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Back to School Preparations

2/28/2015

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A Prefatory Warning:  Steve is convinced that this entry will bore readers to tears.  Despite his reservations, I figured I would respond to a few of you who asked for glimpses into our daily lives.  While writing it, I was almost in hysterics remembering the tribulations we've faced getting ready for school.  As I reread it, I am thinking a more apt title might be "Ignorant Monolingual Gringa Mom without Car Strives to Prepare Sons for School."

     During one of our first grocery store expeditions, we wandered into the paper/office supply aisle looking for some index cards to make Spanish vocabulary flashcards.  There we encountered frantic mothers clenching long school supply lists and receiving assistance by a small fleet of grocery store helpers.  At this moment a premonition of our own upcoming back-to-school trials settled in. 
     After a week, we showed up again at the school; Sylvia greeted us and asked if we were all set.  She was dismayed to learn that nothing had been resolved and worked out a way for us to pay tuition in cash at the school the following day.  When we arrived to pay, they were still stymied and we waited 40 minutes until they could find us in their system and process our payment.  From there we picked up our books in the school gymnasium and received the dreaded school supply list.
     Each boy's school supply list was 3 pages long! The first page listed all the materials we had already picked up, but the next pages contained a daunting list of 131 items.  We were uncertain about how to translate the phrase "se entregarán en el aula."  At first we thought this meant that we had overlooked these things in the school hallways and were supposed to carry them to the classrooms.  When we checked back with the ever patient Sylvia, who now greets us smiling with "Oh, it's the Family Smith (again)," she told us that these items were already in the classroom for children's use.  What a relief!  This news shrank our "To Purchase" list to a mere 66 items!  We asked Rossana, a fellow parent, for tips on stores that carried these items and received some suggestions.  We discovered that store locator features on Peruvian websites do NOT accurately report the nearest location of particular stores.  We also discovered that some operations have slick websites that make them appear like shopping meccas, but are actually modest, disorderly "Mom & Pop" shops with narrow aisles and shelves strewn with cluttered and dusty merchandise. 
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     The first trial came when had to pay matriculation fees.  We already knew that Peruvians eschew checks and that credit cards were not an option, but we thought we could get a cash advance with our credit card and deposit cash at the school's bank. Our friends insisted it was too dangerous to carry so much cash and offered to pay for us and be reimbursed.  Once this step was done, we were told we could receive the boys' books, access the school's intranet, and make monthly tuition payments.  Our payment hit a mysterious snag.  We are still uncertain what happened, but suspect it had something to do with name conventions here.  The online application for the school required us to enter maternal and paternal last names and so the boys were being referred to as "William F. Smith Curry" and Steve was being referred to as "Steven R. Smith Spears."  At the last minute Sylvia, the school's kind secretary, asked us what names we used at home and she attempted to make the correction.  This switch froze us out and we were told to wait while various support people tried to sort out the problem.  We waited a week.  While waiting we debated whether or not to email or visit the school to inquire about the status of our account; we fretted about being seen as pushy Americans and held back. 
    During that week we spent one Saturday walking 2.6 miles to
Centro Comercial Caminos de Inca to a uniform store.  Our walk took us past a long stretch of toxic smelling autobody shops where banged up cars were being repainted on the street outside cevicherias, stray dogs languished in the sun, and small children splashed in portable pools on the sidewalk.  The boys were seemingly seduced by the novelty of wearing uniforms and happily complied with the fashion parade task of trying on: winter pants, cardigans, vests, shirts, PE warm up suits, PE t-shirts, PE shorts, etc.  We walked out loaded down with two bulging bags of clothes.

