Woks, yuppies and over 5,000 plates served!

Lots and lots to tell, so little time to do it:

Going back a little bit, on Friday we had this eye-opening session on our own nutrition when we go to site in a few months. First, a current PC volunteer who has already done his two years told us of how he ate with his Andean host family for the first 3 months and ate exactly what they ate...potatoes and wheat soup for breakfast, lunch and dinner. He lost 26 pounds or something and was obviously severely malnourished and anemic. That was the worst case scenario. Then we heard from another volunteer from the same training class. He slowly incorporated vegetables into his diet, started his own little garden for a veggie source and introduced veggies into his community`s diet. Eventually he not only got almost every household in his town growing their own vegetable gardens and competing against each other for the largest vegetables, but he also got them all to adopt vegetarian diets and they wrote a cookbook with all these different healthy and well-balanced recipes using all ingredients that you can grow or find in markets in the sierra (mountains). So now I`m really determined to learn how to grow vegetables well. My own little ¨huerto urbano¨ I have growing in my house actually has all 6 plants sprouting!! I`m so excited and hopefully they don`t die thanks to the advice my parents gave me last night. My host mom is happy, too, because the previous volunteer`s mini-garden didn`t produce one bud.

On Saturday my host mom took me to Lima. She owns a complex there that she rents out. Most of the time I was just sitting around watching her do her business or buying glass. However, we ate lunch in ¨el barrio de los chinos,¨ Peru`s own Chinatown. Whoa, let me tell you, it was a strange experience. There was classical Chinese music blasting down the street (not the pop, thank goodness), Chinese people every once in a while who spoke Spanish, restaraunts serving a Peruvian version of dim sum, dang ta (egg custards)!...and then there were the supermarkets that sold woks, chopsticks, expensive mooncakes and statues of Buddha. I bought a Lee Kum Kee soy sauce/sesame oil (at least, I think it`s sesame oil...I can`t recognize the Chinese or the Spanish word for sesame), fen ce (the clear green bean noodles) and Vietnamese noodles. It`s so exciting! There is apparently a few million Chinese in Peru. They came over as indentured servants and just celebrated their 150 year anniversary in Peru. Well, I think it was 150 years.

Speaking of Chinese people, today we had a discussion about diversity in Peru. I learned that there is a commercial here where a little Peruvian boy is pulling back his eyes to make ¨Chinese eyes.¨ A current Asian volunteer was explaining that it`s just an accepted part of the culture and that it doesn`t have mean intentions. I`m not offended when people refer to me as ¨China¨ or ¨Chinita¨ because they call anyone by a physical description here. For example, if you`re fat they`ll call you ¨gorda,¨ and that`s just the way it is. That`s cool with me. However, I`m not sure how I`ll feel if little kids run up to me to make ¨Chinese eyes.¨ When I was little, the kids in the neighborhood would do that and I still remember how confused I was about why they were doing that. It infuriates me in retrospect and it will take a lot of patience and understanding to get through that kind of attention. I do believe that the intention isn`t harmful but it will be hard because it is so connected to my memories of the racist brats on my block that wouldn`t let me play with them.

Back to what I did on Saturday, after shopping in Lima for boring stuff, we went to Jockey Plaza. Think of a mall that belongs in a super rich suberb of the USA. That`s Jockey Plaza. There were all these expensive name brand stores like Armani and Tommy Hilfiger. Obviously, this doesn`t cater to the average Peruvian. I went with my host mother and a guy who works for her. As we sat down to eat some delicious and creamy ice cream, they joked about how they are dreaming of belonging in the mall. And that when we finished our ice creams, we would have to return to reality. What struck me most about the mall was how everyone with shopping bags in their hands were white or were super pale. The economic disparity between the rich and the poor here is extreme. To some, economic status also corresponds to the color of your skin. This type of discrimination is blatant. I learned during that same ice cream conversation that there is a discoteca (club) in a rich suburb of Lima that only lets light-skinned people in. The guy told me, ¨you can get in. I cannot. I`m too dark.¨ While I know this type of racism exists in the world, and maybe even in the US, it`s hard to stomach it now that I am the priveliged one and that it is so blatant.

OK, Pachamanca will have to wait. I have a birthday party to go to!