South America journal - Feb 2008

South America trip February 2008 - part 1


"I just remembered that I own a car. Totally forgot about that..."

























Friday, February 1
Well, the trip started out on an interesting note... I got to the airport in Denver at 4:30 in the morning to check in for my 6:40 flight to Chicago and found out that it had been canceled. I was informed that I was lucky I got there early so that I can get on a 6 a.m. flight that they created to leave 40 minutes before the one that they cancelled. Lucky me. Of course, it didn't take off until 7:30.

I got to Chicago, got off the plane and shock... my Chicago - Toronto flight had been canceled. Two flights canceled in one morning. So after are several hours of trying to find different routes to get from Chicago to Lima on a mileage points ticket (not the easiest thing to do), I finally talked to a flight attendant (who lives in Peru, coincidentally), who was nice enough to take me to a customer service person, who spent about two hours figuring it all out. (side note: they couldn't get it fixed within the confines of my mileage award ticket, so the United agent actually bought me a ticket on Delta to get me out the next day - a really impressive instance of United customer service, which they aren't always great at).

The moral of the story is don't ever connect through Chicago.

Since I was in Chicago for the night, I went to visit my grandmother. I didn't see her very often so that was a nice surprise. I picked up dinner from her favorite restaurant -- Hackney's. We watched Wheel of Fortune.

So we got through dinner, and the usual grilling about my love life or lack thereof... and I decided to get out my laptop and show her some techie stuff.

The highlight of the night was when I showed her Google Earth. At first, she wasn't sure what she was looking at, because she still thinks that my computer is a typewriter. So I zoomed in on Peru, her house, my house, and after a while she started to understand that you looking at an interactive satellite view. At the same time, however, there happened to be a travel show on TV about South America. So I was showing her Google Earth on South America, and on the television there is a travel Channel show about South America, and she got horribly confused. For someone 92 years old to whom all of this stuff is fairly mystical, that had to be a very confusing thing. I can understand why because even I got a little bit confused.

Saturday February 2
Flew from Chicago to Atlanta, sat at Hartsfield Airport for 5 hrs, flew to Lima. Uneventful - nice.

Sunday, February 3
Sunday was beach day. After a long flight my reward was to go to la playa in Miraflores. My goal was to surf, but there aren't really any surf shops near the beach - strange. And I couldn't find a locker either. And since the airline still had my bag, I didn't have my board shorts or anything else. So surfing wasn't in the cards, but still a great day at the beach.

I went out to watch the Super Bowl, and of course there were only a few places that show it. The first place called Corner Bar in the Miraflores neighborhood looked good, but it was full and I couldn't get in. So my backup plan was the Marriott. They had a game on, but what an oddball collection of people. It was a lot of Giants fans are found myself rooting for the patriots who, of course lost. My second Super Bowl in a row outside the country.

Monday, February 4.

I originally put this part in a Sunday, because the two days just ran together, but I guess it's actually Monday.

Left the hostel at midnight to get to the airport before 1 a.m.. So that I can hopefully find my bag coming in on the flight from Atlanta. At this point I was giving it about a 20% chance, but I had to get out there and try since my flight was leaving at 5:30 a.m. it just meant getting to the airport a few hours earlier. And miracle of miracles the bag showed up. I slept for about an hour in the airport Chapel with my head on that backpack, making sure it was not going anywhere. I can tell you when I checked in at 4 a.m. and was not happy to give my backpack back to an airline, but I didn't have a choice, so try again.

Anywho... finally got to Cuzco at 7 a.m. and my bag showed up as well. I think the trip karma is starting to change. Jim (President of Globalteer) met me at the airport, and we went into Cuzco. After getting settled in the hotel, we met for coffee to do orientation for the program. And I can say I was a bit nervous. I really didn't know what to expect - I was excited and glad to be there and really looking forward... but didn't know what to expect. It turns out that there is a computer class at both the boys and girls orphanages on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I was hoping to be able to do something like that was happy to hear that.

In 3 p.m. we went out to the boys home (called Hogar (home) de Menores "Maria Salome Ferro") where 60 boys live in old house, donated by a family over a hundred years ago. So they have a nice building but lack of funds to maintain and buy books by sheets chairs etc. I helped the teacher, a college student named Elmer. We took the kids through basic lessons about how to use the computer configuring Windows those types of things. Of course they're all experts already at videogames. I think highlight of the class lies when I showed them Google Earth. It was already downloaded, so someone had seen it before, but the kids in his class didn't seem to have. We spent time looking at satellite views of Cuzco and Lima, and then I asked them if they wanted to see where I live. So we typed in Denver and flew up to the United States and onto Denver and they were all thrilled to see a city in the states, to see the roof of my house and the Rocky Mountains. That was fun.

