Once in a lifetime ...

Admittedly, I was a little overwhelmed by my trip to Machu Picchu (or is it Machupicchu? -- some of the locals insist it's one word).  First, there was an 11-hour, overnight bus ride from Arequipa to Cusco. Then you immediately jump into a cab to catch a mini-van that takes you on a 90-minute ride to Ollantaytambo. From there, it's a 90-minute train ride along the Urubamba River to the village of Machu Picchu. Finally, you catch a bus for a 15-minute ride up to The Lost City. A little bit of a whirlwind, but necessary since I'm on a schedule and budget. It was raining pretty steadily the entire way, and the rain didn't let up when I toured Machu Picchu. I opted to go solo (no guide), and as a result, I would probably like to make another trip. I checked maps and had a good idea of where to go and what to see, but a slight detour can lead to some serious and strenuous up-and-down climbing and wandering. My fitness is fine, and the sheer adrenalin rush of seeing Michu Picchu took care of any fatigue from the travel and lack of sleep. (The next day I was a mess.) The setting for Machu Picchu really is awe-inspiring. It's over 7,000 feet up, and you're walking among the clouds and seeing scenery like no other. And knowing you're wandering one of the seven wonders of the world, it's difficult to describe the sensation. The ruins of Machu Picchu aren't that expansive, really, but I spent about four hours looking at the temples, the houses, the plumbing (which is really cool), the agricultural terraces, and, of course, the stunning scenery. I won't bore you with any history lessons: First, I admit I don't know all the history, and second, you can just go look that stuff up on the Internet. I will say, however, that pictures and books are no match for the incredible experience of being there and walking among the ruins (duh!). At first I thought one trip was enough, but upon reflection, I definitely will return to Machu Picchu if I come back to teach in Arequipa. My computer is working at Peruvian speed these days, but I'll try to upload as many pictures as possible. The next day I wandered Cusco, which is an up-and-down experience on a couple of levels. Every street seems to go straight up, and walking is quite the workout. (Again, no guide.) Plus, Cusco sits at 11,200 feet. Luckily I brought altitude pills and drank coca tea. The center of the city has a beautiful Plaza de Armas like Arequipa, and it is understandably very touristy. There's more pizza parlors in Cusco than in Little Italy. Prices are geared to the gringo, and naturally there's no shortage of gringos. The vibe is hippie meets hipster meets hustler. You can't sit in the plaza without being hounded, and I mean hounded, by kids and adults wanting to shine your shoes, sell you a trinket or a pack of Inca cigarettes, or size you up to steal your stuff. I understand it, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. Supposedly, hard sell is illegal in the plaza, but no one pays attention. I'll take Arequipa any day. There are many other ruins in the area, and the Sacred Valley is highly recommended, but I settled for Machu Picchu and Cusco. Next time ... perhaps I'll have a little more money and time. Changing topics: Christmas in Arequipa is nice: fireworks and food prevail over the the pressure of getting presents. I hear New Year's is the same -- more fireworks and food. I miss my family immensely these days, but otherwise I have no real holiday blues away from home. I'm a Thanksgiving guy, anyway.  I have one more month of teaching -- 39 hours of class time a week, which is quite a bit -- and then it's back to the U.S. I'm nervous about that since I don't have any firm job prospects, but who cares? I'll jump off that bridge when I get to it. I've said it before, but for me it bears repeating: I'll really miss the students here.

Angels are crying

Big, big news from Arequipa. It rained. And the first rain I've seen in five and half months wasn't just a little shower, either. It was a steady soaking that lasted about four hours. There's no drainage to speak of here, so the streets flood, and your shoes and ankles get soaked wherever you walk. The stone sidewalks get slippery as well, adding yet another element of danger to the pedestrian lifestyle I live. It's worth it, though, because I love not having to depend on a car to get around. Christmas break started today, and I celebrated by buying an expensive bottle of wine (38 soles, or about $13). It's from Argentina, and the 14-year-old girl who sells me my vino recommended it highly, and she hasn't steered me wrong yet. Of course it doesn't feel like the Christmas seasons I'm accustomed to -- the temperature is about 70 in the day and 50 at night (summer here), and there are minimal decorations around town. Santa isn't really the man in Peru. I like that as well. Actually, it feels more like Thanksgiving, where the focus is on family gatherings and good food. However, most of the folk here love panettone. It's the Peruvian equivalent of U.S. fruitcake, and it's just as gnarly. Give me the anticuchos any day. Which reminds me, I've been going to this anticuchos stand near work, and it's the bomb. Giant pieces of marinated beef heart with ahi' (hot sauce that is tasty as well as hot), and two potatoes. Outstanding at a cost of S/.7 ($2.50 U.S.). You get a good portion as well. The little chicken hearts I've been buying on Puente Grau are a thing of the past. I've also found a place that sells Belgian beer -- Delerium Tremens at S/.20 (about $7) a bottle. That's a good price, but it takes a little classroom time to earn S/.20. The place is called Crepisimo, and it's something of a gringo hangout, but I don't care. It's been a while since I had a quality beer, so I savored that Delerium Tremens. Classes ended on a high note. Students and I celebrated with a secret santa kind of thing, good food and lots of cheer. I'm really going to miss the students here. Heading to Machu Picchu on Monday. Stoked about that. I also want to give a shout-out to Tracy for baking me a birthday cake, to Andrew for doing whatever he did to the cake, to Eleanor for the homemade, snappy ginger snaps, to Tiffany for the chocolate, to my "favorite" students for the awesome tres leches. My neighbor Jon moved on last week, and that's a bummer. He's a great guy. Adios amigo.

