Thursday, May 21, 2015

5/20/15: Day 1 in Barranco, Lima, Peru

Today has been incredibly long and surprisingly tiring. I work up relatively early (around 8:30) and basically planned my day and talked to Tess and her parents until about 10:30. I left at 11.

I severely underestimated how difficult it would be to travel without knowing the language. Most of the time, it's not too bad because I can read a map, but when I need to ask people for help, it becomes a different story altogether.

I had a pretty busy first day. I walked to the supermarket to buy a SIM card for my phone. I had a tough time figuring out how to walk there because the map I had was not very detailed, and then when I got there and bought the SIM, the man who sold it to me basically told me a bunch of things that I did not understand at all. Throughout the day, I found that my phone was displaying connectivity but wasn't able to actually connect to the internet. Probably something he was trying to tell me.

I then purchased a bus ticket to Ica, where I will be going next. The travel agent was really nice and could speak enough English for us to make the transaction work, but it was a struggle. She made sure to write down what she was telling me - times, prices - to make sure there were no miscommunications. I was glad and very grateful for that, because I could have bought something completely different from what I thought I was buying if she hadn't. The one thing that could have gone better was the fact that she was about to charge a 6% convenience fee for credit cards, which would have been about $0.75, but I was shocked at how high that percentage was!

I also visited three museums: Museo Pedro de Osma (historical, mostly Catholicism-inspired art), MATE (photography of Mario Testino), and the Museum of Electricity. Total, they cost me 15 soles (student price, translates to less than $5 at about a 3.15 exchange rate), which was nothing to complain about. Some pictures from them are below.







The first museum had beautiful architecture (and great Peruvian art!) and the second had breathtaking pictures of people I knew, including exhibits of traditional Peruvian clothing that highlighted bright colors against a black and white background that was from a historical artist, making for an awesome contrast. The electricity museum was free (and very small), but there was a tour guide who was super enthusiastic and kept rambling on in Spanish to me, showing off all the cool demonstrations that they had in the museum. It was cool because they had a working jukebox/record player and the above red and blue old scale that could give you an approximate weight printed on a little piece of cardboard as a souvenir. The problem was that the guide/worker kept speaking and didn't seem to mind or care that I had no idea what he was saying about 95% of the time, and I felt bad and embarrassed for myself! It makes me want to learn more Spanish though, so hopefully I will be able to do that in the next three months. 

Next, I wandered around Barranco's main areas, with a municipal park, bridge, and a little deck overlooking the ocean. The square even had a Starbucks - but its menu items and prices seemed close to American items and prices, so I thought it wouldn't be worth it to buy anything. Instead, I bought a small bag of popcorn for a little less than $0.50 from a nearby street vendor. 






I wanted to buy tickets for Machu Picchu later this month, so I headed back towards my apartment and on to the other side, where Miraflores is. I was able to take some great pictures of the beautiful view, but since it started to get dark, that was the extent of my adventures there for the day. 



One of the most interesting things I noticed is that locals who speak English often assume that I speak English, and then catch themselves and ask me whether I do or not. I assume it's because I appear Asian, but it doesn't make the experience less weird. In the time that I've been here, I've seen several tourists around, but none of them have been Asian. No local speaks anything other than English and Spanish. I expected as much, but because I grew up being aware that I was Asian but not truly thinking about that knowledge or feeling different because of it. The first time that I was really thrown off by it was last summer in Ghana, and I think that special awareness comes from being in a place that isn't as diverse as the places in which I've grown up - north Austin, and then at UT. I think it's just that I consider myself American first and Asian but also not really (it's complicated), and definitely speak English better than any other languages combined. I was caught off guard by the questioning of a fundamental part of my identity today, and reminded of how lucky I am to have grown up in the US with the kind of diversity that I did. 

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