Who are the people in your neighborhood
Part 1

Lima is by all standards a rather informal place. People tend to not arrive on time, class starts when the moment feels right, and the foundation of the economy here is run on the predication that it is too expensive and time consuming to get a license to do most things, so why bother.
I am trying very hard to get with the program, I want to fit in.

Based on the neighborhood I reside in, I have a view of a golfcourse, and where I work, a private University, the general class I find myself in the company of is upper, and in keeping with my research model, ¨Formal.¨
Latin American has one of the world’s more staggering rates of economic disparity. The assumption is if you can make it this far to visit, you have some moolah, and therefore will be spending your time in certain areas.

Among my current formal contacts there is general concern for my well being, there is also a sense of understanding; most have visited the US. They know New York(Some of my students know NYC better than Lima), Miami, LA, and in so knowing, some consider themselves to know me. I am estadounidense(United Stateser…when will this term finally make it into US vernacular?). Others, and I always appreciate this, have for one reason or another landed in more obscure spots in the US. I met someone who spent a year of high school in Kansas. The nearest thing of note, he said, was an Amelia Erhardt landmark. I met another person who had lived in Vermont and Utah. People like this understand that just as to know Lima is not to know the entirety of Peru, to know New York is the tip of the iceberg.

I had a diplomat, formerly stationed in D.C., tell me “Oh, I know your country very well, Very Well.” To prove this he described his drive to work from Maryland and how he would listen to NPR and how some days he would be forced to remain in his car because a particular radio story would be so riveting.
No offense, but I traveled all this way so I wouldn’t have to talk about NPR driveway moments at dinner parties for a spell.
Being the curious fellar that I am, I asked him what he knew of Anacostia, D.C.’s more troubled area. “Oh I know this place, this is a place of nothing, of drunk people and poverty.”

Certainly this response is not unique to a Peruvian, it would be just as easy to hear it from a United Stateser or Russian or anyone.
It is more to illustrate the point that to know a place is to know a place in its entirety, the nooks and crannies and everything in between. Something I am attempting to accomplish here.