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.