Moments and My New Life Goal

I have not been very good about living in the moment.

I have not been stopping, for any number of seconds, to drink in that very second.

Or am I only being paranoid? Is it really even possible to ever so proverbially "live in the moment"?

It's like one of my very favorite quotes from Our Town by Thornton Wilder:

EMILY: "Does anyone ever realize life while they live it...every, every minute?"

STAGE MANAGER: "No. Saints and poets maybe...they do some."

We are surrounded by too much everyday, same-old, same-old mindblowing glory to ever be able to drink it in.

This is a bit of good ol' fashioned family lovin' and birthday glory.

This is a moment I try to catch about once a week - sunset from the cliffs over the ocean

And here I sit, in my pj's with some coffee, after a normal Monday, mired in the beginning stages of an essay that's due tomorrow. And I know, I know, I am unable to capture and remember everything that has and will happen to me during these months in Peru.

Normal Sunday night - English class planning. (And yes, I am reading Harry Potter in Spanish.)

In these past weeks I have been spectacularly sick, taken mid-terms, taught children, swam with sea lions, held babies, met a million aunts and uncles and cousins and finally bought my flight home.

Mixed feelings is an understatement.

I read a poem tonight called "Instantes", author unknown (attributed to Jorge Luis Borges but it's NOT him - I wrote my poetry final on that guy and I am backed up by a Google search). Here's a verse that struck me:

Por si no lo saben, de eso está hecha la vida,

sólo de momentos; no te pierdas el ahora.

The last line says "Don't lose the now."

It would be hard to lose this now - the water was so cold I was shocked into embracing the moment.

I also don't want to lose the "later". I want to live every moment and remember everything for ever and ever and ever. I want to learn Spanish and salsa dancing and change the world and wake up early and stay up late and eat at every single hole-in-the-wall cafe in Lima. So how should I establish a daily routine based on these wants and the desire to "not lose the now"?

Well, I'll likely drop out of school and join a Spanish-speaking, salsa-dancing troupe that performs in cafes and donates all merchandise sales to orphanages. Like a good ol' USA social justice artsy hipster, but in Spanish and with rhythm. Come catch a show.

I'll be like this guy who performed on the micro - except in cafes. Dancing.

Weekend Stories Part 1

I woke up one Sunday morning and realized it was now the longest time I had ever lived abroad– one day over a month. I also realized that I had no idea where I was. Not that I was in a confused, half awake state (which is the norm for me in the mornings) but that I actually did not know where in Peru I might be located.

Let me back track - I was with my host sister and I knew that I was in a friend of a friend’s house where we had crashed for the night after being out late for birthday celebrations. But I had no idea where that house might actually be, and I knew I wasn’t in Lima anymore.

Let me back up yet again. I live for the weekend. It’s the weekend when I have adventures, true intercultural experiences and a lot of fun and sometimes a lot of awkward. And I do really learn a lot about the culture.

Waking up not knowing where you are is a shaky way to start the day. To follow that with a trek through the desert, an hour long micro ride on what felt like unpaved roads and a delicious but incredibly rich ceviche almuerzo was a lot to take. That weekend ended with going to bed at five in the afternoon. And it was still fantastic. Y todavía estaba chévere. Here are some weekend stories.

(I could put them all in one big weekend story post, but large blocks of text can be scary, so I’ll break them up.)

(Does anyone remember the show The Weekenders? It used to play on Saturday morning cartoons. I am the "American in Lima" version of that show.)

Telenovela: Una Noche de Melodrama

At one point in time I thought it was crazy when two boys wanted to sit with me on the couch at a party. That was before I met Peruvian men. One Saturday night I unwittingly found myself in the midst of a small telenovela as I attempted to keep the peace between two Peruvian chicos that both seemed determined to get to know this particular gringa. There were dramatic sighs, there were sudden turnings away, there was showing up around corners unexpectedly, there was leaving without (very pointedly) saying goodbye. Hands were clutched and questions whispered: “¿Te gusta de él?” (Do you like him?) There was even, at one point, a moment when one of the chicos pointed to my number in his phone and said (in Spanish) “This is your number. I’m deleting it.” The horror! He seemed shocked that I didn’t swoon. (Somehow though, he still managed to call me multiple times after this dramatic occasion.) It was all very traumatic and no matter how I attempted to still the waters, nothing worked. I should have slapped one, ran out of the room crying and then invented a secret lover that was actually cousin to both of them! Unfortunately, I tried the ridiculous solution of ignoring all of the intense gazes. Still, I got some really good salsa lessons out of the whole mess.

This is in the Parque del Amor. Yup, melodrama in a statue.

Fiesta de Cumpleaños

I was invited to a birthday party. I pictured an apartment, a bunch of Peruvians I didn’t know, and the Peruvian equivalent of beer pong. I ended up at an exclusive discotech with an absolutely insane dance floor and was immediately offered whiskey and then asked to dance by an incredibly energetic Limeño. No one ever mentioned a birthday to me and I am still not sure who the birthday girl was. Maybe it was a secret. I've given up trying to understand everything going on around me. All I know is that Peruvian men never cease to amaze me with their sly salsa dancing.

Fiesta de Cumpleaños part 2

The day after the raging discotech I attended an informal family gathering for a four year olds birthday. She showed me how to dance Shakira's Waka Waka dance and we ate cake and drank wine (she didn’t drink the wine, Peru’s lax drinking laws don’t extend that far.) It was adorable. For well over 37 seconds I just enjoyed being with a family, parents and siblings and cousins and nieces and nephews. There is such a different atmosphere when with family. The best parties are family parties. I just soaked in all the conversation about the upcoming elections, food, customs, and traveling. I mostly stayed quiet, but I was content to be so. It was nice to just sit in that atmosphere.