Mira! Arroz, Arroz, Arroz- Erin

I wrote this on Thursday, but due to technical difficulties could not post until today, so it might be a little out of date, but here we are.

So the blog title means “Look! Rice, Rice, Rice” for those of you who don’t speak Spanish.  There are two reasons for the title.  1. Those are two words in Spanish that I actually know.  The kids we work with tell me “Mira!” every 30 seconds.  2. We moved 1000 pounds of rice the other day up a flight of stairs.  Literally.  As well as lots of beans and potatoes.  We moved the rice in bags of about 100 pounds, so of course we had two people struggling with each bag.  The two Peruvian women we work with were laughing and laughing at us.  Probably because they could carry them by themselves.  The women up here are SO tough.  They carry everything on their backs wrapped in these shawls- including their adorable babies!  Because we are sort of up in the mountains the people are a good mix of traditional and modern.  The adult women especially dress pretty traditionally in pleated skirts and colorful shawls—except that a lot of times they wear pants under their skirts. 

In other news, El Bichito (the center where we live and the kids come) is so great!  Our rooms are huge!  The beds are not the most comfortable things ever.  Jake, one of the other interns, lovingly refers to them as memory foam with Alzheimer’s because you leave a dent in them wherever you sit or lay and they take a couple of hours for the dents to come out if they do.  It’s mostly just hilarious at this point.  Our new favorite phrase is “esta bien.”  We use it when we have to take an ice cold shower, when we aren’t positive the food is good for us, when we don’t have windows yet, when the power goes out, and when we crowd on the little busses with the crazy drivers. There is only one little mirror in El Bichito and it is downstairs in the bathroom the kids use, so Cynthia and I have yet to look in a mirror other than the one we accidently saw ourselves in when we stepped into a jewelry shop to exchange money.  Yes, accidently.  Cold water leads to our showers being few and far between and make up for us is non-existent, so it is a real blessing there are no mirrors to look in.

When we first got here the widows weren’t in and there was only light in two rooms, but now we have lights, outlets, somewhat working plumbing, and glass in all but two windows!  We think it’s pretty classy and we really are so lucky to have everything we have.  I find it amazing.  Those of you who have ever had the privilege of sleeping in the same house as me know that I check the locks on every window and every door before I go to sleep or I can’t sleep.  It was pretty easy here the first night—there wasn’t even glass in half the windows and there’s just a staircase that leads up to our roof that is covered with a piece of tin.  I always wondered how missionaries adapted to living in more “interesting” conditions.  I guess I’ve learned the answer—you just do.  There’s no other choice and honestly it’s nicer than what a lot of the people around here have, so it just makes me incredibly grateful for what I have. 

Jake and Liz are the other two interns here with us.  They are both great!  Jake speaks fluent Spanish and we use him as our translator/body guard.  He’s hilarious and from California (not that those two are necessarily related, they’re just both true).  Liz is so fun.  She is from Salt Lake and is staying in Peru for six months doing different humanitarian projects.  The food is delicious!  We get fresh bread about every other day and have all sorts of good fruit and pastries.  So far we’ve had the delicious mango, pineapple, and a HUGE avocado. 

We are both working on our Spanish.  Cynthia’s is of course a lot better than mine, but we are both improving.  All of us interns read El Libro de Mormón out loud every night.  Even though I don’t know what I’m saying it at least helps with my accent and learning how to pronounce things.  The kids are so cute and speak to me in rapid Spanish.  I usually just stare or say “Si.”  When I play games with them they will try to cheat all slyly and I don’t speak enough Spanish to explain what they’re doing wrong, so I mostly just loose the games because I try to play by the rules and let them cheat.  My French is coming to me with perfect clarity every time I want to say something in Spanish.  Yesterday I got so frustrated with it I actually started speaking in French to one of the little girls—I think she just thought I was crazy.  But c’est la vie! (or some equivalent phrase in Spanish.  I have no idea.)

I realize that you still don’t really know what we do every day, but this has gotten way too long, so Cynthia will just have to tell you about that next time. Ciao!