Crucigrama

Today started out really well.  I got on the micro and I was reading my book for Ethnography, when an older man sat down next to me.  He had out his paper, like a lot fo people do on the micro, and he flipped through it quickly and then started doing the crucigrama (crossword).  I continued reading my book, but then I noticed a picture on his crucigrama and I recognized the guy in the picture as a Spanish actor that I learned about last semester in my Spanish culture class.  I was starring at the picture trying to think of his name (it ended up being Javier Bardem) and then the man looked up at me and struck a conversation by asking what I was reading and the rest is history.  I explained my book to him and we had a short chat about Peru, my life, and his life.  He works for a ceramics publicity company and he reached in his bag and gave me a cute keychain...

And then, he continued doing his crucigrama and I "helped."  He knew all of the answers, but he would ask me first if I knew the answer and he let me do the English answers (even though he knew those, too).  I've actually tried doing the crosswords here before, but they are quite difficult so it was really nice to do it with someone because I learned a lot of new words.  When I didn't know the answer (which usually I didn't), he would tell me, so I learned a lot of different synonyms for words.  I also learned that people say "arre" in Spanish to get a horse moving, rather than "ya" or "giddeup" in English.  It was a fun micro ride, however, he did ask for my number at the end, which I just thought was awkward because he was older.  I didn't give it to him, but he did give me his card, so I guess if I'm ever interested in going into the ceramics business, I could probably contact him.

Anyway, I got to the university and had Peruvian Social Reality.  To start the class we talked briefly about Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) because it is coming up at the end of this month, but then we watched a documentary.  The film was called "Ciudad Chicha" and it was filmed by people from the university.  The documentary dealt with different types of music that have been in Perú.  If you're interested here's a link to watch the documentary: http://videos.pucp.edu.pe/videos/ver/8387ca648d9e758b63010556559ef1f8.  Even if you don't understand Spanish, you can watch the first few minutes to here some of the music in it.  The documentary talks about different styles of music, starting with Chicha and ending with Tecnocumbia.  It also brings up different musical groups like Los Shapis, Los Destellos, and Rossy War.  It was interesting and hearing the music was another happy way to start the morning.

We headed to Living and Learning next.  We started the class with a perosn sharing a curious/obvious picture from the past assignment.  One of their pictures was a picture of the adorable deer that are on campus.  So then, we talked about them for awhile.  Apparently, back in the day, all the deer were named, but then there got to be too many of them so now they are just tagged and numbered.  We also discussed what is going to happen when they overpopulate teh campus.  Can you imagine?  Marion, our instructor, explained that the overpopulation is already starting to occur.  We laughed about future headlines in the paper, "PUCP closed for hunting."  It was funny and I doubt that will ever happen, but I do wonder what will.  Well, then we started our lesson for the day, which was on the Cultural Dimensions as defined by a guy named Geert Hofstede.  By this, I mean topics such as whether a culture is Individualist vs. Collectivist, Reserved vs. Expressive, Monochronic vs. Polychronic, a Small Power Distance vs. a Large Power Distance, etc.  We had to choose where we thought the U.S. was on the spectrum compared to where Perú and we personally fell.  For example, in terms of Individualist vs. Collectivist, the majority of us said that the United States is highly Individualistic and that Perú falls more on the Collectivism side.  It's a little hard to explain, but if you are interested in learning more you can go to Hofstede's website and he explains where different countries fall on the Cultural Dimensions spectrum.  (http://www.geert-hofstede.com/)

After this class, I happily ate my lomo saltado and chatted with some friends from the program.  Then, it was off to Spanish class.  Today's class was probably the worst yet.  We talked about indirect speech and how to write it in papers.  For example, rather than writing "He said, 'I will call tomorrow,'" we learned to write "He said that he would call the next day."  It was soooo confusing because it got into even more complex sentences and I couldn't even figure it out in English let alone Spanish.  It was definitely the most challenging class yet and I was getting very frustrated!  Also, our assignment is to fill in these comic bubbles and I'm not funny or creative (especially in Spanish) when it comes to that kind of thing.  So that should be interesting.  Tonisha isn't in that class, so she was trying to help me out with everything eariler, which is great of her!

Anyway, after my frustrating Spanish class, I had Ethnography which actually went really well today.  We actually talked about the people of the Amazon and their agriculture.  We learned about different methods they used and about hunting/fishing!  It was interesting and I was happy to be talking about something other than Ethnographers.  Also, we got our first papers back finally.  I did pretty well on mine.  I probably could have done better, but our next one is due on Monday, so I can try and improve on that one!

After class, I just headed home on the micro with Tonisha.  Other than that, I really haven't done too much else tonight except for try and finish up my blogging from the weekend.  I hope you enjoyed those by the way!  Well, I hope you are having amazing nights!  I'm going to get to reading because I still have a lot to do!  Buenas noches!