Then I met with the director of the home, whose name is Janette. She seems like a wonderful (and I'm guessing tough) woman and she immediately gave me an assignment. So I have homework. She wants a software application to track the health of the kids -- information like height and weight -- on monthly basis. It was funny, she immediately brought this up, almost as soon as I sat down. I talked to her at some length to find out where requirements were and told her that I would work on it. I spent time on the flight down learning Ruby on Rails, and I think that will be a good tool for this app.

Tuesday, February 5.

Got some exercise in the morning, then headed down to the library with Judith, the other volunteer. This is a neat program started by an American woman from New York/Boulder, who wanted to provide a place for kids to go when they're not in school, where they can read and study. I read through a book about dinosaurs to one of the kids there. And of course found out that he reads Spanish, much better than I do. That was a bit humbling.

The afternoon I got my Spanish lesson. It was three hours, which is a bit long, but my instructor named Magda a lot of fun and actually really enjoyed the lesson. Today was mostly review, and tomorrow we'll start getting into the past tense and some other new things. I alternate between feeling like my Spanish is really improving every day that I'm here, and feeling that my Spanish is really horrible and it's frustrating when I try to talk to people. There are a lot of Spanish-language schools in Cuzco, a lot of people live here to study Spanish, and many of them volunteer as well. My school is called Maximo Nivel, and it's a big school on Avenida Del Sol. So far it's been really good.

I went to dinner with Jim Elliot, who runs Globalteer and Judith, another volunteer. I found a little place called Las Cupulas close to the Plaza de Armas. I only mention it because it has a great courtyard in the back and aren't really that many places to eat outside in the city, which is surprising because the weather here is really nice almost all year round. After that we went to Nick's, which is a good ex-pat bar just a block or two off of the Plaza. Tuesday is Quiz night which is a good time, I recommend it. It was also nice enough to put CNN on the TV even though he's British. So I got to catch up with Super Tuesday.

Wednesday, February 6.

I spent a bit of time working on a web application for Janette at the orphanage. Just enough so that I could show her a mockup. I helped Elmer teach the computer class at the girls home this afternoon, which was a lot of fun. I'm always bothered by how few girls go into math and science and engineering, so great to see this group of girls getting comfortable on the computer, especially a group that doesn't have the same advantages that most people in the States and other places have. Oh and I learned some new Spanish words. "Inalambrico" means wireless, and "cable" means cable. "mouse" is mouse - or sometimes "raton". Got to love technology words, so much easier to translate...

After that, I headed back over to the boys home to meet Janette and show her my design. She seemed pleased, but I think I'm not quite on to what she's looking for. She's definitely a tough nut. I got her promise to bring me more requirements on Friday. I stayed later to hang out the boys. We had a good time playing on the parallel bars and seeing who could do the most pull ups. Those kids are a riot.

And tonight I worked a bit more on his application, and got an initial version working, which was fun. I don't get to do any hands-on coding at work, so it's nice to have a project. I won't finish it this week, but I'll finish it at home, and then e-mail link to Janette and Tom are so that they can test it out. Then I'll send it to Elmer so that he can install it. It really is a small world. Hopefully this will be something useful for them and who knows maybe it will be useful for others to...

By the way, I'm dictating this whole journal on Dragon, a voice to text program. It works pretty well. And I can talk more naturally than when I'm actually typing, which is nice. And hopefully it will keep my hands and wrists from falling apart. But I'm still training at and having to fix quite a few errors. I'm sure you'll see some come throooo (just kidding).

Thursday, February 7

Today is "Paro" which essentially means stop. It's a work stoppage in protest of the government's attempt to privatize national treasures like Machu Picchu. I talked to my Spanish teacher about this after her thoughts, and it is interesting to hear her response. Essentially, the government is looking privatize national parks including Macchu Picchu so that hotels and other amenities can be built, and people in Cuzco feel like most of this money goes to Lima. So, because of that and because they don't want to happen. They are protesting and striking. It was very interesting to see democracy in action in Peru we'll see what happens.



At the end of the day I decided to walk up the hill into some of the neighborhoods and get out of the tourist area man these hills are steep. Most people were inside because, at 4:30 a football game started between Cuzco and Montevideo Uruguay. This was the championship game for a minor cup so everyone was inside watching. Anyway it was fun to walk around some of the real neighborhoods.



Watched The Matrix. Pretty much the only TV I've watched this week has been American movies in espanol. Good mindless way to practice. And you get good quotes like hearing Keanu Reeves say "no hay cuchara" (there is no spoon). Priceless.