Boricua en la Lima

He's always been a study in contrasts. Super sensitive yet tough as nails. Smart yet vulnerable. Independent yet attached. Loves his sister yet fights with her like crazy. Irritates the hell out of you yet you can't help but love him. Congrats on your 9th bday baby boy. I love you to Jupiter and back. I hope you find your place in this world, I hope you keep being as sensitive and loving as you have been for the past 9 years. I hope the world is everything you have hoped for. I hope...you continue to hope. P.S. I wish the picture wasn't as blurry but it's all I got! I'm actually a little bit sad that the last set of "good" pictures I took was Xmas 2016. Am I destined for that? To only take good pictures (like with an actual camera) on bdays and major holidays?

Krispy Kreme opened on March 23rd if I’m not mistaken. I sent my driver to pick up 30 donuts yesterday so that my son could take them to school this morning to celebrate his birthday. He wasn’t thrilled that they weren’t Dunkin’ Donuts but I swore that if he and his friends didn’t like the Krispy Kreme donuts I would pay him! Today I had to run an errand close by and realized I was right next door so decided to get some for my daughter who complained when I didn’t get here any yesterday. Thank goodness I was in crutches so that they let me cut to the front of the line! Cause you can see in the picture it was PACKED. Seems like a nice alternative to Starbucks for working remotely. It’s got power outlets on every single seat, which is great. And a second story which seems quieter than the first. I’ll be trying it out for working remotely once I’m more mobile. Oh, and the wifi pwd is “krispykreme”. The address is 1335 Benavides, Miraflores. Very close to the Benavides Wong. Facebook ...

It seems like the only time I can write a meaningful update on my life is when I’m on an airplane scared for my life.  The scared for my life part doesn’t play into the equation (although it does interrupt my writing quite a bit) but the fact that it doesn’t seem I can get any writing done otherwise is likely due to technology’s constant intrusion in my life. If there’s a wifi connection wherever I’m at I’m probably too focused on social media and other distractions to actually get any writing done. But alas, I’m siting on the plane without any interruptions (other than the occasional bump) and temporarily job-less, which leaves lots of time for writing. A better use of my time would be sleeping, but due to said fear of airplanes it’s sort of impossible for me to fly and sleep.  Anyhoo, as I said before, I’m temporarily unemployed and therefore with some free time on my hands I decided to move up my trip to Miami a few days so that I could see a good friend one last t...

When Lima is so quiet I cannot sleep When the kids are neatly tucked in bed Waiting for the tooth fairy to brighten their day And my husband's breathing is even and stead And the sky's pinkish hue overpowers the gray That will cover the sun come the next day When no car, bird or dog makes their maddening noise When runners find that perfect peace, out on the streets with just their feet And it's only me in my bed and my running thoughts And Lima's my lover and we get along But then I'm jolted out of bed by the sound of an alarm that rings too soon Thrown into the chaos of traffic lights and honking cars And Lima and I are enemies for the day Each one struggling in the crowd of unproductive people trying to look busy So take me back to that morning glory When everything is quiet except for my head And Lima once again becomes my lover, though I cannot wed When Lima is so quiet I cannot sleep I need the chaos to fall asleep Yet I cannot stand it duri...

Recently I got the iPad mini as a Xmas present, so I gave my two kids the older Gen 2 iPad for them to play with.  Last night my daughter says can I open an instagram account for her. Well, she didn't exactly say instagram.  She goes "can you sign me up for that thing where you follow people and see their pictures"? Since I have already told her a million times she's not getting on Facebook anytime soon I assumed that she meant instagram (she did). This one friend from her classroom has an iPad mini HERSELF and likely every social media app loaded on it (I won't even comment on this, I still have to argue with my daughter every day about the fact that she's not getting a cell phone until she's at least 10).  But of course since my daughter's friend has instagram then it follows that my daughter wants to follow her friend.  So I download the app on "their" iPad, register her, and start following just a few folks (mostly family and myself of co...

We're on our way back to the train station from Machu Picchu and I am so happy that I've gotten to enjoy a well deserved couple of days off as well as seeing the kids enjoy themselves in Cuzco so much when I get am email from the school administration that a kid in pre-kinder has passed away. No name, no explanation, just a note saying that they have rallied all the counseling support they can to deal with this thing on Monday morning when the kids go back to school. First thing I wonder is if the kid was in my kid's classroom, were they friends? How will they explain this to my kid, how will I explain this to my kid? Will all the kids react as if it was a non-event or will their little worlds be shattered? Obviously this is nothing compared to Newton but I find myself at a loss here too, not understanding how God can let something so tragic and sad happen. It's Father's Day tomorrow and I feel so horrible for the parents of this kid, what they must be going throu...

