dreaming.

ever have those dreams that you wish would never end? those dreams that you wake up from then try to somehow slip back into them because you want to continue? either to see how it ends or just because it's wonderful and comforting?

i had one of those dreams last night. and as i hit the snooze button on my alarm clock this morning i attempted to drift back into the world of my dream, but i just couldn't get back in. in my dream i was back at home with my family and friends after peru. it was so vivid and real that it seems like i actually spent time with my family and friends. which left me in a really good mood all day today.

sometimes i wish that i could choose what i dream about at night. when i was younger i would repeat a word over and over as i lay in my bed to try to force myself to dream about it. i don't think it ever worked. but that would be nice. it that were the case i'd like to dream about my family and friends every night. i'd like to be with them, spending time with them. because then they don't seem so far away from me.

"i think we dream so we don't have to be apart so long. if we're in each other's dreams, we can be together all the time." [calvin and hobbes]

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and in case you were wondering, i've

decided to upload my pictures on a weekly basis.

(sorry mom. you'll just have to wait till the end of the week.)

love.

My Jesus, I love Thee, I know Thou art mine;
For Thee all the follies of sin I resign;
My gracious Redeemer, my Savior art Thou;
If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, ’tis now.
I love Thee because Thou hast first loved me,
And purchased my pardon on Calvary’s tree;
I love Thee for wearing the thorns on Thy brow;
If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, ’tis now.
I’ll love Thee in life, I will love Thee in death,
And praise Thee as long as Thou lendest me breath;
And say when the death dew lies cold on my brow,
If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, ’tis now.
In mansions of glory and endless delight,
I’ll ever adore Thee in heaven so bright;
I’ll sing with the glittering crown on my brow,
If ever I loved Thee, my Jesus, ’tis now.

saturday.

[this is how i spent my saturday]:

peacocks in the park

abigaíl

kiara

pushing christian y jorge on the swings for hours and hours

firsts.

our first manicures.

sam's first churro experience.

arte.

so amelia's host father is a famous peruvian paintor - alejandro alayza.

he's pretty legit.

and tonight was the inauguration of his exhibition.

he does amazing work and is a very simple, sweet and loving man.

this is my favorite:

day three.

today is september 21st.

which means two things:

1. i can once again check out books from the library.

2. day three of my photo challenge:

a little bit of skippy for a lot of soles

fish that still have their heads, yuck

choclo

languages and a photo.

I like languages.

are you surprised? probably not.

I’ve been fascinated with foreign languages since fifth grade.

I guess you could say that the reason I am sitting here in lima today started back in a classroom at buker elementary school. fifth grade we took French for half a year and Spanish for the other half in order to choose which one we would want to continue studying in middle school. I decided on Spanish the day that señora cressey asked me if I spoke Spanish at home because my accent was good. (of course being here in peru I realize that she must have been lying or exaggerating a bit because my accent leaves much to be desired) but that was it. I was sold. Spanish quickly became my favorite subject. middle school was just baby stuff. vocab and simple verb conjugations. then after 8^th grade I went to Russia. my world was expanded. a whole different alphabet with sounds that couldn’t be translated. how cool is that? I loved it. I love hearing it and reading it and (attempting) to speak it.

when I came back and started high school I fell in love with more than the Spanish language - I fell in love with everything about Spanish – music, culture, history, food and people. sophomore year I decided to add French. it was amazing how quickly I picked it up. I was finding similarities left and right. before being taught something I was able to guess how it would be because I already knew Spanish. while others struggled with the thought of having a preterit and imperfect tense and a subjunctive mood, I was an old pro at it. senior year was ap Spanish literature. it kicked my butt. but I loved every second of it. the way that the language changed and evolved throughout history. and then there was the beautiful poetry and captivating stories. then I graduated.

