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.
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. |   |
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.
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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