The Adventure Begins - March 21, 2011

Welcome and bienvenidos! 


The purpose of this blog is to inform the reader about life in Peru from the perspective of an American expat. Most readers will be family and friends in the US, many in southern California, and I want to provide as accurate a portrayal of my experiences here as my perspective allows. While I am a low maintenance kind of gal, I'm also a planner, and both of these characteristics will color my view of life in a developing country. I am very fortunate to have as my guide a true Peruvian with American sensibilities, and obviously we wouldn't be in Peru if it wasn't for my husband Kiko. So let the adventure begin!


Here in Peru we live in a big city. I've never lived in a big city, it's a bit different from the suburb of Corona. There are more apartments in Lima than there are houses, and we live on the third  and top floor of an eight unit apartment building in Miraflores, one of the 43 districts which make up the capital city of Lima. Although we live in a residential neighborhood, with one park behind us and another around the corner, it's full of a myriad of sounds. There are many birds in the trees and on the flat apartment roofs: cooing mourning doves, chirping song birds, and squawking jungle- green parrots. Our apartment faces the street, and below my bedroom window there are speeding cars, taxis, motorcycles and trucks of ALL sizes. They have loud motors, mufflers, horns and radios. Car alarms are constantly going off.  There are sirens in the distance. The distinctive whistles of the ice cream man, the knife sharpener, the fruit seller, and the junk buyer. It's the cacophony of the city, and something I need to get used to. 


The apartment we live in belongs to Kiko's family. It used to be my beautiful mother-in-law's, then my sister-in-law lived here, and now we are fortunate to live in it. It's just a tad bigger than the one bedroom place Kiko and I lived in our first three years of marriage. Two bedrooms, one bath, unless you count the bathroom on the service patio, which we don't count because we don't use it. That bathroom is for our empleada - our maid. 


Yes, we employ a maid. I'm not working yet, and it's only me and Kiko here. Nevertheless we have Gregoria two days a week. Even in a small apartment, it is customary to engage some "help". I could have used this "help" when my daughters were young and I was working full time! Don't get me wrong, I am truly grateful to have the luxury of a maid, although a maid is not seen as a luxury here. Gregoria cooks delicious meals, cleans the apartment, and does the laundry. These household chores encompass different things in Peru. Food is generally purchased and cooked as needed, and favored ingredients are fresh as opposed to canned, frozen or (especially) processed. Gregoria makes our meals from scratch, including fruit juice, soup, sauces, and salsas. When I shop with her, I learn to choose my freshly baked french rolls and ripe tropical fruit. Packages are much smaller that we are used to in the states, there is no Costco here, so we grocery shop more often. We also buy a lot of bottled water.


Many homes do not have clothes dryers, as is our case. Out on the service patio, Gregoria washes our clothes, hangs them to dry, and irons them all, including jeans, t-shirts and even underwear. I certainly don't iron unless absolutely necessary, and my clothes are so casual, but it's really nice to wear an ironed t-shirt and sleep on freshly ironed sheets. We don't have a dishwasher or disposal, which is also common in dwellings here. We have a tiny trash bag in a wire holder with a plastic lid on the kitchen counter next to the sink for fruit and vegetable peelings and any food scraps from our plates. 


There's something else we don't have that I took for granted in Corona...plumbing. Well, actually just large pipes. Apparently the pipes here are small, too small to accommodate (here it comes!) toilet paper. Small trash cans are essential in home bathrooms and in every stall of any bathroom anywhere you go. After living in Peru for nearly three weeks, I've now learned the art of toilet paper origami!