Early to rise

Don't plan on sleeping in here. Arequipa rises early. No daylight savings, so the sun's up around 5:30 a.m. and down at 6:30 p.m. year-round. In the a.m., there's barking dogs, the relentless honking of car, taxi, combi and bus horns, and our neighbors pounding on metal with sledge hammers doing god knows what. It all happens before 7:30 a.m. And I didn't even mention our landlord Juan playing opera on his stereo full blast around 6 a.m. Trash pickup here, between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m., is an event. The trash truck plays loud music to signal its arrival -- a recording of "No Place Like Home" on a pipe organ accompanied by flute. When I first heard it I thought it was an ice cream truck. The flatbed truck backs up into our alley, music blasting (sometimes they ring a loud bell instead), and everyone comes running out of their dwellings carrying bags of trash that go on the back of the truck. You've got to be quick. Vehicles, likes buses, combis and trash trucks, wait for no one in Arequipa. Even if they see you, they'll bolt if they're in the mood. Had a funny miscommunication with my landlord Juan. I was asking why our Internet was down, using my spanglish to explain that I needed to keep in touch with my dad. Somehow Juan thought I said that he was like a father to me. Juan seized on this. While he's away, he's having his new son water his countless plants and flowers, and chase the trash truck three times a week. It's nice doing a few chores. I kind of miss my house now, and the endless chores and projects you face as a homeowner. Found a decent coffee/pastry shop where you can hang out. It's got a nice patio, and I go there to lesson plan. The coffee isn't cheap, however. About S/.5 for a small Americano. The ladies are nice there, though, and they like to practice their English with me, and they also help me with my Spanish. We're watching A Christmas Story in my 7-9 p.m. class a little bit at a time. A lot of the dialogue is pretty subtle for the students, but they thought it was absolutely hilarious when Ralphie lets the F-bomb slip while changing the flat tire with his dad. Good stuff. Heading to Machu Picchu Dec. 26. Wanted to be there Christmas Day, but work made scheduling difficult. My contract here ends at the end of January. Wondering what I'll do when I grow up.

Top of the class

Life doesn't get much better when you have students like I have. The group I've had since I arrived in Arequipa finally finished the English language program here with a class called Fluency. We celebrated their graduation of sorts, and our friendship, by going out to lunch for chicharon. They gave me a present, a wonderful keepsake, picked up the lunch tab and said their goodbyes. I admit to getting a little emotional. Every one of those students became a friend, and I'll miss the hell out of them. Another class, the TEFL group I teach on Saturdays, took me out to lunch for ceviche the week before. Yes, ceviche. It was awesome. We went to a place where I was the only gringo in sight. One of the students, Rossmery, aptly observed that all the locals were "looking at the gringo with the four goddesses." They also bought me a cheesecake and I ate the whole thing in three days. (It's a lighter cheese than the U.S. variety.) My night class, which I managed to hang onto for another month, is younger, livelier, and enjoyable as well. They love movies, they hate my dancing (which I use as punishment when a cell phone goes off), and they're all very bright. A fun bunch. These are friendships for a lifetime.
There's a new ASS. director here and two other new bosses, with some new rules and regulations. I wish them the best. I will remain focused on my teaching, which I love.
The other day I ended up on the hood of some douche bag's car. OK, I'll call him Mr. Douchebag out of respect. I was walking between two cars stuck in a massive traffic jam and Mr. Douchebag felt compelled to close the three-foot gap between his car and the car in front of him. I was the monkey in the middle and I had to leap on the hood of his car so my legs wouldn't get crushed. That really upset Mr. Douchebag, who started screaming and gesturing at me. I gave him the universal symbol of displeasure, and he kept screaming and pretending like he wanted to get out the car.  He never did. He was too fat. Didn't matter because I'm in too good of a mood these days.
One of things I really miss from the USA is hot showers. I've had one or two since I've been here. I'm used to cold showers in the morning, and boy do I hit the day running, but every once in a while a long soaker in hot, hot water would be really nice. Also miss milkshakes, but you can get smoothies pretty much anywhere in Arequipa.
One of downers here is the smell of piss on every wall.  Every wall is a urinal, including the one outside my apartment. That gets old. I come out of my apartment to go buy yogurt and some clown is peeing two feet from my door. The smell is everywhere some days, especially in the sketchier parts of town.
Last Thursday was a little rough. No family Thanksgiving dinner. Really missed everyone on my favorite holiday. First one I've missed in many, many, many years. I missed cooking, and I even missed cleaning up afterward. Next year that tradition will resume.
Got really cloudy and windy today, but the streak is intact. Still hasn't rained since I've been here. Got some nice shots from the International Club, which makes the best pisco sour in town, in my opinion. Sitting by the Rio Chili drinking piscos at a classy restaurant ... great students .... good food ... great weather. I can handle cold showers and piss odor.

