Grocery Shopping in Lima

Today, I went grocery shopping. This is a big deal.

As sweet and wonderful as my host family is, and as well as they feed me and take care of me, and as delicious as Peruvian food is, I was in dire need of some good ol' familiar American food. Of the healthy variety.

With eggs and sausage and bread and evaporated-milk-coffee every morning, I could feel my arteries slowly clogging, begging me to please, please get ahold of some glorious skim milk and Honey Bunches of Oats.

Now, I know what you're thinking. Nicole, you're in another country, you need to embrace it, eat the food, walk the talk! Well, yeah. I agree. But I can't ignore those arteries, dude.

So, this morning I suited up to go to Plaza Vea, one of the four supermarket chains (that I know of) over here--the others are Wong, Metro, and Vivanda. This required an empty backpack (yes, the same backpack I borrowed from my host brother to climb Machu Picchu with...and haven't returned yet...), some change for the combi, some good sneakers and my North Face for the misty, gloomy cold.

Grocery shopping here is like sensory overload...there's the normal set-up of a grocery store, with the colorful signs and illegible marker writing and neat labeled aisles...but everything takes me about three times as long to figure out because it's all in Spanish.

And so many of the products I've never seen before in my life--an entire aisle of evaporated milk, for example. The fresh milk, in small cartons, isn't refrigerated, which I still don't quite understand. Nestle rules everything in Peru--the chocolates, the cereal, the ice cream, the cookies...in fact, everywhere you go in Lima, there are people walking around with red vests and red Nestle baseball caps holding around-the-neck trays (like at baseball games) with Nestle goodies. It's kind of startling when they hop onto your combi at intersections and squeeze through the dead-pan-faced people saying, "Triangulos, Sublime, otherNestlechocolatename..." in a monotone voice. I'm slowly getting used to it.

The "Hostess" (as in Hostess Twinkies) equivalent over here is "Bimbo," which makes me chuckle every time. I passed by these little dessert things, and it took me a minute to figure out what it was because it was titled, "Keke." As in, CAKE. And then, I was looking at some overpriced baby wipes and almost burst out laughing because the name of the product is "Pompis Frescos!" as in (I think), Fresh Buttcheeks!

Thankfully, I made it out of there alive, stuffed my purchases into my backpack, and headed over to take a combi home. I feel a little more independent, really thankful I'm not blonde and American-looking, and so looking forward to those Corn Flakes and delicious, cold, fat free milk tomorrow morning. Mmmmm.