Me encanta Peru!

Our adventures at Cumbe Mayo

Us loving Peru




Chillin in the back of the dirt truck- so legit
So on Saturday neither of us could stop saying “I LOVE Peru!”  It was a perfect Peruvian day!  We started out in the perfect, clear, sunny weather (a blessing since it can decide to pour rain at any minute without warning).  We took a bus to Cajamarca where we began hiking straight up the mountain. 

About 45 minutes in (I was already tired), sad I know, but it was steep!) we got a truck hauling dirt to stop and give us a ride.  We rode up the mountain in the back of the truck- yeah we’re that legit.  It was perfect because we had a view of the gorgeous mountains and Cajamarca below.  Feeling the breeze and having an unobstructed view was worth the bumpy ride (I’m pretty sure I still have a couple bruises).  We decided this was a true South American, once-in-a-lifetime experience.  I can’t begin to tell you how perfectly happy we were in the pile of dirt in the back of that truck. 

Some of the beautiful views of Cumbe Mayo

We got dropped off at the road leading up to Cumbe Mayo and paid the nice truck driver a sol (about 35 cents) each for the half hour drive.  We finished walking the rest of the way up to Cumbe where we got to hike around and see all sorts of cool rock formations and aqueducts.  It was so awesome!  We got to climb around a little on the rocks and look at cool petroglyphs!  The aqueducts were personally my favorite part (I know that sounds a little nerdy, but trust me, they were awesome).  They were pre-Incan, so over 2000 years old.  I have no idea how they made them so straight and smooth and made them run at perfectly right angles. 

At any rate, we saw the cool stuff and then we were considering taking one of the tour buses back down the mountain.  Until we found out it cost 10 soles (about $3.50), so we decided to walk home.  I couldn’t help but laugh at the irony that we, the supposedly rich Americans, were too cheap to pay $3.50, but all the Peruvians had paid more for the ride up and a complete tour.  So we started walking down the road hoping that there would be another truck hauling dirt.  Luckily one of the tour buses we decided was too expensive was full of a group of people who decided to convince their bus driver to give us a ride for free when they saw us walking!  They were nice and we told them Cynthia is Shakira's sister (a favorite prank of ours).  I hope they didn’t actually believe us, but I don’t really know. 

They dropped us off in Cajamarca and we took another bus to Baños where we had lunch/dinner.  The restaurant was a little sketchy, but we are glad to report no one got sick! We got soup (which we didn’t eat), lemonade (which we also didn’t drink) and Saltado de Carne (steak and fried vegetables, which we did eat!).  All of that for only 4 soles! (about $1.25)  We of course chased it down with dessert from a delicious dessert shop down the road.  I got Maracuya Mousse and Cynthia had Crocan de Chocolate.  Of course that didn’t stop us from making oatmeal cake that night.  At any rate, it was an awesome day.  And I love Peru!

Que Rico! - Cynthia

You are walking down the street and then you smell something warm and inviting. Your feet begin to involuntarily walk into the panaderia off to your right. But once you are inside, it is not just the pan that smells amazing, it is the empenadas and tortas. And then you see some delicate pastry thing stuffed with manjar blanco (peruvian caramel at it's best). And before you know it, you have bought it and there is powdered sugar on your nose and on your cheek. And you sigh happily. And this is why we are all going to come back fat.
Here are just a few thing of the things that we have enjoyed eating.

Jake and Erin learning how to eat Maracuya. The next week I discovered Maracuya cheesecake... and two days later I just had to try the Maracuya mousse...



And here are the mangos that we turned into mango cake which Jake thoroughly enjoyed. 

This is a fruit called "Tuna" it is found on cactus and is quite tasty and fresh. The first couple weeks we were here we did not know that tuna was a fruit and kept wondering why everyone was offering us a seafood juice. 

Feliciana taught me how to make Arroz con Leche one morning. A lot of it. And it was amazing. 

This is beeswax full of honey. We really just wanted the wax to help make my dreadlock, but turns out you have to buy it with honey still in it. Lucky us. 





Our new friend Jose Miguel taught us how to make our own yogurt. That's right, homemade yogurt. We walked to the pasture next to our house, hollered at the lady milking her cows and asked if we could buy 10 liters of milk. She said yes and the next morning we had 10 litres of yogurt. The thing is, we don't have a fridge here, so we made our own. It consists of sticking the product in a bucket of freezing water in the shower. Jake calls it our "ghetto fridge". 









This is me eating my first empenada in Peru. And it certainly was not my last. They are these incredible stuffed pastries full of chicken and onions and spices and peppers and little bits of heaven. 










