Wow, that was quick! Three very intense weeks of teaching and training and whoosh, suddenly I’m back on a plane and back in Berlin. While I’m still processing a lot of the experience, particularly with an eye to what and how I might do things differently next time I go (should there be a next time), I also wanted to take a moment to share a few more moments and visions of this amazing trip.

So a bit more about my day-to-day. At 6:30 am every morning, I was picked up by a Peruvian MFA driver in a sparkling clean Lexus sedan and driven to work, accompanied either by loud Latin music, US rock hits of the 1970s and 1980s, or a very fast-talking news reporter:

Since 6:30 was the exact time that the hotel breakfast opened, my only option was a cup of take-away coffee that had been in a canister since 4:00 am for the early risers and a couple cookies. Mmmmm.

I would arrive the training site at about 6:50, still before the little cafes on the street were awake. We were fortunate that the MFA had provided us a classroom in a lovely historic building, thankfully updated with teaching mod cons, meaning a computer, an internet connection, and a big screen. Here’s a shot of the building itself, and know that our classroom was through the door on the very far right:

Once the class began, I kept the program participants busy with a varied round of activities including targeted reading, vocabulary, role plays, videos, writing assignments, grammar competitions, pronunciation practice, group problem solving activities, and dog knows what else. Here’s a shot of the group during a negotiation exercise:

One of my faithful readers, Brad, sent a note wanting to know more about the pictures on the wall in this room. When I tried to puzzle this out, I learned that there is a copy of the University Declaration of Human Rights on the wall of this room, and that the pictures were efforts by a group artists to reflect those themes in (mostly abstract) works of art. I took some pictures of them to post, but unfortunately, because they are all covered in glass, I couldn’t get a good shot of any without mostly reflections. Sorry about that.

During the second week, I was asked to take on an additional class for some MFA members who weren’t available for the longer periods. So I would end the first class at 11:00 and then head down the street to another building where I taught until 1:00 pm. Happily this gave me a chance to enjoy some of the intriguing streets and byways of the historic center city:

Of course I had to explore the “Basilica Metropolitan Cathedral of Lima and Primate of Peru,” and here’s a shot of the central ceiling:

As in so many of these cases, the Catholic authorities planned this building to sit directly on the site of the Inca shrine to the sun god Inti. The foundation stone of the building was laid by Francisco Pizarro himself, the famed Spanish conquistador and founder of Lima, whose life came to a (some would say deserved) violent end when he was assassinated by a political rival. His bones can be seen here:

Other days after class I moved from the sacred to the secular by enjoying a stroll around Larcomar, a large mall complex on the palisade overlooking the Pacific Ocean:

I knew I had reached the “McDonalds” stage of the trip (meaning you just get sick of the delicious local offerings and just want a burger) when I found myself at a, yes, FGIFridays. (Just don’t tell anyone.) These lapses in my Peruvian acculturation did allow me, however, to see this most amusing sign hanging in the loo:

Another day wandering in Miraflores, I stumbled onto the Alpaca Museum, a clever mixed-purpose venue with both fascinating information about alpacas and vicunas as well as, no surprise, a number of beautiful items boasting the wool from those iconic animals. I learned that the animal itself allegedly originated as a camel in the Middle East and slowly slowly migrated east to Mongolia and over the Bering Straight into the North American continent and thus eventually down to South America. This seems utterly amazing to me.

But before it got dark and therefore more dangerous in Lima, I headed back to my crib at the Swissotel. Because Lima is so close to the equator, it gets light and dark at pretty much the same time every day, year round. So light at 6:00 am, dark at 6:00 pm. Add to that a mono-climate of fog in the morning, sun in the afternoon, temps in the 70s (21-28 C) and no rain EVER, there’s kind of a “Groundhog’s Day” feeling to the weather in the place. Here are some of my friends at the front desk:

But before we all knew it, the three weeks had flown by and it was time to end the course, to great acclaim, to pack up and to head home. We had some Embassy and MFA bigwigs show up for our commencement activities, but my favorite shot is of the happy participants with me as I try to keep the tears back:

Thanks as always for your interest in my adventures, and I look forward to sharing more with you soon. ❤