An American in Lima

Lola, coiffed and perfumed (actually, smelling like someone’s abuela) A perk to living in Lima is that you can have your hair cut and styled for ridiculously low prices. A salon down the street from us charges S/.20 to do a full blowout, for any length hair. That’s less than US$7 for something that stylists in [...]

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  A yummy seafood causa featured on a poster for the second annual gastronomic fair, held Sept. 24-27, in Lima BBC Online published an insightful overview yesterday of Peru’s booming food industries (“Food business taking off in Peru,” 9/25/09), to coincide with this weekend’s second annual gastronomic fair in Lima.  Dan Collyns reports on the growth of [...]

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Last week I dropped in on a very cool Finnish design exhibit being hosted at Lima’s ICPNA center. “Northern Stars” showcases more than 100 years of innovative design from Finnish designers and design firms such as Marimekko, Arabia, Nokia and Metso. El Híjo and I were hoping to catch sight of some Moomintrolls, the eccentric woodland characters [...]

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Cynthia Paniagua (R) in Chincha (photo: Florencia Castello) Peruvian culture will get a major public-awareness boost tonight when New York PBS stations broadcast the awarding-winning documentary Soy Andina. (Sept. 10, 10 p.m.; check local listings. The film airs throughout the country starting Oct. 11.) Soy Andina is one of eight documentary films selected for the new season [...]

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An ear of fresh Peruvian choclo I’ve been doing a lot of thinking this week about obesity in the United States vs. weight and nutrition in Peru.  We’re currently exploring these topics in the conversation class I teach at UPC (see class blog, here), but really, they’ve been on my mind since I moved to Peru from Florida in [...]

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At last count (mid August), 514 Peruvians had died of pneumonia brought on by extreme cold this year, most of them children under five. Most reasonable people would call that an emergency. Not Peru’s Red Cross, however.  In a bulletin issued August 4, 2009, the Peruvian Red Cross (PRC) issued a general statement about the cold deaths [...]

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