Centro de Lima

As expected, we are too busy living life here to write about it, but Ill try.

Spanish lessons are moving excellently. Lony, who is only on her third day of learning Spanish is starting to pick out words, and I speak a fluent mistake-filled pidgen Spanish. :) Its great it just comes pouring out of my mouth chalk full of wrong conjugations, swapped words, and verbal faux-pas, but everyone is so kind and impressed that I am trying that Im generally understood and vicaversa.

Yesterday we got up had breakfast of bananas, granola and a Peruvian yogurt -- I have to find out what its called. We were in the supermarket here picking out flavors when a tall Peruvian gentleman came over and started advising us what is local and what to buy. He said this fruit is only found in Peru and it is the best. Wow, that is an understatement. It is fantastic. It tastes like a caramel yogurt a little, but fruitier and in fact from a caramel-colored fruit. Plus we always drink this cloves tea with a dash of thick milk. The food here is so fresh, it is incredible. I havent gotten into the coca tea since its tastse sort of grassy and isnt much to my liking.

It is always a moment leaving our locked, safe, stucco-walled front patio. All the tranquility in the stately colonial house dissipates as we step out the the flowered white haven within the gates of our courtyard and out onto the bustling grey streets. You are immediately swept up into the grey hecticness which is Lima, vendors riding long 15-ft bikes with their little bread stands on top, blind beggars and street children, business men and women with pocket watches and three-piece suits walking to work. We live a 15minute walk through the center of Miraflores to our school and the mornings are filled with sights and sounds that are so South America -- or perhaps many non-first world cities. At times it reminds me of Ben Yehuda street in Israel, but then it lacks the familiarity we feel when there. We hurrry to class -- always late -- and then again step off the street into a gorgeous old colonial building; this one ornate and guarded by wrought-iron fences, into the school courtyard and our class.

In the afternoon, we picked up our friend Eva the German girl, and were off to the Center of Lima, the Plaza Mayor (de Armas), a 30minute cab ride, $3.00. All the quaint charm and relative safety of Miraflores gives way to the Big City feeling with shoe-shiners, and police, and pickpockets, and textile and leather vendors, and the seat of government. Pictures are on the upper left, I hope. We made out priority seeing the historic building and the Monastario de San Francisco with the Catacombas -- the San Franciscan Monastery and Catacombs -- which that the most unbelievable frescas and tiling and ornate gold-leafing over Cedarwood furniture. It was a place full beauty and mystery, straight out of Umberto Eco's name of the Rose. There were old monk's bones/bodies in random places and a library with tall winding staircases reaching up into the vaulted walls of ancient religious texts. Lots of skylights there since candles were forbidden in the library. And then the catacombs, a sort of mass grave for those who could not afford a plot of their own, build for Peruvian-size people so we were hunched over walking through the tunnels, and lit by glassed-in torch-lights on the walls.

Incredible.
But it is already 15 minutes before we need to leave for class, and we're on track to again be late, so I have to run!