The "Yanahuara 12"

From David:

Running at night has its advantages – it’s a bit cooler – the girls have gone down to bed – and it gives me a chance to clear my mind before getting ready for bed.  Every now and then I see something of interest: a building in mid-construction, young couples out for a walk, or a gang of men plotting their next heist.  The most recent building going up appears to be something for the city of Yanahuara – the section of Arequipa we live in.  I think watching a building progress is fun to watch.  Not as interesting as passing the ‘Yanahuara 12’ as I call them.  This rogue band of men gather about once a week near a dim street light a few blocks from our house at a bend in the road that gathers them near what I assume is their ‘front’ company – a tienda (little local superette).  It doesn’t appear they rendezvous on the same night each week – I assume that would make it too easy for local authorities to catch on.  I often see them in their pre-meeting banter - chatting about local news, maybe one of them highlighted in the dark by the glowing ember of a cigarette, while waiting for the rest of the Yanahuara 12.  I wonder if they pull off major heists… like art thefts… or stick to the easier pickings of bank robberies and the like?  It certainly can’t be basic thievery if they need 12 of them to pull off these elaborate crimes.  Needless to say, I jog by on the opposite side of the street. 

This past week I caught a glimpse into the sophistication of their work – true professionals.  Circled up as the norm, but now wearing the garb of a traditional Peruvian band – amazing.  I even heard them last night inside the shop practicing just like a real band.  The dedication to their nefarious vocation impressed me.  What a great cover.  Who would suspect a simple traditional band of doing anything so dastardly?  Those fancy outfits?  Certainly they can’t be the ones who just ‘happened’ to be two blocks away from the greatest art heist in the history of Arequipa last year.  These guys are good.  And I was there to see them.

(There is no photo attached to this posting for fear of my safety – I’m guessing no one has taken a picture of the Y12 and lived to tell the tale)

To market, to market, to buy a fat (wait, we don't eat a lot of pork....)

From David:

One of the many facets of life here

Local markets

There are two markets that we frequent near our home in Yanahuara – sort of a borough of the city of Arequipa.  One market is small, and is set up in a nearby park on Saturday mornings.  All Organic, we enjoy the opportunity to stock up on Alpaca, ground cherries, apples (Dirty Dozen, ya know), and other produce.

Organic market- you should go early to get the best selection,
but if you go too early, some vendors aren't there.

Vegetable Market

The other market has a Adela at center stage – she’s our veggie queen.  Mostly organic, or near-organic, we only have a few blocks to walk to one of the ‘old school’ markets in town.  Built somewhere around the turn of the century (~1910), the white-stone cavern hosts many vendors of fruits, meats, and veggies – but we’re there to see Adela’s stand – and pick up lettuce (lechuga), tomato (tomato), carrots (zanahoria), pimiento (peppers), papas (potatoes), vaynita (green beans) and the like.  She enjoys a steady stream of customers, and takes pride in the presentation of her products.  As my Spanish improves, I look forward to finding out more about her life.

Adela appears to work 7 days a week and takes a lot of pride
in her veggies.  They are really high quality and delicious.

We also have three grocery stores within walking distance – that’s not typical to have so many options.  These are new concept to Arequipa – with big, wide aisles, shelves full of packaged food, and scan-style cash registers - they feel just like a typical grocery store back in the US.  We use them for non-produce (meat, grains, etc).

To have such a variety of options within walking distance is wonderful.  We find our trips to get food to be fruitful.

Head Scratcher

From David: 

Spanish nouns are different from English nouns.  Who knew?  Do they feel different?  Are Spanish nouns OK with this?  Maybe English nouns feel left out?

 

Let’s pick up the adventure yesterday, when our mild-mannered superhero attempted to leap (in a single bound) over a particular Spanish sentence in Rosetta Stone: Estas frutas son hermosas, pero peligrosas. No las comas.  Our English-speaking semi-superhero discerned that this meant ‘This fruit is pretty, but dangerous.  Don’t eat it.’  (I’ll remember that when that comes up in my next conversation about dangerous fruits – (tip of the hat to comedian Brian Regan).

Frutas… that means ‘fruit’ in English.  More specifically ‘she-fruit.’  It isn’t ‘he-fruit’… I guess that would be el fruto.  Is fruit OK being labeled exclusively as feminine?  I’m not so sure those testosterone-laden apples are going to be so easily won over to this idea.  Are we going to get ‘The Great Orange Protest of 2014’ – banners swaying in the wind “We are masculine oranges and proud of it!” and “Pardon La Fruta, but Los Frutos are the Real Juice!”? 

So I guess we Spanish-learning-types get to memorize that fruit is a ‘she.’  As an additional bonus, other things around it change too.  For instance, it’s not just ‘This fruit’ but ‘This’ (now in feminine form) ‘fruit’ (feminine form) is ‘pretty’ (feminine form), but ‘dangerous’ (again, feminine form).   So, in essence, what we have is: “She-This, she-fruit, is she-pretty, but she-dangerous.”  Ahh – that makes sense.  If the fruit is a ‘girl’, that must mean the fruit’s girl-ness consumes the sentence.  That only seems fair.  Was this slipped into the 19^th amendment when no-one was looking?

Now if it helped anyone to make something like fruit feminine or masculine, I could understand at the same time why one might want a she-table or make it a he-knife.  But, for the most part, it’s completely random, and every object simply needs to be memorized.  “OK everyone, take the thousands of new words you need to learn, then make half of them… blue, and half of them… red.   Yes.  That sounds nice.  Now memorize those additional thousands of pieces of information… for no reason at all.  Then, when you’ve memorized whether words are blue or red, start changing the words around them, because it’s so… umm… important.  Yes, for the good of the Motherland!  Everything must conform to the ways of He-She!” 

Apparently Latin, and therefore many/most European languages have this eccentricity.  I would chalk that one up to “should have gotten rid of that a few hundred years ago.”

What would you change about English if you were King/Queen for a day? 

And....now that school is back in session, I can breathe...

My (loose) New Year's resolution was to try to post 1-2 times per week.  That worked great in January, when Miss M was in summer school.  When that ended and I had an extra body at home for six weeks, it was all I could do to hang on and get through.  (To be fair, the biggest issue is that M doesn't take naps, which is my main "get stuff done" time.)

We had quite a bit of fun over the past couple of months.  Basically, school runs from March through December.  It's kind of different to see a school year calendar that is entirely in the same calendar year...so instead of having the 2013-2014 school year, it's two years- 2013 and 2014.  M got out of school just before Christmas and then went back for a summer school session in January.  It was a lot more play and socialization than regular school; shorter days, more art projects, and for us, a good chance for M to keep practicing Spanish.  She got to wear street clothes instead of her uniform (which was a big win) and the school day was 3.5 hours instead of 5 hours.

At the end of January, we set out for a week long trip to Colombia to visit our wonderful au pair (post on Colombia coming sometime).  Despite the challenging flight schedule (total flight time is only about 4 hours, but because we have to take two or three flights with layovers, it was 24 hours to get there and 16 hours on the way back), we made it intact.

February saw us all at home for summer vacation, and we had a few days to unpack and restock our food stores when we came back from Colombia before we had our first visitors- Grandma and Grandpa!  We had a great time showing them around Arequipa before they headed out for a tour of Peru's highlights.

Then I had two weeks to run around buying M's school supplies (a full list of everything from markers to toilet paper, not able to be purchased at just one shop, but I was a lot more efficient this year than last.)  We got ready to send our oldest back to school and now I'm trying to catch up.

More posts will be forthcoming......