So today was a pretty relaxed day, but there were still some interesting moments as well, like in Peruvian Social Reality. In class today we talked more about informal jobs, especially focusing on empleadas in Perú. It was really interesting. We talked about the empleadas, their rights, the families they live with, etc. My professor said that most of the time the empleadas don't have contracts with the families, it's usually just a verbal contract. We talked about how an empleada can live with a family forever and the family will never know their empleadas last name. It's actually interesting to learn about. He had a point though, I don't know the last name of my empleada, but then again it took me 10 minutes to think of the last name of my host mom. :) Now, although I don't know her last name, I do know that she is studying to be a nurse which I think is awesome. :) Also, we talked about nanas (babysitters) here in Perú and how some parents are really detached from their children. Our professor explained some things he's seen before, like a couple linked arms walking while the nanny was following them with their child. Apparently it's a way to show status, because it shows that they have the money to pay for a full-time nanny. Also, it's interesting because the child grows up relying on the nanny and there is this intimate relationship between the two of them, but on the flip side, the child grows up knowing that he/she is "superior" and that he/she can boss the empleada around. It's crazy!
Anyway, then we had Living and Learning. Today, we discussed different communication styles, like direct vs. indirect or being emotionally attached vs. emotionally detached. It was a pretty interesting class, too. We watched a video of a student talk show from UW-Madison and we had to decide on the communication styles of the people. It was funny to see that some of the people were pretty obvious on their style of communicating. After class, I ate my lunch. Today, I kind of got two lunches because when my host mom asked me last night what I wanted to take with me today I said it didn't matter, so I got both today. :) It made me smile. Then, after lunch, I had my Spanish Writing Workshop, we worked on subjunctive tense again, it went pretty well today. :)
In Ethnography today, our professor wasn't there today so we had a different professor. Although some people would've probably liked to have class cancelled, I'm glad we didn't because then that would mean two more 3-hour classes and those are no fun! Even though our professor wasn't there, the class was still good. Our fill-in professor talked to us about Shamanism in the Amazon. Shamanism is a set of beliefs and practices that deals with communicating with the spiritual world. It is also interesing and I read about that in my book as well. There are these mediators called Shaman that are "messengers" in between the spiritual world and real world. Some of the beliefs are pretty strange, but it's still very cool to know what they believe. Anyway, we did get out of class early, which was nice.
Other than the previous paragraphs, nothing has really happened today. And I didn't do much tonight. I was supposed to go to mass with my host mom tonight, but by the time I got home she had already left, so that was too bad, but that's what rush hour in Lima does. Anyway, I hope you all had wonderful days and nights. Also, since I've joined the blogging world, I've been following some other blogs lately. I saw a post from today that made me smile. The post is just a short and perfect reminder of how to live life. I hope you enjoy because I sure do. I suggest that you look at some of the other posts, too, they are good: http://stephaniesikorski.blogspot.com/2011/10/picture-to-remind-us.html?spref=fb :)
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