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”).