La hora gringa
The weekend has arrived and it’s time to make plans. “I’ll see you at 7,” I say in Spanish to my friend over the phone, “Hora gringa, not hora peruana.” “7, hora gringa,” he repeats, now well-versed in my need for a timely arrival. Time flies differently here in Peru, or rather, it crawls. Hora peruana is a phrase that existed long before JVs arrived in Tacna. It means that you can set a time for a meeting and expect people to arrive anywhere between fifteen minutes to an hour later than the appointed time. Here, someone might show up half hour late to a session or meeting and walk in as if they have arrived right on time. I look at time through the uptight lens of someone who grew up in the United States, where people clock in to the 00:00:00 second at their workplaces. In the theatre world, I was taught fifteen minutes early was on time, on time was late, and late was fired. I lived by the tick of the second-hand on the clock in college, running from wor