A day at the beyatch

There's no faster way to shed pounds than a good case of dysentery. I'm living proof. The pounds are melting off and all I do is sit. I've been on this "diet" for at least three days now, and other than exhaustion and incredible intestinal discomfort, I'm finding the results amazing. Knocked a notch or two off the belt, and even my socks are more comfortable. I began this unintended crash and burn diet with a trip last weekend to Mollendo, a beach town due west of Arequipa. Mollendo is a small town of about 3,000, and it has all the charm of ringworm. Buses for Mollendo leave Arequipa every hour, and it's a cheap trip, so to speak -- about S/.10 one way -- or $3.30 U.S. The bus ride is like taking a rover over  lunar landscape. It's brown, hot, mountainous, desolate and, guess what?, it's boring. I didn't hear a single conversation on the bus for the three-hour ride. The movie on the way over was Cast Away, which I like, so that helped.  (Wilson, Wilson, Wilson!!!!) Oddly, the bus would drop people off along the way in god-forsaken, uninhabited, parched places where I didn't see dwellings of any kind. But some lady wearing way too many traditional clothes and carrying a huge bundle of something or other would get off the bus and trudge off into god knows where. Amazing. I took a cab from Mollendo's bus station (50 centos to use the bathroom) to the beach for S/.5. The driver showed me the hot spots along the way -- a market and town center. The main beach area had umbrellas and chairs set up, which seemed nice. I settled under one and this lady with a small girl comes up to me speaking rapid and clearly unfriendly Spanish. The girl is kicking sand on my backpack while the lady grabs the stem of my umbrella, and, honest to god, rolls her dentures around in her mouth with her tongue while glaring at me. Turns out you have to pay $/.5 for the umbrella, and I guess she was the hired muscle. I wasn't about to argue. I fell asleep for a bit, the earth kept rotating, and I got a fantastic sunburn. I tried to go swimming, and entered the roughest, most dangerous surf that I've ever encountered. Rougher than California, Maine, Canada, anywhere. I was in up to my shins and almost got sucked out to my death by undertow so fierce that I can't describe it. It pulls you off your feet -- and I'm only out to my shins. (Actually, there's a controversial Peruvian film called Undertow, but I digress.) The waves were too high to even approach. Once I turned toward shore to make sure my stuff was still at the S/.5 umbrella, and I got slammed to the sand by a rogue wave. Crazy and dangerous. Of course, I was the only one in water above the ankles. After an exhilarating six minutes in the water, I loafed around the beach for a bit and then started walking toward town. Along the way, I bumped into one of my ESL students, and I got a ride to a restaurant for what turned out to be a fateful encounter. I ordered from the menu and the waitress couldn't understand me. I was pointing to the menu, and apparently, she couldn't understand my finger. I got some kind of sketchy fish ceviche, which was gross at best, and then sat in the town center watching an endless parade of taxis ride in a circle. The beautiful weather in the morning and early afternoon had now turned cloudy and a bit chilly. That went well with the sunburn. On the bus ride back to Arequipa (with one of the Fast and Furious movies), I started to feel a little uneasy. The ceviche. I've been uneasy since, although I visited the farmacia last night and I'm sure they'll set me right. To make matters worse, I forgot my camera, so there's no pictures to capture my enchanted trip to the beach. I'll try to post a picture of tonight's dinner instead. Bon appetit!

El narco

I have a new favorite haunt: the farmacia. You can get anything there except marijuana and a girlfriend. You walk in, play charades, and presto! .... you're cured. My headaches disappeared after one or two pills; so did my cough. My friends' stomach ailments have been cured. One of the teacher's toenails was turning a god-awful purple and the farmacia took care of it. Xanax is sold over the counter. It's like a candy store. OK, you have to trust your own diagnosis and the diagnosis of the farmacia worker, but so far so good. Take that Obama-care.

