Casa Melgarejo, Before and After

From what I can gather from this far flung corner of the globe, over Sunday breakfast of bacon and coffee the broadsheet reading classes are faced with a tough decision with how to proceed with the day: Cupcakes or Home Improvement?

Well, it's Sunday, the kids are with Katie at the park, I don't like cupcakes and I so have time to upload a few Before & After photos of our cracking abode. Ever modest, I have revealed our Home Improvement secrets in the captions below. Enjoy!

Living room

Living room 1, Before... 

Living Room 1, After
WHAT WE DID: Removed dead animal remnants from wall, bought a chair,
somehow got Wife to agree to giant Kate Moss print. Win! 

Living Room Of Death 2, Before...  

Living Room 2, After... 
WHAT WE DID: Removed dead animals from the wall replacing death with mirror, cleaned the windows, traded grey/brown for colours. Took the 'After' photo with wide angle lens   

Mainlining In The Bedroom: Before...

Main Bedroom, After...  WHAT WE DID: opened curtains, rejected off-yellow paint, put a mattress on the bed, lamps not candles, added an '&' for no good reason, removed more obvious signs of recent heroin use. 

Terrace, Before...

Terrace, After...
WHAT WE DID: Got the pool in shot, replaced bad table with good table,
painted wall very blue, using the sun, added living Human Child.  

 Done.

Private school anecdotes

First of these for a while.

I was teaching a poem, The Cockroach, an interesting sonnet about a man recognising his own worthlessness in a cockroach exploring his flat. Setting the tone of the poem, I lazily asked a couple of kids how they reacted when they saw a cockroach... if they'd ever killed a cockroach? A couple of half-hearted responses.

I picked on Arianna, a magnificently haughty teen in the middle row.

- What about you Arianna - ever killed a cockroach?
Meeting my gaze, she replied, with some dignity - We have, like, people... to do that sort of thing.

Mancora Top 7

Right in the north of Peru, within sight of Ecuador, is Mancora - busy with tourists, mostly Peruvian or backpackers - we stayed about 3 km south on Las Pocitas, which doesn't translate to exclusive rich showy-offy beach houses, but if it did, it would be a better translation.

Met with maracuya sorbet at the house, we pretty much kicked back and relaxed for 6 days. Bubble was not even - well, only briefly - burst when at breakfast, facing us in the sister house also settled down to breakfast, was one of my GCSE students. Fortunately quite a good one, so my skinny white frame should remain free from Facebook and I won't be cyber stalked by the Biebber generation.

Here are some glimpses:

Conclusion: I could definitely winter there.

Food in Peru

You hear a lot about the food in Peru. Everyone talks about how good the food is. The food revolution, gourmet tourism... all of that. It's not as interesting as all of this.

This is what you don't hear enough about, what now amounts to almost an entire shopping trolley's worth of comedy.

Allow me to give you a tour of your standard Peruvian supermarket:

Correct. Those are Bimbo burger buns, then Wanka fruit, thenFanny tuna.
All available at Wong. That's just Wong, isn't it? 

Tea. No, not tanning oil. Just plain old, er, tea. 

Clearly inspired, the service station opposite offer the following classic combo deals. 

Kraps, anyone? Goes nicely with Bailey's, and Wanka fruit. 

Bosh bosh zoom zoom biscuits. Tosh. 

And I am missing Batti Mix (Yoghurt) and Bum Bum Sticks (Lollies). Photos to follow, with any luck. 

 

Last but not least, here's how you can choose your ice cream flavours. I say flavours, but they mean colours, don't they?

Yes, that would be how you explain what chocolate ice cream tastes like. 

And here's vanilla. No, sorry, pistachio. That's a white dude, with acne. 

Strewth.

Terremoto

First proper earthquake this morning, details here. The school has a seismic alarm, which sounded just before 8am, but was quite slow. Most of the kids had already screamed and were heading for the exit points.

We've had a few tremors, but nothing more than a low purr. Recorded at a mere 4.3 about 40km away from the school. Nothing, comparatively. But this morning was the first one I have felt.

Windows wobbling, ground a-shakin', kids a-screamin' - rather like that moment on a plane when suddenly turbulence feels threatening, but the moment you feel that, it's over. No real fun at all. I see  why everyone who has experienced one describes earthquakes in terms of how long they last, not the numbers.

To be honest, I will be happy if I never experience anything more than that. Having spoken to people here who were here in the big ones - 1971, and November 2007 - and to friends in Christchurch who describes what one of these really feels like, nothing more than 4.0 is plenty.

Lima life

A couple of pics of the girls' life here. 

Maia's 2nd birthday at her nido

Leah, perfectly attired for her Saturday swimming classes. 

What's worse than texting and driving?

An original twist on an old story, drivers in Lima, but I had to sneak a photo of this fella on my regular combi, the Pachacamac to La Punta express. 

Stuck in traffic, Billy the Bus Driver considered giving it some horn. 

It took drives more than the duration of my journey to finish reading the article. Maybe - and I might be jumping to conclusions here - he was being distracted by the naked chic on the left.