Fine Peruvian Craftsmanship

We brought our travelling high chair, which attaches to a regular chair, to Peru with us. However, the chairs at the house here have this beautiful leather upholstery, so we couldn't bring ourselves to strap the high chair to one. I went out shopping with a local lady to buy a chair to host our seat, but couldn't find anything satisfactory. So, we bought a highchair instead. I had my choice of powder blue or red cushioning, so I chose red.

I didn't notice the SpongeBob SquarePants pattern till we were loading it into the vehicle.

It's a good high chair, but it needs a strap or something to go between his legs to keep him from sliding out.

When Words Collide

There's this wonderful verb in Spanish, picar. It can mean to pick at, or to mince, or to peck, or to itch in a prickly sort of way, or to nibble. From it come nouns like picadura, which is an insect bite or sting (although, when Alec's teeth are picando his gums, he doesn't pica when he bites, he muerdes), and picante, which of course means spicy - a dish that is spicy might be said to picar when you taste it. Picado means chopped or diced, picadillo is a hash, and picas are spades. Piqueos - at least, in Peru - are appetizers or, more directly translated, nibblies. Many restaurants translate the word even more directly when they draft their bilingual menus, and opt for the nearest cognate available. In this instance, however, it is a false cognate, and thus cheese plates, fried yuca, olives, garlic bread, and a host of other appetizers are advertised as "pickles." It makes sense - they are, after all, foods for picking at.

False cognates are great. Embarazada does not mean embarrassed, but rather pregnant. Sopa is not soap, but soup. To asistir is to attend. If you're all fired up, don't tell anyone in Spanish that you are excitado, because they will be shocked. Instead, you are emocionado. To recordar is to remember, while to record is grabar or anotar, depending on the context. Suceso is an event, not a success - when something goes extremely well, it is an éxito. An exit, however, is a salida, which should never be confused with an ensalada.

I knew all of these, but I couldn't understand why people kept smilingly offering me bland food. Turns out blando means soft, in a mushy food sort of way. And of course, Bimbo Blanco is not a flaky white person, but a brand of white bread produced by the multinational Mexican bakery Bimbo (think WonderBread). They tell me it's very blando.

Random Foodstuffs I Can't Get Here

-Feta cheese . . . or any sort of cheese that would substitute for feta.
-Sour cream . . . well, that's not a suprise, and in any case you can fake sour cream.
-Plain yoghurt. Even the "natural" stuff contains vanilla and glucose.
-Berries. Seriously, raspberry and strawberry are two of the most popular flavours for yoghurt, jam, candy, and the like, and I have yet to see berries other than grapes in any market.
-Pine nuts. Not surprising, but I really want to buy some.
-Basil and rosemary (fresh) . . . and yet, basil is in lots of dishes, and I got dried rosemary, but I haven't found any fresh stuff for sale.
-Cheerios, or any cereal that ressembles them. Frosted flakes, corn flakes, rice krispies, a thousand granola varieties, but no cheerios.
-Juice concentrate. You can get fruit that is grown for making juice, you can get juice in bottles and tetrapaks, you can get powdered fruit-flavoured drink mix, but you can't get frozen or bottled juice concentrate.
-Salad dressing. Okay, admittedly I haven't really been looking for salad dressing, but I don't recall seeing it.
-Zucchini. Eggplant, sure. Cucumbers, you bet. Giant things that look like zucchini but are really some other squash variety with a hard peel, ubiquitous. Cute little courgettes? Not a chance.
-Chocolate chips for baking.
-Basmati or thai rice.
-Baking soda in anything larger than a 50 g packet.

Foodstuffs I Am Surprised to Find Available Here
-Quaker oatmeal, plain, vitamin fortified, and in the usual assortment of flavours
-Soy milk - very popular
-Cheddar cheese (in Canadian food dye orange)
-Sugarfree Trident gum
-Camembert cheese
-Philadelphia cream cheese
-Marshmallows, white and coloured, large and hot-chocolate-sized
-Soy and rice flour baked goods
-Arborio rice, and brown rice
-Snickers bars

Okay, that last one isn't that surprising.

