Good medicine

I figured I would keep you updated on my latest purchases from Moore. I'm going to order a couple of other things next week, then I think it is time for a break until after Christmas. My friend Jen and I have been doing lots of retail therapy lately and it is going to come back and bite me. I'm very happy at my job, but I am still adjusting to Lima and missing Berlin very much, so shopping my problems away seems to be the solution I have come up with. Okay, maybe not the smartest idea, but I've gotten some fun things the last few weekends. :)

Tri-M Music Night

The music department hosted a talent show a few weeks ago and it was a great success. A bunch of my kids played and were amazing. It is always so much fun to see them up on stage, doing something they love. Here are a couple of photos from the dress rehearsal in the afternoon.


Ben, playing a classical guitar piece he wrote himself.











Pedro, Enrique and Diego playing the jazz/funk song they wrote.

Earthquake

I experienced my first earthquake this morning. I was laying in bed, having just hit snooze after my alarm went off at 5:45, and all of a sudden my bed started to shake a little bit. It wasn't too big, but definitely was nothing I had ever felt before. A couple of minutes later, when I still wasn't out of bed, a much bigger tremor happened. I lay in bed and watched my whole room shake. It was the strangest experience. The second tremor lasted for about a minute. I literally laid there while it happened and wondered what I should do. We do earthquake drills at school, but I never really thought about what I should do in my apartment. I figured I was safe in my room - there aren't any pictures on the walls around my bed and there is nothing sitting up high that could fall over. I heard my dishes shake in the cabinets in the kitchen and watched my closet doors move back and forth. I looked out the window to see if I could see the buildings moving, but they looked still. The car alarms on my street started to go off, but that was all that happened. As suddenly as it started, it was over. My friend Ben, being the scientist guy, looked the quake up on the US Geological Service when we got to school. Here is the info on my first earthquake:
magnitude 6.5 (considered pretty strong)
epicenter 50 km (30 miles) W of Chincha Alta, Peru
155 km (95 miles) SSE of Lima
What a way to start off the day!!

National Day of Mourning

The former president of Peru, Valentin Paniagua, died yesterday, so today is a national day of mourning. It is a very strange phenomenon. We got a notice in the middle of our last class yesterday saying that Paniagua had died and that tomorrow would be a half day of school. The kids, of course, wanted a full day off and they are actually right - I don't understand the significance of a half day versus a whole day, but whatever. And to top it off, Paniagua was only president for about 5 months. My kids have been giving me Peruvian civics lessons to help me understand who this guy is. Here is what I have gotten so far: Fujimori was the president of Peru for over 10 years and he was very corrupt. He eventually fled the country, leaving no president. It wasn't an option for the vice president to take over, since he was corrupt too. Paniagua was the president of the Congress, so he was chosen to take over the government. He was president for 5 months, then there were elections and someone else won. He then ran for re-election in the last elections and lost to the man who had been president of Peru in the 80s and basically ran the country into the ground. The political history of this country makes me shake my head in amazement. So, anyway, we have a half day of school today to honor the memory of a man who was president of Peru for 5 months and, according to what I've heard, didn't do much good in that time. This place...

Culture

It has been a weekend of cultural experiences for me. Thursday night Reada and I went to the ballet in central Lima. The ballet was "Giselle", which I had never heard of before. It was a traditional Romantic ballet and it was performed by the local Lima dance company, with a 21 year old guy from the States dancing the lead male part. The scenery and costumes were beautiful and the dancing was incredible. It was nice to get out and do something cultural. I feel like I haven't done any of that stuff since I lived in Berlin. This photo is of the lobby of the theater where the ballet was. It is a beautiful old building, but pretty run down, like the rest of Lima. It is sad to see all these old buildings that you can tell used to be really amazing, but are dirty and falling apart now. Everything just has a run down feeling to it. Its very different than Berlin, where everything is so clean and new and where the old buildings are preserved incredibly well.


Today Reada, Cynthia, Tim, his girlfriend Alex, and I went to hear the National Symphony. They perform at the national museum in this 70s era wood paneled hall. There are concerts every Sunday morning at 11:30 and there was a pretty big crowd this morning. The program was a mix of European classical (Weber and Borodin) and Peruvian (2 composers I had never heard of). I wasn't a big fan of the Peruvian classical music, but it was still interesting to hear. The orchestra is doing Mozart, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky next week and I think I might try to go. Here are Alex, Tim, Cynthia and Reada outside the museum.