Being Extranjera

Stephanie and I have realized that extranjeras (foreign women) are allowed to do whatever they want and commit all sorts of social errors that Peruvians just couldn’t get away with—like buying just one piece of bread or ordering yogurt at the wrong time of day. And it’s days like today that make me extraordinarily glad for that.

We woke up this morning to the sounds of the evangelical Catholic church on the corner. It seems that anyone in Peru who can afford a megaphone has the right to use it, so they project their services starting at about 6:30 in the morning and ending around 7 at night. It woke us up the first morning, but there are so many megaphones around that we’ve kind of gotten used to it by now. Not kidding: the palta (avocado) guy starts at 6:15: “palta! palta! palta! palta para el desayuno!”

As luck would have it, I actually had a great shower this morning. I took my shower first, and experienced what some might call hot water. It was awesome. Stephanie, unfortunately, was not so lucky. I knew things were bad when I heard here trying to coax the hot water out of the shower with a kind of whiny, sing-song voice. (FYI, we definitely talk to the inanimate objects in our apartment. Whoever said talking to water doesn’t make it boil faster has never lived in Peru.)

Things did not improve. Electricity was sketchy, and hot water was completely on strike. Worse, we had just gotten back from a retreat the night before, so we were both sunburned and disgusting. I decided to go buy veggies for lentil soup (we learned how to make lentil soup!). As I left, Stephanie was standing next to the shower in her underwear and a T-shirt, verbally pleading for warm water and wondering if a cold shower was really all that bad.

The market outside our house on Sundays is especially busy. We’ve discovered the avocado guy, and we also discovered that avocado goes with everything we cook. So we regularly buy enormous avocados (seriously, about the size of a small child) for 30 cents a piece. I visited this man first, then went down the street to get tomatoes, onion, and a carrot.

On my way back, I stopped by the store beneath our apartment (the one owned by our duena’s daughter-in-law) to get bottled water and pasta. I briefly considered buying beer, but then realized we didn’t have a bottle-opener yet.

As I was checking out, someone came up and tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around to find my supervisor, César. As background, you should know that César is awesome. Seriously, maybe the best supervisor I’ve ever had. However, both Stephanie and I have something of a complex about the fact that we can never manage to get grammar quite right around him. He actually probably thinks we’re retarded by this point, but figures he’s got to put up with us for the rest of the summer so he might as well not mention anything.

So César is comes up to me while I’m checking out, and I am suddenly quite glad I decided not to buy beer. Not that I think he’s a teetotaler, but still: in a country where most religious folk prohibit drinking, it probably wouldn’t be great for a seminary teacher to be buying beer at 9am on Sunday morning.

We small talk for a few minutes, and I consider making a joke about how Stephanie didn’t have water, something like “Stephanie’s standing outside the shower in her underwear waiting for the hot water to start.” I decided not to because I figured I’d probably screw it up and say something like, “I’m wearing Stephanie’s underwear right now.”

Luckily, the small-talk chat ended harmlessly. He probably still doesn’t think much of my intelligence, but at least I didn’t accidentally lead him to believe Stephanie and I regularly exchange underwear.

Upon entering the apartment again, Stephanie was still arguing with the shower, and it looked like the shower was winning. I probably would have given up and just braided my hair that day, but Stephanie is much more persistent than I. And apparently perseverance pays off: as I was making tea in the kitchen I heard a scream midsentence from the bathroom that apparently signified the hot water was working.

Stephanie finished her (hot) shower just in time to get to church. We go to the smaller of the two Methodist churches in Huancayo: a congregation of about 50 that meets in a rented room about three blocks from our apartment. Services are usually about an hour and a half, and consist of several songs (which everyone else knows the words to, because there are no songbooks), a pretty long sermon, and at least 3 “greeting times.” During these greeting times, people walk around and greet everyone else in the sanctuary by kissing them on the cheek and saying something meaningful—usually “God bless you” or “Peace be with you” or, in my case, “Hi.”

There is an art to the cheek kiss that I seem not to have mastered. I learned in Spain that it’s more of a touching cheeks than actually kissing, but here it seems to be somewhat more complicated. After much observation, Stephanie and I have come to the conclusion that the men actually kiss cheeks, while women touch cheeks and make a kissing sound. Which means that when a woman greets someone in this manner, she aims with her cheek rather than her lips. This is the part I don’t seem to be able to get. For some reason, I am unable to control the velocity of my head, so that I either miss completely (leading to an embarrassing do-over) or accidentally inflict a head-butt with my cheek (leading to an embarrassing apology and—depending on how old the victim is—an offer to go get some ice).

This morning was communion Sunday, meaning that we all filed up front and had yet another “greeting time.” I managed not to injure anyone this time, but did startle an older woman when I accidentally hit her with my cheekbone. After greeting time, César and the other pastor (Jaime) walked around the circle to give communion. They served by intinction, so each person took a piece of bread and dipped it in the…whatever that was. (I think some sort of juice…definitely not grape juice or wine). Great, I finally know what’s going on. I took my bread dipped it in the cup, and put it in my mouth. It was at that moment that Stephanie elbowed me in the ribs and pointed out that everyone else was still holding theirs. Apparently, Peruvians wait for everyone to be served before eating the elements.

My first instinct was to spit out the bread that I hadn’t swallowed yet, until Stephanie pointed out in a loud English whisper that that would be disgusting. The second best option was to hold it un-chewed in my mouth, and then pretend to eat something when everyone else did.

Unfortunately, by this time Stephanie (who had not eaten her bread) was cracking up, which was making me crack up. This was not good, both because I had a piece of bread in my mouth and because the rest of the church was praying. I tried to stifle it, but—unlike Stephanie—I have not been gifted with the ability to laugh silently. My stifled laughter tends to sound somewhere between a horse snorting and a goose being chased by a wild hog, a hard sound to pass off as crying or some other pious activity. This made Stephanie laugh even more, which made me laugh even more, which made the congregation think that perhaps I was choking. I held my hands in front of my face, partly to mask the sound and partly to make it look like I still had my bread.

Luckily, communion ended soon and Stephanie and I were free to go to the back of the church and laugh to our hearts content. Nobody mentioned anything, although I did notice that one lady shook my hand instead of kissing me goodbye.