The only thing missing from my life...

... is iced coffee.

Is it possible that I'm just looking in the wrong places? Is this related to a national aversion to iced beverages? (Most people here go for water, juice, and soda at room temperature. Rachel tells me that I need to stop being such an imperialist and adapt my drinking habits, but I really love me my cold beverages.) I must remind myself that British people don't really go for iced coffee either, and I survived just fine in London.

Now at the two week mark, I'm starting to get my life in order. I'm doing a workshop with Yuyachkani next week, and my Spanish class started last week. It's through the Language Institute at the Catholic University, where Rachel is studying, and right now I'm taking a class on Peruvian culture. Since it's only four weeks long, it's basically Peruvian culture for dummies, but it's a lot of fun. And my class is pretty diverse-- we're from Bulgaria, Brazil, China, Germany, and the US, which is great, because we can't cheat and speak to each other in our first languages. Another great thing is that we are going to learn how to make cebiche (raw seafood marinated in lime juice). Om nom nom. My mother will be surprised to hear how much I like cebiche-- I shunned fish for years, which was a stupid thing for a Seattle kid to do, but what's done is done-- but seriously, folks. The cebiche here is unbelievable.

Life in Pueblo Libre is lovely. Rachel and I have moved off of the roof and into our new room, which is blue and orange and bright. I really love my roommates here-- they're all artists of various kinds and are a lot of fun. They run a space called elgalpon.espacio where they mount and host all sorts of performance and installations and classes. Good stuff. This week I've been taking a course on Performance in Latin America, taught by Augusto Del Valle, a philosopher and art critic. Some of it goes over my head-- my Spanish is getting better every day, but I wish I could understand everything now-- but the course is interesting, and it's good to study performance from a Latin American perspective. In the US (with SITI and with other friends), I had been discussing the postmodern performance that stemmed from the work done by Judson Dance Theater in the 60's. It's good to learn about flash points outside of my North American framework-- the Biennials in Cuba in the late 80's and 90's, the show in Medellin in 1981. Del Valle has also talked a little bit about how the specific political contexts affected performance in each country (i.e. how did performance in Argentina under the military dictatorship differ from performance in Peru?), but either he didn't choose to discuss these ideas in depth, or I missed something major. Anyway, I'll learn more, I promise, and then I will try to organize my thoughts to say something other than, "Wow; performance is interesting." But that will be a job for another day.

Oh, you want to see another picture of Maletó, do you?






I thought so.