Well its been a while! I have been busy, out and about, I'm in school now so its hard to always update and I need to practice my spanish more so I can't always be blogging. However it has been 4 weeks since my last blog post, which is a little bit too much time, so I apologize, but at least you get four weeks of blog in one, I think that it is worth it.
So where to begin! Well an update on my life as Jeff Kennes. School is better, I can actually understand most of the teachers now, but I am still exempt from the majority of things, and most teachers are just focusing on helping me learn Spanish, especially my Spanish teacher. She is so great, like I am so happy she is my equivalent of a homeroom teacher. She will never be Mrs. Martin though. (who I do miss, and who I hope starts reading my blog soon! Even though she might have a stroke at the number of grammatical and spelling errors I am making.) I have also begin to make friends, like alot of them. I love the identity of the class room here, EVERYONE is friends. In Canada usually there are people you despise in your classroom, but here everyone really cares about each other, and sure they tease each other but its more just love. It is also very common for the students to give each other nicknames too, and some are even mean like gordito (which is like little fatty) or Chancho (Pig) and it begins to upset that them if used constantly, but if it is occasion they don't mind. I have been expecting and dreading mine since my rotary conferences where I learned about them, but lucky me I totally got skipped over! The only thing anyone has called me more than once is gringito bonito (which is like saying Pretty Whitey it a very endearing way). I will say that i continue to dislike teachers and their lack of respect for students, some go out drinking with their students at parties, and others do other stupid things. They also make fun of students and laugh at them to embarrass them. It is honestly disgusting, and I am not impressed with the majority of them, the other day, my math teacher called me gordito, and I was little less then impressed.
But in more interesting news! I have like four different adventures to tell you about! We will start with Pamplona Alta. Now as I have said before, there are 43 districts in the City of Lima, each functioning like its own municipality. One of these, boarding my more residential District of Surco, Is "San Juan de Miraflores" another huge district, that is much poorer than Surco. Although there are people there who live quite well, it is also home to likely one of, if not the poorest part of the city, Pamplona Alta, which is possibly one of the most poor, yet most amazing sites I have ever seen in my life. A literal city of shacks built on the sides of a mountain. The magnitude of emotion this site brought on will likely end up being equal to macchu pichu for me. Anyways I had the opportunity to help out here on a rotary project quite a bit. The San Isidro rotary club in junction with it's roteract club teambed up with medical students from Penn State University to provide a day of free health care to the people of Pamplona Alta, many of whom desperately needed it. We Built a hospital/clinic out of tents and we went to work on literally the SLOPE of the mountain. I did a bunch of stuff that day, from translating for the Med students (yes my spanish is getting that good ;)) to helping my mom (a dentist) and helping patients find their way around, but the majority of the day I spent as a pharmacist, COOL RIGHT? I worked in the pharmacy tent measuring out pills for perscriptions and finding medicine.
Anyways it was a rediculously filling day, and I enjoyed it alot. And to top off the day me and Sofiane (my french amigo who helped out all day) hit Miraflores with some friends from School and hung out at a cafe and later went out to a party!
The Monday after was also a very important day. The Feast of Santa Rosa de Lima, our patron Saint. It was a rather interesting day and a national holiday here in Peru. Anyways the story of Santa Rosa, is that she, like most other saints healed the sick, but what is very interesting is that she made an orange tree grow out of the cement! So two miracles as any Learned Catholic knows is enough to canonize a saint. Usually people in Lima go out to her church in Lima on this day, but we knew it would be very busy, so we instead headed out to a military Club (a country club for military officers and their family)) in a mountain town called Chosica where we had lunch toured the mountains (yes Mountains!) and played a game of Giant Chess. All in all, a very fun day!
