maandag 5 mei 2008

Balance after 4 weeks

Hidiho!

Somewhat four weeks ago I was in the air on my way to San Francisco. Incredible, but we are already four weeks further in time. Time races and the impressions have been counting. So I would like to share the first ones of Jaén, Peru.

* in a restaurant you can eat what is made that day, ordering from a menu is done in expensive diners (read: 2 euro for a meal; a cheap dinner is 0,5 euro)
* they make that menu but if you are really late to enter there is a chance it is sold out
* a quick snack in between is quite difficult, because the restaurants are closed between 11 and 4, they only eat on regular eating hours
* you can eat delicious cakes and pastery (yes Queen!!!)
* rice with almost everything
* they seem to work a lot and they don´t seem to need much sleep at the same time
* you actually have clothes with little pockets in the inside of the pants to store a cell phone or some money (they are customed to theft, that's for sure)
* just outside the village Jaén there are still communities without clean water
* wine tastes more like Martini
* the food: ceviche (raw fish in a slightly spicy sauce), humita (mais with cheese), tamales (mais, cheese and chicken), empenada. chicha morida (mais fresh drink), fried cheese, ... all good!
* sunny and sometimes rain for half an hour
* there are one-day-in-a-week-open-markets as known to Belgians but also permenant markets with a roof
* there is a herbal shop (where you can buy hallucinative cactusplants) and the guy has one blue and one brown eye (he gave me an extract of a tree as a repelant)
* I go and eat at señora´s Nora. She has a dog with no hair because it is too hot here, a skinny cat, chickens, perroquets (papegaai), little birds (parkieten)
* mototaksi´s as seen in Thailand are also here the means of transport, even for two streets (off course with theft you would think twice)
* every Sunday there is the flag ceremony (patriotism mixed with militarism)

I have a room with Lizandro and Desi, and Eva as well and Rosillo as well, so three tenants. They have three children, two sons and one daughter. The oldest son is a soldier and lives in San Ignacio, the youngest studies to become a doctor and lives in Trujillo. And there the three tenants come in handy because it is a private study. Anita is living in Jaén and just gave birth to a baby girl JeniferAnita, a little sister for Elmer. She is a bank employee and will get paid during her three months of absence.
Do you know that they did not yet have a name untill two days after the birth? And the family and friends made a list with names. In Belgium the name is a secret untill the card or telephone comes. Here they told everyone the sexe and they invented a name after the birth. Ne güzel! Isn´t this great, no pressure, no nothing.

I do start to miss some little things ;-)

Beso!

1 opmerking:

Anoniem zei

Hey meid,
amai al 4 weken ! En ik raak nu pas even op je blog (internet in Ghana liet het redelijk afweten). Hoop dat alles goed gaat, dat je niet meer bestolen wordt, en da Christophke je fijn komt bezoeken en dan met wilde verhalen terugkomt ! liefs,
Lieve