Our Home Stay

This is our second true home stay.  Our first one was in Koforidua, Ghana (see blog entry September 5). It is the first home stay where we have been forced to speak a language other than English.  This is a good challenge but not fun when you are tired or you don’t feel well.  It forces us to listen and speak in Spanish more than we would if we stayed in a hotel.

Three generations live at this house.  Victor and Berta are my parents’ age.  Even though they are the same age, Berta and Victor act far older than my parents.  Two of their three sons also live in the house, which is fairly common in Cusco.  Carlos, 30, is married to Indira and they have a son that is fifteen months old. Fernando, 25, works at the fanciest hotel in Cusco.  Leo is the housekeeper and cooks for the family.  She is old and tiny but has a very large presence in the household.  It's a lot of people in one house but at times it doesn't seem like they are all living together.

There are also two other Americans staying with us.  Their names are Robin and Mayuree from California and Boston.  The guests have a section of the house that is separated from the family's quarters by a courtyard.  We share a small bathroom with Mayuree.

In Peru, generally people eat their biggest meal at lunch with a very small breakfast and leftovers for dinner.  For breakfast, generally we get stale pancito, a type of white, sweet pita bread that seems to be everywhere here, some not very good jam, and hot water for making tea or coffee from concentrate.  Lunch is normally a pretty bad egg drop soup and a main dish of rice, potatoes, and some kind of stew.   Lunch is really the only meal that the family eats together.  Victor comes home from work for it. Dinner is a small portion of the same main course we had at lunch.  We normally go out for either lunch or dinner because they are the same.

At night we have to bundle up because it's very cold and there isn't any heat in the house.
- Brook