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Madre de Dios

2/27/2015

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     In line with our plan to travel extensively during our time here, we spent most of last week near Puerto Maldonado on the Madre de Dios River adjacent to the Tambopata Preserve.  I think the expansiveness of the river panoramas are hard to capture and once inside the forest the opposite is true.  As you see in the photos, it is the rainy season, which actually worked quite well for us.  It rained almost exclusively when we were either on the riverboat or inside.  One memorable afternoon we decided to take the canoe across a small lake during a thunderstorm with an incredible downpour.  The boys loved it.  Hard to believe but this whole wide river is subject to flash floods.  It rose 3 feet during the week we were there.  It seemed like a river of chocolate milk strewn with bobbing logs eroded from the banks.  Our guide, Ruben, reported that the river grows wider by 2 meters a year due to the incredible power of the annual rainy season.
    Most of the observable animals are birds (there are more species in Peru than in all of North America including Canada) and I was in heaven.  Marnie had a near religious experience involving a pair of scarlet macaws flying directly over the boat so she is close to being hooked on birdwatching too.  Sam, who feigns indifference, may have the sharpest eyes and he displays a knack for remembering names.  Once identified, he will call them by name any time the same bird is spotted afterward.  It's great to hear him say, "Look, there's a social flycatcher."  Without much trouble we were, with help, able to identify over 35 different species and saw many more we couldn't name.  Many were strikingly beautiful while others were drab.  The air around our cabana was filled with many types of bird songs all day long.
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The Amazon Basin with the Madre de Dios River highlighted in pink
CREDIT:
Madredediosrivermap" by Kmusser - Own work using Digital Chart of the World and GTOPO data.. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Madredediosrivermap.png#mediaviewer/File:Madredediosrivermap.png
     Some other highlights of the trip were a canopy walk through the treetops, a visit to an animal rescue center, and a night excursion into the rainforest where we turned off our flashlights and experienced total darkness while listening to cicadas humming and frogs chirping.  Finn was quite interested to discover a giant pink toed tarantula out for its evening feed in a tree that we had been passing daily.  Meanwhile, Sam has decided that he wants to volunteer at the rescue center after high school.  Our hope is to go back in the dry season to observe the differences.
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Slideshow of Our Trip

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Finn's and Sam's first week...

2/13/2015

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We started the week at the Museo Nacional.  Finn and Sam both enjoyed it more than they thought they would.  The Inca were late arrivals on the scene and this museum does a great job of putting the previous 2000 years in perspective.  Lots to learn...

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Every good field trip includes lunch so we went to Palachinke, Sam's favorite restaurant in the world.  He always gets a nutella panqueque (crepe) the same size as the one on Finn's plate.  You wouldn't think he could finish it but he is always the first one done and that includes half a side of bacon.  The waiter, Mattias, remembers us from past visits so we already have a regular haunt.
We went to a chocolate "museum" where we learned about chocolate from tree to bar.  The young man in the photo was quite charming and informative.  It's interesting how much emphasis is put on sustainability and stewardship here.
The highlight of the experience was taking melted chocolate and pouring it into a mold with favorite additives--gummy bears, marshmallows and various other things to ruin good chocolate.  You can see how attentive the boys are.
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Today we toured the Fortaleza de Real Felipe in Callao which is the northernmost municipality in Lima proper, though Lima seems to continue well past its city limit.  It is quite an imposing structure, one of the largest such the Spanish built.  Lots of gold and even more silver was mined in the Andes and brought here for safeguarding until the galleons were ready for transport to Acapulco and then to the Philippines for trade with China. (This trade is very well described in Charles C. Mann's 1493).  Sir Francis Drake made two of his most lucrative hauls north of Lima on his circumnavigation.  He is less well regarded here than he was in the more England-centric history books I was brought up on.
Sam, being Sam, is already beginning to make friends.  Both boys are less hesitant about using Spanish and we are hoping school goes well when it starts in March.  A few more things to do first.
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Lima/Miraflores

2/11/2015

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Many people don't realize that Lima is a coastal city located in the tropics in the middle of a long stretch of desert.  Average annual rainfall is 2 cm a year, most of which is in the form of accumulated drizzle.  Temperatures are moderate with apartments having no heating or cooling systems.

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Lima, a city of 10 million inhabitants, is divided into submunicipalities each with its own government and character.  This section of the coast is Miraflores, one of the more affluent and cosmopolitan areas.  It has done a great job of keeping the coastal strip open to the public via a well-used and well-kept park.
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Water comes via river from the Andes and although not really abundant, Limenos like to keep things green.
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Looking south from Miraflores to Chorillos.
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             A well earned rest after a long walk around town.
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