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Family Life in Arequipa

In Arequipa, I am staying with Mark Lipski and his family while I am taking the Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) course.  Mark and his wife, Yesenia, own and operate the SEPA Institute as well as a bi-lingual private grade school called the Arequipa Education Center.  Mark is from Maine and his wife is Peruvian.  They have 4 lovely children - Jeffrey, Raisha, Benjamin and Sharon - ages 9, 8, 2, and almost 1 year old.  The kids are all bi-lingual, actually tri-lingual.  They are learning English, Spanish and Quechau (a native Inca indian language).  It is so interesting to listen to the 2 year old communicate.  He will have all 3 languages in one sentence, yet his sentences are complete and totally understandable.  I have never seen such a communicative child at such a young age - AND, in 3 languages.  He is pretty lucky to be learning so young.  To say the least, they are very busy people!

The family also have some domestic help 6 days a week.  Martita is the live-in nanny.  She is up at 6 with the kids and isn't finished until 9 or 10.  She accompanies them to school and actually teaches all the kids at school Quechua.  Maria is the cook and house keeper.  She arrives around 6:30 and leaves around 5.  She cooks the meals, cleans the house, does laundry, goes to the market etc.  A lot of the time, the laundry is done by hand in the sinks on the roof.  That is quite a job with all the people in the house!  After school, the kids also have a tutor to help them with their homework for 2-3 hours.  I have found that in Peru, you either have domestic help or you are the domestic help!

The SEPA Institute teaches English to Spanish speaking students as well as provides the TEFL course.  Those taking the TEFL course have built in "guinea pigs" to practice teaching English to at both the Institute and the elementary school.  I am currently teaching English at the grade school to kids kindergarten to 4th grade and to some directors of a technical institute here in Arequipa.  I also have filled in for some of the other teachers with students studying for their TOEFL test (a proficiency English test).  You don't realize how hard English is to learn as a second language until you try to teach it to people who don't know the language at all!  I can certainly empathize with them as I struggle in my Spanish class! 

Lately, the kids have been going to school on Saturday and a few hours extra during the week to make up a few days of school.  School is out December 15 for summer and they still have quite a bit of curriculum to finish.  It is a push to the end!  It is very time consuming to teach the curriculum in both languages, but in the long run, it will pay off.

On Halloween, the grade school had its party at the Casona.  Since I didn't know the kids yet, I was asked to be a judge for their costumes.  Each age group (2 year olds through 4th grade) paraded in front of me and Jennifer (the other judge).  The older kids had to tell us about their costumes in English.  We judged them on their originality of costume as well as their presentation.  To say the least, it was very difficult to choose the winners!  There were so many cute costumes and kids!  We finally decided on the 4 year old Hawaiian girl and the 4th grade Terminator.  Yesenia, dressed as a COW boy, was the mistress of ceremonies and did a fantastic job introducing each of the kids.  Yesenia and 3 of her kids came dressed as a COW family.  Pretty cute - even Sharon the 1 year old. 

After the judging, the kids got to eat LOTS of junk food - I guess I should say, party food!  Then they turned on the music and the kids all got up and danced.   These kids really have natural rhythm and it was incredible to watch the moves they have at such a young age!  Plus, they were all loving being out there dancing.

One day, I arrived home in time to do the daily run to the local dairy for milk.  Benjamin's favorite animal is the "bacas" or cows and he can't wait to take the walk to the dairy farm 6 or 7 blocks away.  At 3:00, he gets his little water bottle he uses as his milk bottle, puts it under his arm and off he goes - walking all the way with Martita.  The dairy is right on the Chile Rio (river) and has some gorgeous views of the volcanoes and downtown.  One by one, the farmer hooks up the cows to the almost manual milking machine.  The milk goes directly into the metal milk containers or into the containers people bring from home.  We put the milk in water bottles, others in pails or even plastic bags.  Of course, the milk is not pasturized, so when we get home, the milk is boiled with cloves and cinnimon sticks.  Not only does this "pasturize" the milk, but it also gives the milk a nice flavor.  Pretty fresh stuff!  (Benjamin loves cows so much, that on Sunday, when asked what he would like to do, he wanted to go to the fields and watch the cows!)

Sundays are the only days the family really has together, so they try to do one thing as a family.  One Sunday, they decided to go to the zoo and invited me along.  It was quite an experience!  Unfortunately, I forgot my camera.  Anyway, 3 kids and 3 adults piled into one of the super small taxis for the 30 minute ride to the zoo.  The zoo sits on a hill above the city.  Like most of the land around and in Arequipa, it is very arrid, barren and dusty.  The zoo is small and specializes in animals native to Peru.  There were bears, jaguars, hawks, pelicans, condors, eagles, ducks, snakes, parrots, penguins, foxes, tortoises, monkeys, ostreches, alpacas etc.  It was interesting to see all the animals of Peru.  Unfortunately, the cages were small and many of the animals were out of their natural habitat (i.e. jungle animals) and also did not have any mates.  The kids really loved the bears and the playground!  Unlike the US, you could get up very close to the animals and even though they said to keep your hands out of the cages, people were letting their kids pet even the bear. 

I am sure I will continue to have other experiences with the family, so I'll keep you posted.  This has been a great part of the journey - really experiencing what it is like to "live" in Peru!

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