PeruFail

So what did we do today in Peruvian Social Reality you ask?  Did we learn more about race or about the people of the Andes?  Did we learn about the people of the Amazon? No, our professor showed us a website called http://www.perufail.com/ at the beginning of class and then we saw his addictiveness to the site come out.  The site is just full of pictures of signs that are wrong or have been translated wrong or just funny pictures of things you would only see in Peru.  We spent the whole hour looking through the site and just laughing!  I think we heard him say "just one more page" at least five times.  :)  It was enjoyable and technically we DID do some learning.  We learned some new vocabulary and about some Peruvian humor.  Here's a couple of the pictures that were on the site..   

"Maximum security"

"Moto Family"

See, they're funny, aren't they?! :)  Anyway, moving on to an actual class from today.  In Living and Learning we talked about values that U.S. Americans had.  We split up into two groups and, out of about 38 values, we had to each choose the top five values in the U.S. and the bottom five.  It was kind of difficult and some of our values from each group didn't match up, however, both groups did put "Freedom" as number 1.  It's the only one that matched up exactly with both groups.  Also, in both of our top 5 lists were "Equality" and "Capitalism."  As for the five things that are least valued, that was a hard list to come up with because you rarely talk about the least valued things and our groups didn't agree as much.  Although, two values were in the bottom for both groups, and those were "Tradition" and "Formality."  It was just an interesting class trying to discuss the values of the U.S.A.  Try taking a list of 38 values (that ranges from freedom, equality, respect to creativity, group consensus, and clear gender roles) and picking out the most and least important ones...it's not as easy as it seems.  Anyway, I do enjoy that class a lot and honestly I feel like it's a class that alomost every student should take.  It really makes you think.

In Spanish today we learned and practiced Spanish idioms.  Those were definitely fun and useful to learn.  A couple of my favorites:  1. "Consultarlo con la almohada" meaning "to sleep on it" or literally translated "to consult with the pillow"  2. "Estar en la luna" meaning "to be oblivious, mentally lost" or literally translated "to be on the moon"  3. "La gota que rebalsó el vaso" meaning "the straw that broke the camel's back" literally translated "the drop that overflowed the glass"  and 4. "Meter la cuchara" meaning "to butt in, to intervene" literally translated "to introduce the spoon."  It was fun to learn expressions that are used in Spanish since these are used in English fairly often.

Finally, I had Ethnography and I actually enjoyed it today and wasn't completely bored!  I was able to actually pay attention and understand everything that the professor said.  It gave me hope for the rest of the semester.  I don't know why today was interesting for me, considering we talked about the farming of rubber trees in the Amazon, but it was. :)  We learned the correct and incorrect processes of harvest the latex from the trees and it is actually a pretty precise process.  Anyway, I hope that this whole not being bored thing continues!! :)

Other than classes, nothing else really happened.  The cobradora this morning did try and charge me S/.1.50, which is more than I've ever paid even without my Student ID so I definitely fought that battle and won. :)  Anyway, I think I'm going to consult with my pillow now. :)  Buenas noches!