First Week on the Job, Cultural Differences, Cooking Up a Storm

Last week was my first full week at my new job. I was hired as a travel writer for a local travel agency that specializes in customized, mostly luxury trips to Peru (and Ecuador/Bolivia). It was exhausting! I'm using my brain in such a different way when I write professionally and it took me the whole week to really get back into the swing of it. I think I'm there now, but my brain hurts.

Office life is kind of boring. I mean, it's nice to be able to do what I'm doing -- I love writing -- but sitting at a desk 4 hours a day and just writing is very different from the rest of my life. I won't deny that the structure is good for me, it's just that I haven't sat at a desk and worked on someone else's schedule for a very loooong time. It takes getting used to again.

But I like it. A lot. The descriptive writing I'm doing is very interesting and a lot of fun. I spent the first half of the week researching a bunch of other luxury travel Websites and have to admit that I salivated more than once at the trips available out there for bottomless wallets. I never had one of those, but at one point it was definitely deeper than it is now. Oh, the memories...

This has also been a growing week for me in terms of my relationship with Hum. I came to the realization that I'm much less independent than I once thought and need to come to terms with that and figure out how to change it. I'm not good at trusting people and it only took a couple of fights to make me doubt the stability of our relationship. The fights were complete miscommunications and cultural misperceptions that lead to arguments and it is nothing short of frustrating. I just wrote about this to a friend explaining how much more difficult it is for me to explain my life to Hum in my broken Spanish than it is to just write it or discuss it with another English speaker. The extent of my high-school Spanish this time last year was "Hola, como estas?" so naturally for the writer/communicator in me to just easier to talk in English. I'm getting better at expressing myself in Spanish, but exasperation is a sentiment I feel quite regularly. My patience is growing, but sometimes I think it doesn't grow fast enough.

And this doesn't just apply to Hum. It's the every day things here in Peru that can exasperate me. Take, for example, a visit to the pharmacy or one of the stores here. At the pharmacy, I have to go to the counter, tell one of the pharmacists what I need and they go in the back and get it. But they don't give it to me. First, I have to take the ticket they've written up and bring it to the cashier. I wait in line to pay the cashier and then take my stamped ticket to another window where I wait in line again to get my item. It's a pain in the ass.

After going through this at the pharmacy today we also went to the tupperware store. It's basically a store that sells all items plastic (plus glasses, cookware and other household items). You have to hunt down a "helper" who writes down everything you want, gives you a ticket, which you then bring to the cashier and, after paying, bring the stamped ticket to another person who then fulfills the order. Our "helper" forgot to write down one of the items and so I had to wait in line again at the cashier, pay again and then wait in line again at the fulfillment counter. I wanted to shoot myself. But, alas, TIP (This Is Peru).

I just don't get it. Why can't I just take the item off the shelf, bring it to a cashier, pay for it and leave?? Why???

Ok, enough complaining. This is just how it is.

The ridiculousness that is one of these stores...




I've been cooking up a storm at the house in the mornings while we have water. I've now perfected the Pomodoro sauce we want to serve in the restaurant and have modified it to accommodate the Mexican-themed taco meals Humberto is now obsessed with eating. He's created a mighty-tasty guacamole to accompany our taco meals, so I've been enjoying every bite.

I've also made a few baked items with avocado (think avocado chocolate chip muffins) and yogurt (vanilla yogurt cake). I'll be posting the recipes as soon as I can take pictures of the end results -- they just get eaten way too fast to photograph!

We had a few friends over for dinner the other night and while the intention was to cook stuff from the restaurant for everyone to try, we ended up making enchiladas and tacos -- foods sorely missing from the Peruvian diet as well as the menus of most restaurants. And when they are offered, hoo boy, do they suck. Ours did not. I bought some Pyrex-type cookware and went to town. Dinner was lovely and it was nice finally having a little party at the house.
Dinner at our house
Jacob trying to open a bottle of wine with a hammer and nail -- don't ask.
Dessert: A Yogurt Cake with fruit and a Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake (I'll post the recipes soon)

The restaurant is also moving along. Our carpinter is buying the wood this weekend and the bar should be ready no later than April 5. That gives us 3 weeks to put together the rest of the restaurant to be ready to open no later than April 15. The menu has been written and almost all of the recipes tested. A few more need perfecting, but it'll happen this week. I'm still working out a good mac and cheese with the ingredients I have to work with down here. My cheese options are kind of limited, so trial and error seems to be the name of the game. I'll get it down soon though, and when I do, stand back...