The following week we didn't go out and do a whole lot, but all it all it was ok, minus the school part ;). Anyways the weekend following me and Sofiane headed back to Miraflores, with our friend Megan to go on a tour of Lima, mainly Miraflores and El Centre. It was a nice trip, we saw some ruins inside of the city of the Incas, as well as some beautiful colonial Spanish Architecture, and my Favourite the Cathedral of San Fransisco de Assisi. Now that was just plain cool. It is a Church ran by Franciscan Monks. First we entered a beautiful garden courtyard, where we could hear mass going on, and quite humourously I could hear an alleluia coming from the church before the gospel and I sang along with it, because I knew it, everyone was kind of impressed, but more than anything thought I was a nerd. Later just reaffirming my catholic nerdiness I was able to name a saint from the back of a statue (keep in mind it had wings and was carrying a sword (if you want to guess post it in the comments)). The church contined on with a beautiful and very old library, where any history geek (yours truly) would die. There were very old texts and bibles in the library, which had all very old chairs and what not. It was amazing. The library also had an open book.....of Gregorian Chant.......I flipped....there were neuves and everything, unfortunately I couldn't take pictures anywhere inside the church. However the coolest part by far was the catacombs, underneath the church, with bones, thousands of them, from actual people.There were real skulls and what not. It was so cool, can't wait for my real mom to see it when she comes ;). Anyways, thats about all I did that day, except for when I came home, there we watched the Peruvian-Canada Futbol match. It was, upsetting to say the least, but on the bright side Canada (who is the worst futbol team in the world) ONLY lost by 2 points to Peru. I think thats preety good!
So the day after that we all went to a rotary lunch, very quaint and what not, I enjoyed it, all of my fellow intercambios were there and we had fun, while all the Peruvians and Americans laughed at Canada's Defeat in Soccer the Day prior. Anyways that night me and Sofiane and my parents went to a place called "Parque de los Aguas" where we saw beautiful lighted fountains and some light/water shows. It was honestly, gorgeous! I hope I get to go again, there was only one thing that annoyed me, and that was the trillions of young peruvian couples snogging on the benches.
The weekend after that was also a very relaxing one, as all I really did nothing. We went out to a concert with some exchange and highschool friends on the friday night, which was really cool. The Group was Called La Mente, and they were a Peruvian-Rock-Reggae infusion thing, which was cool, but I couldn't hear after, and I had a number of bruises, but it was very fun! The next day was another rotary lunch, what fun, and apart from that and the Peruvian-Canadian Volley ball game (which we also lost) we didn't do too much. I will say though that after losing both of Peru's favourite games to them, I didn't hear the end of it.
Finally this Past weekend was also very interesting. On Friday night I went out for Sushi with a bunch of my good friends (it was a buffet, OH YES!) and on Sunday we had an interesting day too. We decided to go out to Huacho. I will be honest, there is not much to do in Huacho, and it is a 3-4 hour drive from Lima, so the day wasn't that great, BUT I got to experience another one of Peru's geographical areas. The Desert! (we Have two, on north, and one south of Lima, both very large) This was the north Desert, and to be honest, iw was so amazing. It was also gigantic. If any of you have watched the Book of Eli, that is what the whole desert looked like, very deathly, very cloudy (no sun) and very depressing. (But I deffinately wasn't depressed, I liked it ALOT)
So that catches you all up on the major things that have happened here, I have also entered my next exchange phase (Culture Shock) but I am dealing quite well with it, more and more things are starting to shock me about Peruvian culture, but that is ok, I am hear to learn another way of life, andI am enjoying it. I have also been making a ton of friends, and I am starting to really understand my teachers when they talk in Class, andI can converse with my friends! It is really great!
Anyways, I have got a fun week coming up, more sushi this weekend, and maybe to the fort in Callao (yay geeky history) and after that, the next wednesday begins my holidays, and since I don't write exams, instead of 1 week of holidays for spring break, me and Sofiane get 2 and a half! So it will be a marvelous few weeks, we plan to see sights, eat some crazy food, hang with friends and FIESTA! OH YES.
Talk to you all soon! CHAU!
( I will soon begin updating my posts with pictures, so take a look back, I have finally learned how to, but today it isn't working :P)
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