I can't write anything about the Newton school tragedy because it still hurts to even think about it. I've been trying to avoid the news and Facebook because every time I hear about one of the children or one of the teachers who died helping save children my heart breaks all over again.  I was literally sick to my stomach all day Friday and I cried at all hours of the day in the most inconvenient places.  I drank half a bottle of wine to numb the pain and cried myself to sleep.  And I'm just a spectator in this whole big mess, I can't even imagine the pain the parents are going through right now. So instead I'll just write about the last race we did which included Sebas and had a very festive Holiday feel to it so those were my two favorite things about it.  I did 8 Km (5 miles) in 45:54 which is a personal best for me but it was also hard because I was trying to keep up with my husband the whole time.  Then towards the end when we wanted me to go faster becau...

...like I really want to move to my new house but probably won't be able to until the end of January! Argh, so frustrating.  Trying to be really patient but there are just some "creature comforts" I feel like I am entitled to NOW! Like what you say (thinking I sound like a Gen Y'er or Millenial or whatever they're called).  Like clothes for work would be nice.  Yep, I've accepted a job offer with L'Oreal and I need to start soon but guess what, all my working clothes are in boxes, together with my summer clothes.  Well it's getting warm and it's getting to the point where I'm going to need professional looking clothes but all those things are still in boxes because I never thought it would take this long to move into our new place.  The cat is also starting to act out -- he's peeing and pooping in places he's not supposed to.  And I know that part of it is because he's living with a dog which he's not used to doing and he's...

This weekend I had signed up for another 10K , this time I signed up to do my first race with my husband.  We "trained" one time which basically meant running five miles the Sunday before.  During training we started off really fast (like (8.5 minutes per mile, fast for ME!) and I quickly realized I wasn't going to be able to keep up that pace.  So once we hit the half way point I told my husband to go back on his own so that I could run/walk.  I had no energy that day but I chalked it up to "it happens" -- some days you just don't have as much energy as others.  What I didn't realize is that night I was going to get the stomach bug from hell which would put me in bed for the next 48 hours. So to run a 10K "competitively" 3 days later was kind of a daunting thing. So as much as yesterday I wanted to run WITH my husband (not in the same race as him!) I told him at the beginning "you do your own thing I'll do mine".  While there...

Yesterday I did my first race as a resident of Peru!  Hadn't trained for squat because between my mom's visit and the kids' ongoing sickness I haven't had much time for exercise.  Definitely don't want my mom to leave (which she does tomorrow) but hopefully once I'm back to a "normal" routine I can fit exercise into my day a little bit better. I was scheduled to run with two of Jose's cousins, although one of the cousins we couldn't find at the start of the race so it was just Marco and me.  Marco doesn't run often but he does other types of exercises pretty much every day so he's fit (not to mention much younger than me!).  So he went in with a goal of doing 10K in 45 minutes and all I wanted to do was less than 1 hour.  Although once I started and I realized how humid it was and how out of breath I was (and out of shape!) all I wanted to do was finish.  I tried to keep up with Marco but around the 7th Km when we opened a gap betwee...

With all the craziness of activity that's been going on these last few weeks (now both kids seem to be sick not to mention crap that goes wrong with Jose's grandma's house all the time), there hasn't been much time to take my mom to do tourist thing (other than what I like to call the gastronomic tour of Lima).  So today we did the express version of the "Turibus" of Lima to take her to see some of the most important sights.  Thankfully we also got lucky and got the sun to come out, although not at the catacombs which we visited!  Good thing the kids weren't there because they would've been pretty frightened.  In fact, there were kids in the tour that weren't so happy with that particular portion of the tour.  We had taken the kids to see the catacombs in Rome while we were living in Switzerland and they were already pretty scared.  While these catacombs are smaller overall (they've only dug one level deep vs. the 3 that are there below the ...

This weekend we continued with the birthday celebrations for Gabi (and boy am I glad it's done!).  Friday we took TEN girls to the movie theater to see a local movie (partly Peruvian and partly Argentinian) about a mouse who needs to find a princesses' tooth in order to save his kingdom.  I got a mini van to take all the kids from school to the mall and then we brought them home to sing Happy Birthday to Gabi and have some cupcake before all the kids got picked up.  I was totally pooped by the end of the day but Gabi was so happy to share with her new friends from school. Saturday we had Sports Day at Gabi's school and then a family BBQ here at Jose's grandma's house to celebrate four family birthdays including Gabi's.  We had a great time with all the family and ate like champs, but boy was I glad to wake up Sunday morning and realize there were no more kids' birthday activities on the agenda! Sunday morning Gabi had her first marinera class and w...