Whenever you move somewhere new, you know there are going to be cool, fun, enjoyable things that you had no idea about before you moved there. Here are a few of them.
-The grass on the lawn is really, really springy. It's like walking on grass that's growing out of four inches of moss.
-Salchipapas. I realize I'm going to lose some or many of you from the word go, but there's this fantastic junk food called "salchipapas." Basically, it's fresh-cut fries topped with thinly sliced fried weiners, and laced with ketchup and mayonnaise. Salchicha is sausage, and papas is potatoes, so: salchipapas.
-The mayonnaise is flavoured with lime juice. It's very yummy.
-We have a hot sandwich maker in the house. I wasn't expecting one, but I think now I will get one for our new house. It's very convenient to slap together some cheese, ham, tomatoes, and bread and have a fast breakfast, lunch, or snack.
-Fresh squeezed orange juice. It's everywhere, it's cheap, it's clean, it's delicious, and it has replaced milk as Joffre's favorite drink, since Peruvian milk is "lucky" (yucky). I bought us a juicer, and you can get cheap bags of juice oranges (naranja de jugo) at the grocery store.
-Produce is unbearably cheap. Beautiful, plump, deep red tomatoes cost roughly 25 cents Cdn a kilogram.
-The water or the soap or the washing machine or some combination of all three has made our clothes brighter, cleaner, and softer than they were in Canada. Also, my hair likes the water.
-Joffre has started saying "Hola", "Buenos Dias", and "Adios".
-A form of endearment similar to "sweetie" or "honey" is "cielo", which means "heaven". I don't know if this is a Peruvian thing or a Spanish thing more generally, but it's lovely.
-Some mornings you can actually see El Misti, the big mountain above Arequipa, from the kitchen window of the guesthouse. (Click here to see it)
Just Plain Unexpected
There's also this phenomenon where things happen in a foreign country that surprise you, take you aback, force you to examine your own preconceptions, or just leave you shaking your head.
-They put sugar in baby food. ALL baby food. Also, they sweeten all packaged fruit juices, even the ones that say "natural" on them. The fresh squeezed stuff is your only sugarfree option.
-Cheese Ice Cream (Queso Helado) is not in fact made from cheese, I'm happy to report, but from condensed milk. We will try it.
-Turkish Baths are everywhere, and I don't know if it's a bona fide public bath, or, you know, something else . . .
-I saw a sign for "Horno Publico", which means Public Oven. In a fairly affluent suburb. But, hey, our guest mansion lacks an oven, so now I know where to go if I want to bake a cake.
-Taking your baby out with bare feet will earn you accusatory glances and exclamations of "pobrecito!", even if it's 22 degrees C out.
-When people want to know how old your baby is, they ask, "how much time does he have?" Which, really, has a rather different implication in English. But the literal translation of "how old are you?" is "how many years do you have?", and they know the baby doesn't have any yet.
There are many more little things about Peru that I will have to share another time, when I don't have scrapping children underfoot.
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2 comments:
Hi M. After cruising through 12 entries on the horrors of sickness, the plane flight, the leaking house, the lost camera, sugar in the baby food, etc. etc., I'm still nostalgic for my younger days when I had adventures like the one you're having. Which makes me nuts, I think.
Anyway, a question: do you want comments on your blog like this one, or shall I stick to traditional email?
Gordon
By all means, comment! I just have to accept comments, to avoid spam and the like. Yeah, it sounds like high adventure, but we're really very sheltered and pampered here.
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