I don't know why, but some days there are fresh mushrooms and asparagus at the markets and some days there are not. I mean, I would understand if asparagus was only in season at certain times, but it seems weird that it comes and goes almost weekly. Also, domestic white mushrooms don't really have a season, do they?

This Week's Winner of the "Strange and Foreign Product from a Familiar Company" Contest
Rasberry-scented Kleenex brand facial tissues, in a Winnie-the-Pooh box.

Scary Things When One is Wee

We went to the beach this past weekend. It's about a 1.5-2 hour drive from Arequipa, through absolutely desolate mountains and hills. Complete desert, not a sign of life except for irrigation projects and soft-drink sellers on the roadside. It's a whole lot of switchbacks, too, since in that 1.5 hours you go from 2350 m above sea level to, um, sea level.

The kids were great on the drive down. In fact, they both slept. We pulled into the town of Mollendo at about 1:00 in the afternoon and checked into a simple hotel. Our room, with four single beds, was on a tiled and flowery courtyard. We found a local restaurant where we ate corvina (a type of sea bass) for lunch, and then headed down to the beach for some fun in the sand.

The beach at Mollendo is not a swimming beach, thanks to the pounding, relentless surf and wicked undertow. Instead, it makes a perfectly acceptable spot for playing soccer, building sandcastles, and dipping one's toes. The Peruvian coast appears to be perpetually misty - Aaron tells me this is caused by the Humboldt Current, which comes from Antarctica. Even a block or two inland from the beach, it was blazingly hot, but it was refreshing right on shore.

Joffre had a blast, and got soaked by a couple of waves that came further inland than normal. Alec, on the other hand, barely held in there. He was terrified of the waves in the distance, which is logical, but he was also completely freaked out by the sand. The instant his toes touched it, he curled his legs up under his body and started whining. When he looked around and saw sand in every direction, he started to cry and tried to climb up my body onto my head. I got him relatively calm, but had to hold him the whole time we were at the beach and comfort him, as he was perpetually on the edge of a cry.

We headed back to our hotel to shower and rest a bit before dinner, and just to keep things interesting, Joffre stuck his fingers in the oscillating fan. Now, earlier, he'd been turning it on, then turning it off and sticking in his fingers to stop the blades once turned off, and we'd gotten after him and tried to explain how badly he could hurt himself. And he'd stopped earlier, so we figured we were in the clear. But then I was in the bathroom, and Aaron was changing Alec's diaper, and all of a sudden there was a terrible thudding noise and a blood-curdling scream, and I ran out of the bathroom and Joffre was screaming and dancing around in pain. In my panicky brain, I thought I saw blood spatters on the fan before I realized it was just rust. Nothing was broken or severed; he just bruised three fingers and opened one. Fortunately I'd had the presence of mind to bring a little first aid kit, so we got him cleaned up and bandaged, and gave him some kiddie Tylenol and an ice-cold water bottle to hold against the bruises.

Once Joffre was over the trauma, we went out to the town square, which as luck would have it was full of entertainment for children: climbing gyms, carousels, screened-in trampolines full of beach balls, and electric cars for children to ride around in. Each station charged about 1 sol for five or ten minutes of entertainment, so for the low low price of about $1.50 CDN we got a whole lot of Joffre fun before dinner.

We went to a restaurant that specialized in grilled meat and got the "complete platter", which consisted of chicken, beef heart, and tripe skewers, pork chops and steak - and was far more meat than we could eat - as well as potatoes and salad. For $10 CDN. We stuffed ourselves and then retired to the hotel, where we got the kids to sleep and then sat in the courtyard drinking a cool beer, smelling the night-blooming jasmine, and listening to the fretful wailing of the neighbours' three year old and baby. I'm pretty sure they were hating us, with our peaceful, sleeping angels. However, it is unlikely that their children woke them up at 5:30 the next morning . . .

