Thursday, October 02, 2008

Lima, Peru

 

 

 

Safe in Lima

Horns and Personal Space

 

 

 

Yahoo! We did it! We arrived safely yesterday afternoon in Lima, Peru. Step 1—get successfully out of the country. CHECK! I can’t say that we’ve accomplished anything else yet, since we’ve spent our first two days lying low in an attempt to alleviate the jet lag and culture shock. Still, you have to admit that Step 1 was a big one, and since we like to celebrate the little victories, I think the Yahoo! was warranted.

 

Jason and I are so jazzed to have finally set sail on our big adventure. The kids are quick to tears (and blows), so I know that they’re having some second thoughts about the harebrained scheme that forced them out of their comfort zones. We’re trying to be sensitive, like homeschool parents would, and make the transition into global gallivanting as easy on them as possible. Our decision to start off in South America was made with this goal in mind. I’ve been speaking to the kids in Spanish since they were born, so we’re hoping that the language aspect of culture shock won’t be so drastic for them—at least in the first country on the itinerary.

 

Though Jason and I are anxious to get out there and start exploring, we’ve decided to spend the first couple days relaxing with the kids. The little apartment that Jason rented for a week here in the center of Lima would definitely fall into the no-frills category, but it’s nice not to be staying in a hotel. It feels so much more like we’re at home. Well, okay, not our home, but a home. We even have a micro-kitchen and have thus far been eating meals in—focusing on comfort food. Right now Jason’s cooking up some spaghetti, and the scent of simmering tomatoes coming from the kitchen is competing with that of rotting fruit drifting into the window from the city streets below.

 

When energy levels were peaking this morning, we ventured into the city for our first short outing to start getting our feet wet. Lima is a crazy, huge, chaotic, polluted city of seven million. It’s right on the ocean, but now is the winter season. Though it’s nearly always 70 degrees, each day the city is blanketed in a thick gray fog, so the beach has not yet beckoned us. Maybe tomorrow. For now, we’re studying the finer differences between life in Peru and life back at home, mainly from the comfort of our 12th story window.

 

The most pronounced contrast we’ve noticed thus far would be the use of the car horn, which we now realize is severely under-appreciated in the US. We had our first crash-course on Peruvian driving during our initial cab ride from the airport to our apartment. I was relieved that cultural expectations required Jason to sit up front with Mr. Flores, our driver, as this left me free to sandwich between the kids in the back, locking my arms tightly around the three of them in a futile attempt to compensate for the lack of seatbelts. (Let alone booster seats. Booster seats? Come again?) Mr. Flores, who I have since decided must have been suicidal, but who managed to give off an air of joviality, nonetheless, began to navigate the city streets with wild abandon. He darted precariously between bumpers and mopeds while casually pointing out the city’s sites. Jason did an admirable job of keeping his eyebrows low and maintaining a calm demeanor (betrayed only by the white knuckles on his right hand, which held tightly to the Oh Shit! bar beside his head). In the back seat, meanwhile, eight wide blue eyes (which only moments ago had been clouded with jet lag) now ceased to blink, instead registering every near death experience and marking each with a gasp. By the time Mr. Flores came to an abrupt stop in front of what was apparently our new residence, we were simultaneously wired and dog-ass tired. Mr. Flores handed us his business card with a radiant smile and commented on how lucky we were to be arriving early in the afternoon while the traffic was still suave rather than at a busy time of day. Despite their exhaustion, the kids gladly helped schlep our five back-packs and five carry-ons up twelve flights of stairs (Elevator? Come again?), if only to get the hell off the streets.

 

Cyrus has decided that his first homeschool undertaking will be to put together a video on traffic. The first thing we noticed is that the right-of-way is determined a bit differently here. Rather than the guy on the right having the right-of-way (and really, who’s idea was that?), it seems that in Peru whichever driver is going faster has the right to go first. After an hour or two of studying the madness, we started to see the pattern. When approaching an intersection, the driver who feels he has the right-of-way (generally, the one who’s either going faster or has a larger vehicle) toots his horn a few times to say “I’m not stopping.” Usually the other driver will submit and slow down. (Unless he has a louder horn, in which case the aforementioned rule is null and void.) Although I swear that there are stop signs here (and even a few street lights), the flow of traffic seems to be directed instead by this symphony of horns. Though this was quite a foreign concept to us at first, we’re starting to see that it’s actually an astonishingly effective way to manage traffic. Why haven’t we thought of this up north? Can you imagine how much money we could save if we stopped wasting it on all that silly signage?

 

Now, that’s what I’m talking about. This is exactly why we endeavored to force our children to travel with us to foreign lands. It’s so mind-opening and enlightening to see how another culture has resolved a common fundamental issue—in this case traffic—with such a polar opposite solution. Perhaps this cultural difference is the result of the same mysterious force that allegedly causes toilet bowls to flush backwards in the Southern Hemisphere? We have not yet tested that theory, but I’ll propose it as an idea for the next homeschool project. (At which point they’ll remind me why Papa is the one doing the teaching.)

                                                

Rest assured, Jason and I have no intention of attempting to drive here. Instead, we’re happy to rely on the city’s public busses, which we found to be quite entertaining once we resigned to throw our old ideas about personal space out the window (along with our garbage, as instructed by the hand-painted sign we saw yesterday urging riders to “Keep your bus clean—throw your trash out the window”).