Manifestaciones

Day three classes today.  I attended Comunicacion Social again.  I'm kind of enjoying that class, even though it's at 8 a.m.  I feel like it's a good way to start out my day.  After that I went to Realidad Social Peruana and during this class we actually got to "experience" Peruvian social reality.  As the professor was talking we heard a bunch of chanting.  To me, it sounded like a riot.  The professor stopped in the middle of class and said, "Do you know what that is?  It's a manifestacion (protest)."  So obviously since we're learning about Peru we left the class for a couple of minutes to check it out, then we went back to class and talked about it.  The protest was for the recent rise in tuition at PUCP.  It was pretty interesting to witness a small protest on campus because protests/strikes are pretty common in Peru.  I'm happy I got to see that part of the culture on a small scale though rather than in an uncontrolled environment.

I also went to a new class today called Living and Learning.  It's a course offered by CIEE and its purpose is to help students learn how to development interculturally and reflect on new experiences.  It was really interesting today.  We played the "Name Game" which consisted of us talking about where our names come from and what significance or stereotype is attached to a name.  For example, the name Gertrude carries the perception of an elderly woman.  This then lead to the discussion of how Peru obviously is culturally different and a name like Gertrude may mean something completely different here.  This discussion can then be translated to any aspect of life.  We grow up with our own cultural perceptions, but these concepts are different in the eyes of a different culture.  Another example...

Guinea pig in the United States = Pet
Guinea pig in Peru = Food, delicacy, Religious value

Which brings me to share a fun little commercial that the Banco de Credito put out this past year.

This is a play on the fact that in some places guinea pigs hold a certain religious value and are seen as "magic or healing."  So this cuy magico can also make money appear. :)  Number one reason why this is funny though...this dance and song became popular in Peru.  People would do it in clubs (I imagine it as the Peruvian dougie).

Other classes I went to were Spanish writing workshop and Amazonic Ethnography.  I am not going to go into detail on these classes, but I will say #1 The writing workshop is really forcing me to get in touch with my creative writing side (something I don't have) and #2 Two hour classes in a different language are hard to pay attention to after about an hour and fifteen minutes.

Well since this whole blog was pretty boring aside from the AMAZING magical cuy video I will leave you with this funny image to picture.  This has happened more than once so I feel like now it is a must to share and guess what it has to do with....MICROS!!  Okay, so sometimes in the mornings the cobradors buy a newspaper from off the street and give it to the driver.  Now, I don't know where in their right minds the drivers think they will have time to read the paper, but they still attempt to.  I just don't get it, but it makes me chuckle everytime.  Picture it...The cobrador buys a paper hands it to the driver, the driver unfolds the front cover, maybe reads half the headline, and has to put it down because the light is green.  Then the next red light comes..the driver picks up the paper again, unfolds it, maybe reads the whole headline this time, and puts it back down.  It really blows my mind.  I mean the stoplights here have countdowns on them!  The driver knows he only has 30 seconds to pick up the paper, unfold it, barely read, fold it back up, and set it back down.  What's the point?  I guess after a day of work and many red lights he could probably get through part of an article, right?

Well, I hope you have a wonderful night/day (depending on when you read this)!!  Don't forget to share my blog with your friends and family!!  Thanks again for reading!!!