I still haven't adapted to Peruvian time, which is a minimum of 10 minutes later than scheduled times. For example, class starts at 7 a.m. and things get rolling at  7:10 a.m. at the earliest. Apparently, students, teachers and staff here have adapted to Peruvian time better than I have. Being an anal American, it can drive me un poco loco. My favorite lunch spot, Mishka, opens randomly and closes randomly. Walk there for lunch on a Tuesday and the doors are locked. Open Wednesday with fantastic food, closed again Thursday, and who knows the rest of the week. Still love the place.

There was some kind of bottle fight outside my apartment window last weekend at 4 a.m. Glass shattering, guys screaming, and more glass shattering. Sounded kind of nasty. It had to be loud to wake me up. I scored brownie points in the neighborhood the next day by cleaning up the glass while folk walked up and down the alley where I live. I believe the glass could still be there if I hadn't cleaned it. However, Arequipa is a clean city even though I see people littering all the time. Municipal workers are cleaning the streets every morning, sweeping up cigarette butts, banana peels and the like. By 9 a.m., the city sparkles, except for the piles of trash left on some of the street corners. No worries. Packs of dogs look after the trash piles. 

I had three dogs growl and walk menacingly toward me while I stood outside my apartment last Sunday. So I did what any cowardly gringo would do: I ran back into my apartment. The dogs moved along. I don't have to remind myself to not pet the dogs.

I feel more accepted in my neighborhood all the time. The grumpy lady who owns a little shop nearby actually gave me a yapa (a freebie) -- an extra piece of pan. This is the same lady who charged me S/.1,30 for a candy bar while the guy next to me got the same candy bar for S/.1. That's a true story. I guess it's the gringo tax.

I miss the season changes. It's Spring here, which means it's sunny and warm in the day, a little cool at night. Reminds me of winter in Peru, which is sunny and warm in the day, a little cool at night. I hear it's pretty much the same in the fall, too. Summer (Christmas-time) is supposed to start a rainy season. It hasn't rained once since I've been here, and I've been here 3 and a half months.

Glad this month is over. I resigned as ASS. director last week, choosing to focus on teaching starting in November. Teaching is the main reason I came here. The teaching is going wonderfully, while the ASS. job reminded me of my night managing editor days. Been there, done that. Walked into a metal grate on a window and cut my head, and few days later fell off a sidewalk. Sober both times. I've mentioned that walking here can be a contact sport. Also, I managed to piss off George Thorogood. A buddy from ESPN emailed me for information about George's old sports days in Delaware. I joked (and I was joking, sort of) that George was a slap-hitter who couldn't get around on my fastball. He shot back some funny but pretty sharp stuff about me. I'm not going to get into a pissing match with a .218 lifetime hitter. Just kidding George .... I know it's .228.

Two of my good friends here -- Anna and Vanessa -- are moving on. I'll miss their belching and constant illnesses. Later guys.

San tennista

On a very rare cloudy morning in Arequipa, I'm enjoying a breakfast of pepino, yellow granadilla, green apples, little bananas, drinkable yogurt, super sharp cheese, and my beloved pan de tres puntas. I deserve a treat. It was a  rough weekend of homesickness and other emotional maladies, and I even smoked a cigarette or five -- effectively ending a 14-year drought. But back to the fruit. Granadilla is awesome, and I'm sure many of my devoted readers (ha ha) have tried it. I think it's also called maracuya, and it's supposedly good for urinary tract infections and sporadic coughing. Both are on the way for me, I'm sure. It's very light. You crack it open and eat the mucus-like center, seeds and all. Mucus-like is the only way to describe it. Yet it's absolutely delicious. I think it's also known as a passion fruit, but I know nothing about passion. The pepino, which I've been told means cucumber, doesn't taste like it looks. The outside is cream colored with some purple stripes. It looks kind of like a peach when it's cut in half, but tastes a tiny bit like a cross between cantelope and cucumber. It's also quite good, and good for you as well. Helps with depression, I believe. I'm feeling better already. (I have a picture of some of my breakfast. Properly name the fruits and bread and you get a prize -- another blog from me in a week or so.)
I'm playing tennis this afternoon with a teacher named Rony. I'll see if he'll let me post his picture. The dude can play some tennis. He's younger, 36, USTA certified or something, and about 25 cuts above my level. He's a good sport about our differences in ability. We're playing on clay courts, which is kind of cool. I like the color, and the ball bounces all over the place. Rony's top-spin is ridiculously good, and oh by the way, I suck at tennis. On the bright side, I suck even more at golf.
I've hit a bit of a routine. The little shop owners near my apartment all know me now and are quite friendly, and I have a budding friendship with the lady near the Puente Grau who makes my anticuchos. She's great, and so is her anticuchos. She has a daughter or granddaughter who's 11 that hangs with her sometimes. I call the little girl 'once' (pronounce all the letters for 11 in Spanish) and we high-five when we see each other. I guess with friends like this, there's really no need to get down. It's a good scene here.