Sunday morning Aaron and the kids let me sleep in until 7:20. They had already been up for quite some time, and Aaron discovered that along with sand, Alec is apparently terrified of goldfish - at least, of the grotesque, bulbous ones in the hotel fishtank. After a breakfast of rolls with butter and jam, coffee, and orange juice, we headed down to the beach. This time, we were instantly approached by touts wanting us to rent their beach umbrellas, which completely lined the shore. After a bit of discussion, we accepted an umbrella and two beach chairs for 10 soles, and a kiddie pool for 4 soles, which a man filled with sea water for Joffre's splashing enjoyment. Alec and I snuggled up in a beach chair and bought every bit of food wandering past - fry bread with syrup, cookies with dulce de leche, boiled eggs with hot sauce - while Aaron and Joffre went for a long explore up the beach. After Joffre was thoroughly drenched and the kiddie pool was full of sand, we headed back to the hotel and packed out. Another delicious dinner of corvina, and then we got picked up by the driver and came back to Arequipa. Alas, although Joffre was asleep before we had even gotten out of Mollendo, Alec cried and screamed for most of the drive home.

All in all, the beach was fun, but I am not sure we need to repeat it any time soon. After all, we have beaches in Vancouver!

Now I'm Really Cooking With Gas

Literally, that is. Figuratively, I'm winging it, or possibly even flying on a wing and a prayer. On the stove it's not that bad, since the flame is right there and you can adjust it constantly. The only problem I have is that even the lowest heat on the smallest burner is hotter than I'm used to. The rice boils dry too quickly, and stew meat gets tough.

The oven's the bigger issue. For one thing, there's no broiler. As it turns out, I used the broiler a lot in Canada. Also, the temperatures are marked in Celsius, but I've worked out the conversion. The heat from the gas just travels around the food differently, and the result is quite different from electric heat.

I'm sure I'll get used to it, and in the meantime Joffre and I will continue trying to make the perfect peanut butter cookies.

The Evidence

This one's for you, Jacqueline!

Alec the Gordito

His shins are plump. The tops of his feet are fat. It's madness, I tell you.

School Supplies Gone Wild

Joffre is in Kindergarten now. Really - I mean, it's for three-year-olds, but it's every day and for four hours. And they are doing all sorts of enriching, educational things, as evidenced by the school supplies I was required to buy:

-48 page notebook
-3 plastic folders, in red, blue, and yellow
-250 white 8x11 sheets of paper, A-4 bond
-1 box of large Faber-Castell crayons
-1 10-colour box of Faber-Castell modelling clay
-1 1/2 litre bottle of acrylic paint, any colour
-1 fine-tipped permanent black marker (assume from here on in that anything that can be specified Faber-Castell, is)
-1 fine-tipped paintbrush
-1 compass pen
-2 tubes glitter glue, 1 silver and 1 green
-1 1/4 kg tub craft glue
-1 squeeze bottle white glue
-1 pair child's scissors, red
-1 wide paintbrush
-1 sheet of "microporous acrylic" (kind of like a thin gym mat, but for crafts)
-3 coloured sheets of A-4 bond paper
-1 20-piece puzzle
-10 pieces construction paper
-5 pieces glossy coloured paper
-1 sheet white poster board
-1 sheet corrugated cardboard
-1 sheet crepe paper, any colour
-1 sheet tissue paper, any colour
-1 sheet "kraft" paper (I still don't know what this is)
-1 piece of sandpaper (not yet procured)
-1/2 metre of "corrospun", any colour (no idea what this is, but it's crossed off the list, so I guess the nanny bought it and put it in with the other stuff)
-1 set of Duplo or Megablocks
-1 set of small shape blocks (called "logic blocks")
-1 bottle coloured nailpolish (not yet procured)
-1 musical instrument
-1 ball of yarn
-3 rolls of masking tape
-1 hand puppet
-1 cushion
-2 packets of coloured popsicle sticks
-2 packets of coloured macaroni
-5 large balloons
-1 packet coloured bottlecaps
-1 packet drinking straws
-1 sponge
-12 disposable spoons
-12 disposable forks
-12 disposable plates
-12 disposable drinking cups
-3 "tecnopor" balls, medium sized (can't find these in any store and have yet to understand what they are)
-5 large buttons
-1 old toothbrush, for crafts
-1 bottle liquid soap
-1 plastic placemat
-1 plastic smock
-1 old t-shirt
-1 handtowel
-1 comb
-1 toothbrush with children's toothpaste
-1 plastic cup
-6 rolls of toilet paper
-1 lunchbox, filled daily with a healthy snack
-paper napkins, as needed
-2 dishcloths
-1 small bag of cotton balls
-1 12 cm2 beanbag (can't find in shops - have been advised by shopkeepers to make one)
-1 large rubber ball
-1 complete change of clothes

**All supplies must be clearly labelled with the child's name. This includes every building block, every puzzle piece, etc.

