Bio: Bloom, Cindy (Summer/Lima Peru - 1974)

Contact: Dolores (Mohr) Kenyon
E-mail: dolores@wiclarkcountyhistory.org 

Surnames: Bloom, Minetti, Valasco, Ito

----Source: Clark County Press (Neillsville, Clark Co., WI) 10/10/1974

Bloom, Cindy (Summer/Lima Peru - 1974)

Cindy Bloom has returned to her senior year at Loyal High School after a summer in Lima, Peru, South America. She attended a Catholic all-girls’ school, Saito Maria. It was a switch from our system. The students stayed in one classroom while the teachers came to them.

Her home economics class was from the book, with no stoves, and sewing machines. Very few homes have a sewing machine. The one English class was studying grammar, and the other studies the “Tale of Two Cities.”

She carried a sack lunch.

She said, “you just don’t appreciate hot water,” which she learned to do without. “You never think about reaching for a tissue,” she said, and added they got theirs from the bathroom roll.

It was winter in Lima, which meant there was a cloud cover over the city except for three sunny days, when there were earth tremors. When one strikes, “Everyone runs outdoors,” she related. “They weren’t bad. I slept through one.”

Fortunately, her mother didn’t know about that part, and therefore did not worry.

Her family included Senor and Senora Carlos Minetti and daughter, Livia. Senor Minetti was traveling in the United States at the time she visited there. Livia plans to come here as an exchange student. She is in her last year of high school.

Senora Bertha Minetti teaches Spanish in another area of Lima. The family has no car, so they rode the taxi and trains. Cindy did get to see other cities, and found that the sun was shining at other elevations.

In attending church with her family, Cindy was surprised to see the crowded conditions, with people standing in the aisles. The churches are huge, with impressive decorations.

Fortunately, Cindy was able to listen to news from home broadcast in Hawaii. She did not have access to English newspapers. During her stay President Valasco took over their newspapers.

In the first 15 days each month, no meat was to be sold, only chicken, which was to help in the shortage. Instead, the wealthy, who had both freezers and refrigerators, bought meat, refrigerated it, and ate it when they wanted. Only the poor without refrigeration had to abide by the chicken menu. Rice was the main fair.

Although Cindy has studied some Spanish, she found movies in Spanish voices with subtitles in English provided a good way to learn the language.

“Daniel Boone speaking Spanish was something else!” she laughed.

Cindy did enjoy the zoo with native animals, and elephants. An entirely new sport to her was going to the horse races, but she wasn’t a gambler.

Among her schoolmates at Loyal, Cindy, who wears a size 9, is no exception. In Lima it was different. The girls of her age wear sizes four and five. To her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Lester Bloom of Rt. 1, Loyal, she didn’t really grow either. She was wearing a pair of popular four-inch platform shoes when she returned.

Her exchange mother kept clippings of her waist length hair as a souvenir. It is only shoulder-length now.

It was no wonder her mother, and her grandmother, Mrs. Henry Bloom of Loyal, didn’t recognize her at first glance when they met her at the airport in Eau Claire.

After graduation next May, Cindy wants to take up architecture, beginning in Wisconsin, and going on to complete her studies in Minnesota. Presently, the Bloom household is one big geography lesson, with Cindy matching adventures with their new exchange son. Hide Ito, from the island of Joyo-shi, Japan. Both traveled under the International Fellowship.