An American in Lima is written by Barbara Drake, an American expatriate living in Lima, Peru, since July 2007.
I started this blog in 2008 to share my thoughts on adjusting to another culture, one with a different language, vastly different customs, horrible sanitation and terrific food. I’m interested in the details of daily life in Lima, as well as the big picture (the economy, climate change) and how events in the southern hemisphere might relate to what’s happening up north. You’ll find here blog posts, news items/rants and photos taken with my trusty Nikon D80.
- Who I Am: freelance writer, fiction writer, guidebook author, copy editor, musician;
- Location: Lima, Peru, district of Miraflores;
- Writing from: My office in an old two-story house overlooking a small grassy park populated by (1) city gardeners in red jumpsuits; (2) maids in blue and white uniforms walking their employers’ dogs; (3) little kids playing in a grungy sand pit; (4) random couples kissing on park benches; and (5) The Humping Poodle, an unkempt, oversexed stray who goes at it with tree trunks and holes in flowerbeds;
- Nationality: U.S; now American expat with Peruvian carne extrangeria (obtaining this card took months of paperwork and endless visits to stuffy offices all over Lima: visiting bureaucrats in crowded offices filled with desperate people, waiting for a guy to translate our U.S. marriage license into 17th-century Spanish and handwrite it in elaborate calligraphy; paying innumerable fees to the Banco de la Nacion, and then leaving Peru in November 2007 in order to re-enter as a resident alien)
- Moved to Peru: July 2007, one month before the big earthquake (excellent timing);
- Living with: El Fotógrafo (husband J.), El Hijo (our 10-year-old son) and Lola (our one-year-old black Labrador whom we will NEVER let near The Humping Poodle);
- Current projects: writing about loss of glaciers in the Andes, learning Spanish at a snail’s pace, countering the effects of the daily almuerzo (large lunch) with steady doses of Lima-style exercise classes; helping El Hijo adjust to the peculiarities school life in Peru, where he is expected to solve division problems on math tests by grouping camelids into herds of llamas, alpacas and vicunas.
- Contact me at:
mail AT americaninlima DOT com
- Learn more about my writing projects and teaching experience at:
- Find out about the very cool Celtic-rock band that I recorded with last year, The Three Jacks, by visiting www.thethreejacks.com . They are coming to Lima in August to play two benefit concerts at Santa Ursula (Aug. 8 & 9) for victims of last year’s earthquake. For some reason they still want me to play with them, which is very nice, considering that they are monster musicians and I’m a tootler.
The Three Jacks are the newest incarnation of The Volunteers, Miami’s “original American-Celtic rock band,” which formed in the early 1990s. I played penny whistle with them for years – how many years, oh ancient one? Years! — then I moved to Gainesville, so I wasn’t really with the band, but I still played on their recordings and toured the Turks & Caicos with them (lucky me). Then I recorded some tracks for them in Miami and I left the country, so I thought it was over — but, no, they reformed the lineup, changed their name and gave me a credit on the liner notes anyway. I wasn’t a Jack but I was a Jill. Very nice of them to put up with me.
Give the Three Jacks’ fabulous album Treachery, Lust & Misfortune a listen at CDBaby. That is not me singing backup on “Bare-assed Girl.”