I entered gordon being completely confident that I wanted to be a Spanish major. and I still am. although I’ve found another passion along the way: linguistics. I think that up until sophomore year of college I was unaware that such a concept even existed. you mean a class where you just simply learn about languages? you’ve got to be kidding me. it’s just so interesting. things like the phonetic alphabet and morphemes and allomorphs and syntax and trees and derivation and performance and universal grammar and Chomsky and Turkish and the great american vowel shift and sapir-whorf and blocking and traces and train stations. that probably doesn’t mean much to many of you, but at the risk of sounding like the biggest nerd ever, it is just so darn fascinating.

ok so where am I going with all this? good question. today in my amazonian ethnography class we were discussing bilingual education in peru. bottom line is that many Peruvians are being quietly discriminated against because of the language they speak. Peru is a country of many languages – the main three being Spanish, Quechua and Aymara. funny thing is that Spanish is the only one of any real value. kids who grow up bilingual eventually leave the other language and just study Spanish because their mother tongue really has no use. sad fact: a national peruvian bank called BCP has branches in Bolivia as well. and in Bolivia you can be attended to in Spanish, Quechua or Aymara! but here in Peru you must speak Spanish, no other option. how crazy is that? and there are no translation schools here in Peru for indigenous languages, only European languages. what? I was just so surprised and a bit upset by this information.

alright, so day two of my picture challenge went well. is it ok if I share more than one photo? I think so. I do what I want. here you go:

vending machine on campus.

getting a little snacky-snack before class.

deer on campus

the ad that starts out BUSCO - translation:

I'm looking for a boyfriend for my persian cat...

alright javier. i'll let you know.

a photo a day.

i've been wanting to take more pictures recently. i mean i'm only here until december then who knows when or even if i will make it back to peru. thats a strange, sad, and somewhat scary thought to me right now. so i want to soak it all in, remember little details. i've recently been reading some friend's blogs and see that they are doing a 365-day photo challenge. a photo a day for a whole year. now who knows if i'll make it a whole year or if i'll actually take a picture every single day, but i'm going to try. and i'll do my very best to upload them here. they may not come every day but at least once a week. this will also give all my readers a little glimpse of my life here in lima.

so to start it all off here is the picture from sunday september 19th 2010:

a door that i pass when walking to catch a micro on benavides.

"Sí a la Vida" - "Yes to Life"

culture.

hello all! it's really been too long since i've seriously updated this blog. i realized today that i've completed one month of classes already. time certainly is flying! i've been keeping busy with homework, hanging out with friends, volunteering, sleeping and eating. unfortunately i haven't been taking very many pictures, but i hope to change that very soon.

the theme for tonight's post is culture. i've been noticing a lot recently how where you grew up greatly influences all areas of your life. i guess i've always been told that but i never really believed it. i mean we're all human so of course we have the same values and ideas of how things should work, right? wrong. every person from another country is actually an alien with very different values and ideas. just kidding, the incorrect part of that statement was the part about sharing values and ideas. why yes i think that some ideas and values are universal, i'm learning that many of my own (more than i would have thought) have been shaped by my american-ness. let me share a few examples that i've come across:

1. answering your cell phone during class. yes, thats right. i've seen it done. sometimes a fellow student will bend over in their seat and whisper into their phone in the middle of class! i honestly couldn't believe it. some just get up and walk right out of the room to talk. i don't know which i think is better. i mean isn't that rude? or doesn't it show a lack of respect for the professor? for me, yes. but not for everyone. i asked my friends jonatan and miki about this yesterday and jonatan's response was "por favor abby! vivimos en una democracía en perú, donde estás libre a hacer lo que quieres. no es como los estados unidos." translation: "come on abby! we live in a democracy here in peru, where you are free to do what you want. it's not like the u.s." (he likes to joke around about the u.s. by the way, he wasn't being serious)

2. wearing hats inside. i recently realized that my friend jonatan is always wearing a hat. i don't think i've ever seen him without it. which got me thinking if he ever takes it off, like in class or such. but no. i've always grown up thinking that it is rude (for a guy) to wear a hat inside. i'm not really sure why. but hats were definitely not allowed in school. and they are not allowed at the dinner table in my house.

3. walking. first off i'd just like to say that walking speeds vary greatly. here in peru i'm practically a speed walker. although sometimes i do get passed on the sidewalk. but when i'm walking with my peruvian friends sometimes it is painfully slow. like literally my legs start to hurt after a while. isn't that weird? but thats not actually what i wanted to say about walking. what i recently noticed and got me a little frustrated was when i was walking up stairs in a building on campus someone was walking down the stairs on the same side as me. as in i was staying to the right, because that is the way that traffic goes, but the other person was walking on their left. i thought to myself, why don't these silly people walk on the right? simple rules of traffic!! but my program director kindly pointed out that what may be common sense to me does not necessarily apply here. and it's true. it can be a bit frustrating at times, but i'm learning to deal.

