Living in Peru : your everyday companion

Celebrating its 35th year, the Mercado de las Pulgas is holding up better than ever with their annual fundraiser. No doubt, it's no surprise things are already going crazy with all the furniture coming in by multiple delivery trucks. From August 21-25, las Pulgas will be opening its doors at the Cuartel San Martin to the thousands of loyal customers looking for a good buy in exquisite household furniture.

By Larry J. Pitman

Lima on the brink of winter. Somehow the image of living in South America doesn’t include cold foggy days. And yet it is just the way Lima is in the winter.  It is the beginning of July, and the cold season is beginning. Cold here may mean down to 12 degrees Celsius (about 55 degrees Fahrenheit). Not really that cold by European or North American standards. But all things are relative.

By Ben Jonjak and Diana P. Olano

It started simple enough. Last year, in one of our weekly newsletter's "Peru this Week", the Livinginperu.com team asked its over 22,000 readers to answer one question: What made them most proud of Peru? The response was overwhelming to say the least. With everything from the neon-colored, sweet beverage Inca Kola to the ancient Cusqueñan citadel of Ollantaytambo being suggested. Each email provided a new idea, a new inspiration.

Barranco, a place of tranquility and inspiration for artists and intellectuals, a cultural and entertainment center for thousands of visitors, preserves its identity throughout the centuries, perhaps, due to the fact that it has achieved to combine -without  mixing them- modernity and tradition.

By Milagros Leiva Gálvez
for El Comercio

Translated by Diana P. Olano

She strains the bread, dry and chopped, and transforms it into flour that will later be used to fry hamburgers and other fried foods. She strains in silence. In each of her movements one can notice what it took for her to be sitting here, today, in this confectionery workshop which wants to say that people with disabilities can work; that they can making a living and that they won't spend the rest of their lives studying the way some may think. This woman with a child-like face doesn't speak, but it's possible to understand her.

By Carl Hennings

The country is basking in the glow of high metal prices and an unprecedented number of exploration and development projects, coupled with the investment funds that are ready to pour in. The media and resource conferences are buzzing with the news of the great potential and great projects in the country. Government officials at home and traveling the world are pounding their chests proclaiming the great investment climate and geological potential of Peru. The government had one of the more prominent exhibits at the recent PDAC in Toronto.

The economic world has its eyes on Peru. Bouncing back from an agricultural nightmare in 1998 thanks to the affects of El Niño and President Alejandro Toledo's policy to decrease government expenditure which made foreign investment significantly slow down, Peru is on the brink of an economic metamorphosis. Its economy has grown on average 5.7% annually, for the past five years and has surpassed the global average in business, fiscal, monetary, financial and government freedom. With local and foreign investments expected to reach $50 billion by the end of 2010 in this country that is a main exporter gold, for example, investors here and around the world are taking a gander at this little engine that can.

The Asociación de Hogares Nuevo Futuro Perú, was founded on March 21st, 1995 and up until the month of May, 2007  has provided shelter for hundreds of children.

The association has an excellent record of not only helping children in need but also reuniting them with their families and finding adoptive families for them. 

The association lovingly takes in abandoned children and provides them with a family environment that will permit their overall development and meet their bio-psycho-social and spiritual needs.

This extraordinary association has five Homes operating in Peru. The first is located in the district of Villa El Salvador and aids children between the ages of 3 and 13. An integral program to take care of the children has been established, providing a mother figure present at all times and an educator that helps with the children's formation and at the same time acts as a father figure.