Daily Life

Last weekend a few of my American friends through a little Fall party where we had pumpkin bread and apple cider and pumpkin carving and it was a great time! I am definitely missing Fall and lots of things about Fall. Such as candy corn! But this little get together definitely made me feel a little better and was also a great time to catch up with some of the other people in my program who do not go to USIL with me because I do not see them very often! Also, on Tuesday night, I went to Karaoke with some of the same people and had a blast singing old 90s songs in English, and attempting to sing radio hits here in Peru in Spanish!

Speaking of school, I will write a little about my classes here in Peru since I have yet to do that. First, I am taking Introduction to Gastronomy. This class is fairly interesting, although pretty basic, general and it often feels like our professor copy and pastes info from Wikipedia and puts it on slides then continues to make generalizations about food, culture and history. However he is an entertaining guy, and his English is decent which makes the 2 hour class (that usually gets cut to about an hour and 20 minutes) bearable. There is about 12 of us in the classroom, me, Leah and other Peruvian students. All of the classes here are generally small, although this one is particularly small, probably because the first project and test we had were both pretty hard. I cannot even imagine taking this class if English was your second language! I have gastronomy 2 times a week.

On Tuesday s, Wednesdays and Thursdays, I have Advanced Spanish class which is probably the easiest Spanish class I have ever taken. The teacher is an oddball and very nice, but he is just too nice and wastes so much time. Last week, he spent at least 30 minutes trying to get the movie ‘The Incredibles’ in Spanish to play on the projector, while we sat and just talked to each other, most likely in English the whole time, since the class is almost completely composed of American students. There are 3 girls from other countries as well, but their English is pretty darn good. Makes me realize how dumb it is that a can only speak a language and a half while these girls speak at least 3 languages. Darn.

Then, on Wednesday mornings, I have History of Contemporary Peru. I still am unsure about how I feel about this class, because I am interested in the topic, however the readings have generally been dry and the teacher’s English is horrific. Which, is sometimes entertaining, and she flip slops back and forth between Spanish and English or some sort of combination of the two. Again, I am in that class with a large group of American students, but I have made friends with the Peruvians in that class as well. History is probably the class I like the least.

The best, but also busiest day of the week is Thursday, when I have bar tending class, which has turned out to be even more fun than I originally imagined it would be. Every day, a group does set up, squeezing fresh orange or lime juice, cleaning classes, slicing fruit, etc. Then, our professor shows us how to make 4-7 drinks as we take notes, and passes each one around for us to try after he makes them. Then, for the next two hours, we practice making the drinks ourselves! It is very interesting because I am in this class with a lot of Peruvians who are studying hotel management, tourism and gastronomy and many of them plan to own or run their own restaurant or hotel one day, so the skills they are learning in this class are really important. Obviously, it is more just a fun class for me, but I have learned a lot and maybe will be able to get myself at a bar sometime in the future! Is anyone looking to hire a Spanish speaking American bartender in California???

tequila sunrise

bloody mary

Overall, my day to day school schedule is fairly boring but I am trying to make the best of it by making friends with the people in my class, and just enjoying being here as a break from real life school. Part of me is really looking forward to going back to UCSD and working hard and learning a lot, but the other part of me really is enjoying these mind numbing classes.

UPDATE: JUST GOT CANDY CORN IN THE MAIL FROM MY PARENTS. YESSSSSSSSSSSSS