Living in Lima Part 1: New Job, New Foods, and New Experiences Every Day

Happy Thanksgiving to those of you tuning in from Canada! Myself and my Canadian colleagues here in Lima are truly sad to be missing Thanksgiving dinner, not to mention Ontario’s incomparable autumn colours.

Today is a national holiday in Peru, so I finally got the chance to sit down and pen this update about life here. My first three weeks in Lima have flown by! In the past month, I started a new job (the one I moved here for), celebrated my birthday with new colleagues, tried tasty Peruvian dishes, explored a local market, and took a guided walking tour of Lima’s historical centre. I also stayed at a hostel for the first time, am trying to improve my Spanish each day, and am learning to balance full-time work and full-time online classes. The best part is that I’m not experiencing these things alone; one of my roommates is a close colleague at work, and we’re having fun getting to know Lima and learning the ropes at the office.

Without a doubt, one of the best things about Lima is its food. While I have yet to try Peruvian classics such as ceviche and Lomo Saltado, a restaurant near my office has a constantly revolving menu of local staples (it’s less than $4 CAD for an appetizer, entree, and a juice of the day). Take a look at the photos below, and check out the video to witness a truly Peruvian lunch – potatoes with the famous Huancaína sauce, chicha morada (Peruvian purple corn juice), and live music via a Peruvian pan flute.

Rice and lentils with chicken

Palta rellena (avocado stuffed with vegetables)

Rice, chicken stew and a yellow-green Peruvian potato

Rice and chicken in mushroom sauce

Pollo al Sillao (rice and chicken in soy sauce)

Unsurprisingly, my recent visit to the local market culminated in a fridge full of fresh produce. Keep an eye out for a separate blog post about the goodies that my roommate and I found there!

Work has been very busy and slightly overwhelming. I’m working at a project called EQWIP HUBs, which offers entrepreneurship and employability training sessions for youth in 6 countries and provides graduates with the opportunity to receive seed capital for their businesses. I’m part of Peru’s four-person Youth Leadership Team, which is designed to collect and analyze data about the livelihood statuses of local graduates. Our main goal is put together a comprehensive report (to be shared with the project’s partners) detailing how the graduates’ businesses are doing, the main takeaways from their months of training, and their suggestions for improving the project’s quality and delivery of classes and workshops. Our contracts with the project end in mid-December, so we have two months left to interview (by way of surveys and focus groups) approximately 100 graduates and then analyze the findings.

On my birthday, I was able to leave work a little early with my roommate (since we had worked late earlier in the week) and we checked out the famous outdoor shopping mall, Larcomar. We enjoyed the ocean views and I had some fantastic chocolate cake and coffee from Juan Valdez Café – I highly recommend both. After that, we met some of our colleagues at Mercado 28, a newly-opened restaurant where I had a delicious birthday burger. The restaurant has a cool “market” concept where diners can choose from various small restaurants located inside the space. They have a wide variety of foods, including ceviche, sushi, paella, poké bowls, Peruvian street foods and, of course, the burgers.