Mi trabajo

Since I'm not having as many random adventures here since I spend at least 45 hours a week in an office 10 blocks from my house, I figured I should write more about work. Overall, it's going very well. My project is progressing with relative efficiency--I'm probably more efficient than I've ever been in an office job, although I'll admit I'm becoming re-addicted to Washington Post online chats. It's been a nice mix of quantitative and qualitative work, although I'll probably be spending the next two weeks straight pouring over WB reports trying to extract specific pieces of data, so I might have to up my caffeine intake to make it through. Fortunately, we have a cappuccino machine in the office and my coworkers like to make Starbucks runs. Unfortunately, in Lima a Starbucks run with your coworkers does not include a nice 10 minute walk to justify Frappuccino. Instead, it involves taking the elevator down to the basement, getting in the car, driving 5 blocks, pulling up to the take out/valet parking lane in front of Starbucks, running in to order coffee, politely saying no and trying not to run over the little girl trying to sell you tissues when you come back to your car with the coffee, and driving back to work. We did this on Friday. It's pretty comical how Limenos never walk anywhere. Yeah, there might be a small danger of being robbed (but this is a nice, non-touristy area) and yeah the air isn't the cleanest, but still--it was a beautiful Friday afternoon!. (this is very far from an original observation, for anyone who's been to Lima)

Anyway, back to work. My officemates--the three I share a room with--are funny. They are all friends from university--not super close, hang-out on the weekends friends, but they have known each other for at least 5 or 6 years--so they are often joking around. Most of the time I have no idea what they're talking about because it takes to much effort to listen. Then every once in a while they say my name and I'm totally caught off-guard--without any context, I usually have no idea what they're trying to say to me even if it turns out to be really simple the 2nd or 3rd time they say it and (usually) I finally get it. It's fun when I'm involved in real conversations with them, but other times I can't tell if they totally think I'm an idiot. The whole Spanish is the language of the office but they all speak English too thing is turning out to be harder than I expected. I feel like, if there was no English in the office I would have to speak more in Spanish and I wouldn't feel so dumb with my mistakes because the other people wouldn't speak my language well either, and if I spoke no Spanish than everyone would just expect me to speak English and that would be ok too. As it is, I feel like it's a cop-out to speak English so I try not to, but I make so many stupid mistakes in Spanish and misunderstand the easy things that are part of normal office banter, so I don't speak much at all. I also don't normally eat lunch with the rest of the office, since my three officemates don't usually either (for various reasons) and I feel most comfortable with them, so I don't like just joining a lunch table of people I don't really know and then not saying anything. As a result, I've been eating in front of my computer which is not normally my preferred lunch hour activity, although it has allowed me more time for WP chats. Of course, these are all just excuses, and the basic fact is that I'm shy and a big wus when it comes to making the mistakes that are part of learning a new language, and nothing can change that but me. Which realistically probably isn't going to happen so...

The bottom line with work is that it's definitely a good situation for me, both professionally and socially, but I'm also definitely looking forward to going back in just over 3 months and I'm happy that, as expected, time is flying. I'm glad that I have one more month of work, then a 2 week vacation, then less than 2 months to go until we're back to our apartment, our friends, and our language. Taylor is feeling somewhat similarly (although he is still enjoying his research here and has been successful thus far), and we talk frequently about things we want to do when we get back. I hope this feeling doesn't grow too much stronger before May! In the meantime, one work-related thing that I'm really looking forward to is that one of my officemates is getting married next Saturday, and since the tradition here is to invite everyone you know to the wedding (but fewer people to the reception), we're invited. I'm excited to get dressed up and go to a Peruvian wedding, and I'm excited for Taylor to meet all my officemates who will also be there. And then afterwards, we can go out to a fancy dinner!