I think that I feel a certain kind of shame in being a tourist--a shame that comes from things beyond my control, such as the differences in exchange rates, the millions of families living in poverty due in no small part to my own country´s overconsumption of the world´s resources, the undeniable privilige I have to be white, oblivious to this country´s language and heritage, that I am able to be here at all, snapping pictures and eating food. All of these things, and everything that accompanies them, gives me this feeling of nakedness, a sense of original sin, a shame for things that at some level I realize are not my fault. I try to atone for these things by attempting to learn the language and customs and not being a conspicuously asinine tourist. Really, it is kind of ridiculous to have these feelings, considering that I should be getting ridiculously drunk every night instead of being stressed out about being foreign. I think some of these feelings extend beyond simply Peru, I think some of it comes from ingrained inclinations to avoid relying on the kindness or similarity of others.
That said, I´ve settled into a semblance of daily life in Miraflores. I get up and go to mi escuela de español, which happens to be right next door to my hostal, then I walk around and find a nice cheap little Peruvian food joint to eat my lunch--they always have a kind of menú de el día, which consists of an entrada, un plato principál, refresco, y un postre. Despues tomo una siesta (I take a nap), and then the rest of la tarde y la noche is open for whatever, which lately hasn´t been too very much, I´ve done a few touristy things like gone to Centro de Lima and a giant marketplace and read some of Cien Años de Soledad and been studying my spanish, and then usualmente I am muy cansado a la 10 en la noche and I go to bed.
I went to a salsa class this afternoon and it´s weird how salsa always seems to be different each time, the salsa that the masses dance apparently is much more informal than what I learned in the US, the man and woman just kind of hold hands--instead of the ballroom type holding. It´s still kind of hard to perform for this gringo. I kind of like the meringue though, you can do pretty much anything.
I realized today that I shouldn´t have judged Peruano dancing ability by the one bar that I went to that played mainly western booty drivel and Latin pop mierda--there´s apparently an abundance of these places called Peñas where they dance only to Criollo (local) music and do the salsa y merengue all night. I´m a little scared to go by myself but hopefully I can dig up somebody to accompany me.
Nothing too exciting in my travels as of yet unfortunately, I´m kind of buckling down right now and trying to string some kind of castellano ability together. I don´t know how much one can really get from 2 weeks, but I do feel like every day I gain a little bit more knowledge of the language, which is of course at an extremely elementary level, like learning to say,¨there are 4 chairs in the room,¨or ¨my butt hurts¨. Got to start somewhere though.