4. colors. so usually peruvians identify the micros by their colors. (i haven't figured out why they don't refer to them by numbers, that would be logical - there i go again) as in to get to barranco from la católica take the white one with red and green stripes. or take the big gray and orange one to get to pueblo libre. but what always gets me is the color celeste which is sky blue. so someone tells me to take the celeste and to verify i say ¿el azul? (the blue one?), to which they reply, no celeste. as if it's not even blue. but it clearly is, to me at least.

5. food. huge aspect of culture. i've come to realize that the food you grew up with will always hold a special place in your heart. i mean yes peruvian food is good, but nothing will ever be able to stand up to my mom's spaghetti and meatballs. (side note: i was trying to think of another expression for that...like nothing will ever hold a cake to my mom's spaghetti?? or hold a candle?? am i making this up or is it actually a phrase that people say?) what you eat is just such a big part of who you are (literally - haha). and here in peru is no different. and peruvians are very gosh darn proud of their cuisine. talk with any peruvian long enough and the topic of conversation will undoubtedly become food. they want to know what you like, if you've tried ceviche and what you think of all the different kinds of potatoes. honestly, they go on and on and on. and they just can't seem to understand other types of food. my peruvian friends are appalled by the mexican tortilla because it apparently has no flavor and really serves no purpose. whenever that argument comes up i point out the fact that peruvians eat rice with every meal. mmmm how yummy and flavorful. all they can say to that is "no es igual." - it's not the same. sometimes at lunch when the básico (the lunch plate that you buy at the cafeteria at la católica) doesn't contain rice, but instead maybe noodles they complain and get upset. for them it just isn't a meal without a mountain of rice. i'm not joking. it may be hard to believe, sometimes i can't even believe it myself and i see it every day.

thats it for now. please don't mistake some of my sarcastic comments for negativity. i really do have an open mind and i'm enjoying realizing and learning new things. i'm being stretched outside of my comfort zone and learning to re-evaluate what i think is acceptable or important. and i'm happy here. it's a beautiful place with wonderful people who have welcomed and accepted me into their lives, for which i am eternally grateful.

dear peru,

i love you, with all your quirks and things that seemed so foreign to me and are now becoming strangely familiar.

little letters from first month back in lima.

dear aviación,

please hurry up and stop being such a mess.

dear twins at church on sunday night,

you were so cute copying everything that i was drawing.

dear nose,

why won't you let me put another stud in you?

dear nose,

thanks for finally letting me change the stud.

dear polvos azules,

how did we not meet at all last semester?

dear buenos aires,

i can not wait to meet you in october.

dear chomsky,

i'm not 100%sure how i feel about this whole universal grammar stuff.

dear traffic in lima,

just to let you know, you and me - we're in a fight.

dear fall in new england,

i'm very sad that i'll be missing you and all your beautiful colors and crunchy pine cones.

dear señorita at gelato place in plaza san miguel,

you're very sweet and your lovely smile makes our tuesday gelato tradition that much more enjoyable.

dear biblioteca central,

hate you.

dear september 21st,

come a little faster so i can check out library books again.

dear fruit roll-ups,

you're amazingly delicious.

only bad thing is that i've almost eaten you all.

dear jenna,

congratulations!

dear skype,

we have a love-hate relationship. tonight was one of the nights when my feelings are of love.

dear strawberries,

i'm so glad that you are currently in season here in lima.

dear little boys on the street,

good job pick-pocketing me. congratulations on swiping my católica id. and thanks for not taking my cell phone or anything else.

dear everyone reading this,

please pray for safety.

dear deporte y vida,

its so nice to be back. i missed you all.

dear spring (or whatever season is next here in lima),

please hurry up. i'm sick and tired of these cold, damp, gray days. enough winter, i'm ready for the sun to come back.

dear rosa,

i'm so excited to get to meet you in november.

dear brown sugar,

why can't you be found here in lima?

dear friends back at home,

i miss you all very much.

dear friends here in peru,

i am beyond thankful for you all. thanks for all the laughs, memories, help and patience.

dear kika,

you are a truly inspiring woman.

dear wong,

i'm not sure how i feel about the fact that you sell crack.

but it sure is yummy.