The Peru trip is coming up fast. We leave on April 27 for 100 days in Peru. The Puerto Rico (PR) trip does not happen until early 2016. I'm behind the curve on planning for Peru. I'm trying to avoid being behind the curve in planning for PR. Here's where things stand.
First, PR, since we are early on in that process. Jana and I will be attending the Southern Political Science conference in San Juan in early 2016. So our first thought was, why don't we have the extended Morgan family do a late Christmas celebration in Puerto Rico. Jana's sister and husband did a cruise that ported in San Juan once, and they liked it. Her parents have never been, and neither have the kids. So why not piggy back some family fun on a holiday on a conference trip? The Morgans were game, so we're giving it a go. Right now, I'm simply focused on finding a house for us. We'll try to be there for the week ahead of the conference. I'm hitting all the usual suspects for finding a house to rent - homeaway.com flipkey.com, airbnb.com. This one is going to be pretty easy because we have six adults and four kids. There just are not that many houses big enough to handle us. I know we don't want to be on the east side of the island where the waves are biggest. 3 year olds just don't need big surf. So, I've got it narrowed down to less than 10 options already and it's just a matter of getting feedback from the rest of the family. That will be the hard part. HEY FAMILY, IF YOU'RE READING THIS, RESPOND TO MY EMAILS!!!!! More on that trip as the details are worked out.
Peru is more interesting, for several reasons. First, this is a trip oriented primarily toward work. Specifically, Jana and I are collaborators on a project pertaining to economic and social inequality in Latin America. We've written a few papers on the topic to this point, and we are looking to extend this research to several articles and a book. It took us a while to settle on a place that met two criteria. 1) A country that has interesting values on the key variables we are interested in at this point in our project: economic inequality between men and women and ethnic groups, and incorporation of economically disadvantaged groups in the political system. Jana would say a lot more than this and probably suggest that this explanation is not on incomplete, but also misleading. So be it. It's not a political science blog, after all. On to the second characteristic. 2) A country that we feel comfortable taking our 2 year old daughter for three months, which basically means in practice a country that we've both been to before and don't feel is problematic for the Little Lady's well-being. For instance. we love Venezuela. We've been there. But the situation is not good now. We would not take our toddler there by choice at this point in time. Peru, however, seemed a good option. So Peru it is.
It's also interesting because it's our first field work trip with the LL. An interesting thing has happened since we started making long trips with the LL. Now, the first thing I look at when trying to find a place to live is availability of childcare. We know if we're going to Peru we'll be in Lima most of the time. There are a handful of very nice neighborhoods there, and our favorite based on previous trips is called Miraflores. So I focused on searching for pre-schools in that area. Found several via internet. That is a major difference from fifteen years ago I'm sure. We contacted several and found a handful that would be willing to take the LL for just a few months. I then started searching for apartments within a 10 minute walk of these options. Found a really great apartment about 10 minutes from two different pre-schools, and decided that would be a good options. Turns out it's also only 12 minutes from the really cool LarcoMar Mall, which I'll show you pictures of some other time. For now, just understand that it is a mall built into the face of a Pacific Coast cliff. Not cool in some ways, for sure. But it's a really nice place to spend some time in Lima. It also is across the street from a supermarket. Within a block is the park where an organic farmers' market is hosted on the weekends. And within 10 minutes is the central park of Miraflores, not to mention dozens of world-renowned restaurants. Hopefully it's as good a location as it seems.
Flights are booked, but this was also an interesting process. We're actually using miles for these flights even though it's a research trip. When using miles, flights are priced per segment for international flights. So while it costs a lot more money to buy two one-way tickets, that's not the case with miles. Flying direct from Newark to Lima only cost about 20,000 a piece. It's low season in April, and that is a very good return on miles. The return is complicated by the fact that it will be August, the height of travel season for Peru. Still, found an American option with way too many connections for 17,500 miles each. That is very good. Though I will be very thankful if there is a schedule change or delay that allows me to avoid the Lima to Dallas to Charlotte to Philly route, with a 2 year old in tow.
We'll be truly living in Lima for more than three months. So I'm sure I'll have lots to report once we are there. I'll also report on any smaller trips within Peru that we plan as they develop. For now, I will leave you with some pictures of our apartment in Lima.
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