And this is Erin eating our two most favorite things ever. Queso fresca and Pan de Agua. Queso fresca is a type of cheese (which we also learned how to make thanks to Jose Miguel) and it is fresh and light and delicious. Paired with the most amazing roll ever, you have a winner. 


Pan de Agua. What words can I say to give you justice? You are crispy and chewy and you puff up so perfectly. You make a delicious crunch noise when I bite you and you fill my mouth with such happiness. I buy you almost every day and it is still not enough. When I go home I am learning how to make you. 

These are the wonderful ladies who cook for the kids of El Bichito every day. Here they are making "papas fritas" or french fries. And here we are eating our daily meal of rice and lentils. Who knew that something so simple could be so tasty?

And what would life be like without chicken foot soup?








 We have had fun experimenting with food on our own as well. We make pastas and... well more pasta and then we go eat it on our roof. 
And after discovering the hidden oven here we have made cake, cookies, banana snack cake, coffee cake, more banana snack cake and more coffee cake. Like I said, we might come home a little chubby. But very happy.

Bonita, No?- Erin

Where we live

Everything is going great here in Puylucana.  We are a lot more comfortable knowing where things are and what sorts of things the kids like to do.  I think that by the time we go home we will have done enough puzzles and played enough memory for a lifetime.  We’ve also had a chance to do more with the kids.  We have had two pre-Carnival water balloon days.  (Side note about Carnival: From what I can tell the holiday consists of some parties and throwing water balloons at random people walking down the street.  I am still trying to discover why they celebrate Carnival.  I have asked some of the Peruvian people and the answers range from “to celebrate a Greek god,” to “Because it’s fun.”  In Cynthia’s guidebook it says it is to celebrate the days leading up to Lent, but I haven’t had any people tell me that yet.)  During the first one we taught about the importance of washing clothes and some of the kids brought T-shirts that we washed.  We wanted to wash clothes again with them on the next water balloon day because we thought we could get more of the kids to bring clothes to wash since they knew what was coming after, but not a single kid brought clothes.  We had lots of fun with the water balloons though!  

 Washing clothes with the kids

 

We’ve also been trying to do some activities to improve their reading and math skills.  One of the hard things for the summer is that we have a small group of kids with a huge age range, so we usually end up playing games that are more basic so that the little ones can play with us, but it doesn’t really help the older ones learn as much.  For example, they LOVE to play the Dice Tally game.  All you do is roll a die, count how many dots there are and then put a tally next to the number that corresponds.  You win when you have five tallies next to each number.  It’s good practice counting and learning to tally for our four, five, and six year olds, but the girls who are ten and eleven like to play too and tend to win.  We try to have more than one “winner” so that the little ones still like playing.  The kids also like to cheat.  We are thinking we might have a lesson about honesty sometime soon… We love finding games that are “cheater-proof,” like Spanish-English Bingo. 

On out hike to Otuzco

After the kids leave and on Saturdays we go on our own little adventures.  Our first Saturday, like Cynthia said, we hiked a mountain behind our house.  The second Saturday we went to the city of Baños del Inca to go to the Baños del Inca, which are hot springs.  Because we don’t have any hot water in our house this was especially wonderful!  They pipe the water so that you can go swimming, get a private hot tub, or shower, all with warm water! They also have a few remains from when it was actually used by the Incas that you can look at.  This last Saturday we hiked/walked to some ruins known as Otuzco.  It was cool to see, but my favorite parts were the beautiful views as we walked there and at the top.  Our “tour guide” was one of the guys from our ward, Jose Miguel.  He is super cool and we do a lot of stuff with him.  He comes over in the mornings and we all study the Book of Mormon.  He and Jake read in English and Cynthia, Liz, and I practice our Spanish.  He also took us to where he works, which is for someone in the ward who makes paintings for souvenirs that are sold all over Cajamarca.  The paintings are mostly of places in Northern Peru, but because he is LDS he also does some of temples.  It was cool to see how they are made.  Jose Miguel also brought us homemade queso fresca and yogurt, which were delicious!  He has promised to show us how to make queso fresca and manjar blanco (which is a sort of caramel spread).  We are really excited!  

