Sorry for being so vauge about my surroundings here. Heres a little description.
My room is normal sized with one bed, a table, and three hooks and a bench for my clothes. The floor, walls -the entire house for that matter- is concrete. Concrete is one of the cheapest building materials, so most, if not all houses around here are brick and concrete. Most houses have one or two completed floors with an open roof and unfinished concrete pillars so they can keep expanding thier house as they save up money; its actually a nice physical representation of hope and planning. Most people have an ugly mutt and chickens on thier roofs, and like in my house, the sink to wash clothes in and the clothes lines are up there too.
Chaclacayo is in a valley, so all houses start at the river and dramatically climb up the steep mountains; they´ve literally terraced thier houses right on top of each other in some areas. See, in the 80´s and 90´s when the terrorism in Peru was really bad, many people fled the country side and went to the cities. The cities had no room so the people had to build on the steep hills that were once considered un-inhabitable. Your best visualization is to think about steep, grey, rocky hills, covered with colorful matchboxes! Of course there are central areas and parks which are always a nice get-away, and like all neighborhoods you have the upper classes and lower classes usually seperated by walls and/or mountains!
I eat some variation of rice, potatoes, eggs, chicken, meat everyday; definitly rice and potatoes everyday. Its interesting because Peruvians have always had an aversion to eating anything animals eat, so there is a big emphasis on harvested cerals, meats and potatoes. The interesting part is that rice is one of the hardest crops to grow in Peru, and they actually waste millions of dollars to grow rice in near desert conditions or import the stuff...gotta´love cultural cunundrums. I´ve had cuy (guinea pig), Cua Cua (intestines), and Ceveche´ (raw fish in lime, onion, garlic juice to kill the bad stuff) Pulmones (cow lungs), and Anticucho (heart and liver,) and i´ve enjoyed it all. I think the only dish I won´t try is the i´ll-prepared, fried chicken anus that they sell in the streets! But then again they say ketchup can cover all!
Sunday, October 25, 2009
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