Cute” she replied as she pulled some papers from the seatback; reading over her shoulder I could see she was being deployed in the marines.

We discussed at length the novelty of being a female marine.  She was the youngest girl in a family with five brothers.  She explained her attitude towards motherhood with “I don’t think motherhood is for me, when I hear a baby crying my first thoughts at a solution are a punch to the face.”  She wanted to be in the infantry but discovered she was a girl.  So the closest she could get was driving troop transport.  When I asked what drew her to the marines she said her deeper desire was to blow stuff up.

Despite the machismo she admitted to being a girl.  She said after her stint in the marines she thought she might like to be a cop as that was another way she could help people, while carrying a gun and bashing some heads.  We talked about gays in the military and the marines different attitude in recent polls.  She started with not wanting to be looked at by lesbians in the locker room.  Then she said she could understand the combat guys having more of a qualm than she really did.  She hit her point home with a splayed finger hand gesticulation saying she couldn’t really articulate her views on the matter.  This for me was one of her deeper expressions of femininity.  She was rather articulate and wasn’t short on pointed words at any other time during the conversation.

We also discussed our different experiences being in marching band.  She plans to take part in civilian band but didn’t want to play sax in the marine band as there was an insufficient amount of blowing things up on musical duty.  I explained my band experience which started off the wrong way.  I was a runt with a chip on my shoulder so I picked the biggest instrument I could carry, the baritone.  Eventually I got weirded out by how tightly knit the school band social fabric was.  She had dated in the band pool and lost her virginity much earlier than I had.  Perhaps I should have stuck with it.

I have my doubts about whether she will go the 10-15 years in the marines she anticipates.  She is well spoken and rather prejudiced against the under-educated which she freely admits is a problem she has with most of the marines she has been worked with.  She also has some growing to do, as we all do.  I can only hope her growth spurt doesn’t come during a horrific 90 seconds on the Pakistan border involving explosions.

On the next leg of my trip from Atlanta to Lima I sat next to Elna, another single woman.  I would have guessed her age to be around mine, but later I found she was 48.  Elna is the other side of the female coin from Gloria, but also quite interesting.  At first I wasn’t sure if she was a nurse or a doctor.  She works for a doctors without borders type of organization with a heavy presence in Haiti.  Although born in Peru, she has lived in the states for some time and is now dismayed when cab drivers in Peru complement her on her Spanish. 

Her story is almost the twin of my friend Jim.  She always thought she would meet Mr. Right and have kids, but it just never materialized.  Mr. Right didn’t want to have kids and subsequent partners just weren’t quite right.  For a moment I thought “wouldn’t it be great if Elna and Jim could meet”.  And then I thought, “Murray is rubbing off on me.”  Elna apparently has regular opportunities to adopt in Haiti as mothers she treat find out she has no kids and assume she couldn’t have them offering up their 3^rd or 4^th borns to a better life in the states.  I think I am relatively good at engendering trust, but that is a significant statement about how people assess this woman.  And I can see it. 

Elna strikes me as having an idealism that has been worn through the wringer of reality but come out largely in place but tired.  She has mentioned more than twice on disparate topics including men and relationships that she has “high standards” and following the story of her life she obviously has high standards elsewhere.  The world needs more single, experienced, people that can and are willing to head out to the third world again and again to try to contain the suffering.  It is a heck of a lot more than I am doing with my couple hours a week tutoring at the jail.

So I sit on planes, quietly judging people.  For the women I talk to, I also review how much fun it might be to rendezvous in the Lou at thirty thousand feet, were I not happily committed.  Elna claimed to be cynical, but I doubt it is more than the world wariness one ought to expect from her vocation.  The communications professor I met last week, specializing in social media, seemed like he ought to be jaded with all his time in Washington and academia. 

However, the professor seemed genuine when he said I had given him much to think about.  Gloria actually is jaded at her tender age.   I fear she and I have something in common that I am not so fond of.  I think we are both well rehearsed.  I sit next to these people, and we talk for an hour or three, and if I decide they are interesting and I like them, I expect that at subconscious level I would like for them to find me interesting and likeable.  So the well rehearsed stories, quips, and factoids jump out.  These are probably tailored, spun, and presented in a way that I feel will most disarm and allow me to engage with the person.  I shudder to think that I probably do have, in the back of my mind; a list of what I think makes me interesting to others: the Isaac-Murray story, running for office, playing in a rock band, running a business, being raised Mormon etc. etc. 

I went to a talk given by the author Jim Collins.  He had taken on a board of advisors for his personal life.  An advisor gave a bit of insight that resonates.  “Try less to be interesting, and more on being interested.”

Back to the grind

I am back at work now.  I really do like my job.  More than most people I am sure.  But, it is hard to compare to traipsing around Latin America and learning espanol.  I got my tickets for Peru last night.  I will be a full month in Cuzco near Machu Pichu up at 11000 ft.  My new criterion for picking places is that the temperature for my visit be below 75 deg.  This is possible in many places if you stick to the high altitudes. 

What your stomach says about you when you aren't looking

I discovered something interesting on the drive back from the ranch today.  It appears to be literally possible to feel what someone else is feeling.  I had a bit of a head ache and lay down in the bus with my head in Murray’s lap.  I could feel her stomach muscles against my head in what felt like a laugh.  I couldn’t hear over the road noise, it was a quiet laugh.  But I am pretty sure it was a laugh.  The driver’s phone rang with a bird call.  Earlier Murray had asked what kind of bird it was looking out the window trying to see it as we nature watched from the van. 

Later I felt, but didn’t hear, what seemed to be a yawn stomach muscle action.  I am pretty sure it was a yawn because after she drooped to one side a bit as we are want to do when we get tired.  I am not a sensitive person, but this is an interesting insight into how other people feel.  I don’t know if this would help me in a business setting.  I am sensitive enough to know that for most business meetings, sitting with your head in someone’s lap is not acceptable.

Happy Turkey Day-