Us and the Peruvian women who asked to take pictures with the "gringitas bonitas"

Church here is great.  Personally I get a lot of time to ponder because I usually catch the title of the lesson and not a whole lot more, but I am getting better.  We went to the baptism of a little girl this week.  It was supposed to start at 7:00, but in true Peruvian style the meeting actually began at 7:45.  There was a talk and time for some pictures and then the actual baptism.  It was probably about 8:30 by this time and we were thinking it was getting close to the end.  Oh how wrong we were!  There was still lots of singing (which is always an adventure at church because there is no piano and key and tempo don’t seem to be important concepts here) and testimonies.  They also took a picture of every single person who was there with the little girl.  While they were taking pictures some people brought around cheese puffs, candy, and some herbal tea.  Then we sang happy birthday (three different birthday songs in a row, including the English one), and then they served some good cake.  By this time it was 9:45 and we had to leave so we could get a taxi to go home.  We think it probably ended around 10:00, but we don’t actually know.  The moral of the story is that we are having way too much fun and learning a lot along the way. 

Un Dia in la Vida- Cynthia

Erin reading with Alesandro

For most of us the day starts around 5am, at least that is when the rooster who lives next door starts crowing. The dogs and buses join in about 30 minutes later and if we do manage to get back to sleep, I am awoken by tapping on our window which means it is 6am and that it is time to go running. Jake and I take the bus down the mountain to Banosdel Inca and we run on a trail from Banos to Cajamarca and back. The best part of the trip is that we end our run at a small Panederia or bakery in Banos and buy Pan de Agua. It is pretty much the most delicious crusty roll in the world and we have all been living off of it for the past 2 weeks. We get home and usually make enough noise that Erin and Liz wake up. We get ready for the day; eat breakfast, and such things. Oh and sometimes we do laundry. We hand wash and hang dry everything which is quite the adventure, and if we want warm water to wash in, we heat it on the stove. Yup, we are just that awesome.

Sorting Rice and Lentils

 

 Jake quizing Rodrigo and Fernando with flashcards

Around 10am Feliciana or Merchuda will arrive and we meet in the kitchen and sort rice. The rice here comes with little piedras or rocks still in it and so we sit at the table and sift through it. It is the perfect opportunity for Jake to attempt to teach us Spanish. After the rice is done and any other odd jobs from the kitchen are completed we plan out activities for the kids for that day. We pick books to read, and decide if we will have some sort of organized game. Last week we tried to play freeze tag outside, it was going pretty well until the interns got winded and we had to let the kids win. The kids here LOVE puzzles, they will do the same puzzle every day if we brought them out. And Memory, any cards that have some sort of double they will turn into a game of memory. But they play an interesting version where after every turn you mix up the cards again. So it’s more of a luck game than anything, but they like it. Connect 4 is also a favorite and we were surprised and how much they like to read. In addition to just games we slip in a few math flashcards and have days where we focus on a hygiene goal- like washing clothes regularly. It is fun planning out activities, but as any teacher will tell you, it’s hard to know how they will be received.

 Erin being tickled

The kids come and eat the food that Feliciana and Merchuda prepared and most of them stay for several hours afterwards and we get to spend time with them. They are an adorable and a hilarious bunch. We are still learning their names and they are learning ours. When they don’t remember our names they just call us “gringa”. Also, no one here seems to be able to pronounce “Erin”, though it’s funny to watch them try. So we have renamed her Melissa, which they can mostly say. Hector (age 6) has particularly taken a liking to “Melissa” and follows her around tugging at her shirt every 5 minutes.

As for me, I have been lucky enough to spend a lot of time with two sisters named Diana (age 11) and Milagros (age 4). Diana is very intelligent and is very interested in learning. She is patient when I speak to her in Spanish and we both can have a good laugh when I mess it up. Milagros might be the cutest thing I have ever seen and she enjoys chatting with me and giving me kisses on the cheek. I don’t think she realizes that I only catch about half of what she says, but I smile a lot and I guess that makes up for it. 

Me and Milagros

These kids also make me laugh all the time. Example:

I discovered that Milagros has one dreadlock in the back of her hair; this was the following conversation with her older sister-

Cynthia: Diana, what is this in Milagros’s hair?

Diana: A dreadlock

Jake: Why does Milagros have one dreadlock in her hair?

Diana: So she will be lucky when she grows up

Cynthia and Jake stare.

Jake: Seriously?

Diana: Yes…

That’s right, a lucky dreadlock. I decided I need one, so if anyone knows anything about making just one awesome dreadlock in my hair, please let me know. (I’m serious)

After the kids all leave we clean up and have the rest of the day to do whatever we want. We ride the micro down to Banos or Cajamarca and buy food, we read books, we watch movies on laptops, and I like to sit on the roof. So far we have also been to the hot springs, explored the city, hiked to the top of the mountain behind our house, and sat around and talked a lot.

Life is good, and hopefully in the next post Erin can tell you more about the fun activities we have done with the kids.

 Hike day, yes this is where we live- isn´t it beautiful?