So, I got all but about 5 items on the list, and labelled them (although not as prettily as some of the other mothers did), and packed him off to school.

The thing is, it's a pretty impressive list, but bear in mind that we are paying about $60 CDN per month for 20 hours a week of excellent preschool programming in a safe, secure, caring environment with instructors who speak basic English and who are committed to teaching Joffre Spanish. They don't provide any supplies for the children, because their fees are so low.

Still, what does a three-year-old really need a compass pen for?

When Fruit-Flavoured Goes Wrong

When things for children are fruit-flavoured, one assumes syrupy grape, strawberry, and perhaps orange. Mixed berry, maybe.

The infant acetaminophen drops we bought taste like chinotto, a particularly bitter citrus fruit that I believe is used in Campari liqueur. With a charming aspartame aftertaste.

Alec spits it back out, which is messy since it's chemical red, and then he drools profusely - I think because it's so bitter - and the drool is pink and frothy. Isn't the point to make the medicine palatable to the child? I mean, he can't get enough of infant Tylenol; it's like candy.

What were they thinking?!?

If You Were a Peruvian Baby . . .

. . . you would wear long underwear, quilted pants, a woolly sweater and hat, and thick socks and booties in sweltering summer weather. You would be assumed to be about to catch your death of cold if you were missing any of these items.
. . . you would be taken into public almost from birth, but for the first three months would be totally covered - head and all - by a thick blanket. Even in the summer.
. . . complete strangers would call you "fatty" (gordito) and pinch your legs, arms, and face.
. . . your first solid food would probably be pumpkin.
. . . you would start half days of school Monday to Friday at the age of two, but would still be referred to as a baby at the age of four.
. . . people would find out if you were a girl or a boy by asking if you were a "little woman" (mujercita) or "little man" (hombrecito, varoncito).
. . . you would be worn on your mother's back in a brightly woven sling.
. . . all prepackaged baby food available to you, including rice and barley cereals, would be sweetened with sugar, but all your teething and fever medication options would be sugarfree and vile.
. . . your socioeconomic status and the duration of your breastfeeding relationship with your mother would be inversely proportionate.
. . . not only would all of your disposable diapers, wet wipes, etc be heavily scented, and not only would every brand of laundry detergent carry baby powder scent (same detergent, but perfumed for babies), but a wide array of baby eaux de cologne would be available for your caregivers to use on you.

The Second Plague Visited Upon Them

Well, we appear to have traded ants for flies. Lots and lots and lots of flies. We are killing easily fifty of them a night, and they keep on coming. I actually bought fly spray today - fly strips seem unable to catch any but the slowest, stupidest of flies, and the fly swatters are just not enough.

I guess that's what we get for living in the cows' backyard.

Flash New Digs

Well, we're moved into the new house. The move itself was quite painless, but now begins the long string of little things that need fixing, changing, securing, and so on.

Here are a few shots of the new place:






For a real tour, click on Los Andenes.

The Unexpected Perks of Having a Nanny

Not only does she keep an eye on the kids, assist with feeding and bathing them, and just generally help mothering go more smoothly - kind of like a mommy's aide - she also can run out and do my shopping for me. You see, there are times when the children are both asleep (admittedly, this is rare), or one or both of them is being very clingy (this is constant), and she's at a bit of a loose end. So, yesterday, I gave her a shopping list and some money, called her a cab, and she came back 45 minutes later with all my groceries, a receipt, and some change. And today, when the boys both fell asleep, she said, "well, I can go out and get Joffre's school supplies - my mom's a preschool teacher and I know the good places to go." And off she went.

Nepotism Makes the World Go 'Round
I knew our nanny was the daughter of friends of our company liason, and I knew the real estate agent was a friend of the company liason, but only on Wednesday when we moved did I discover that the nanny is the daughter of the real estate agent. But she also teaches preschool. Oh, and the staff psychologist at the preschool we're sending Joffre to (more on that phenomenon later) is the older sister of a schoolmate of the nanny's.