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?

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!

Hemos llegado! - Cynthia

Peru is awesome. We wrote out an entire blog plost full of our adventures from the last day and then I left it on my computer which is back at our place... So this summary will have to do. 

 Saying goodbye to my wonderful cousins who dropped me off at the airport.

Lima is very humid, and the people here are crazy drivers! There are three established lanes but no one seems to notice, 5 cars at a time will all be driving and honking and cutting eachother off and waving each other forward. The streets are full of huge tour buses and taxis and combis as well as dogs. Lots of dogs and lots of people. 

  

 This is Zara, and this is Erin and Zara enjoying ice cream while we hang out at Josue´s swim lesson. 

We were lucky enough to have the wonderful Zara for our contact here in Lima, she picked both of us up from the airport, helped me practice my spanish and let us rest and eat at her house. She has a wonderful family and a very cute son named Josue. We learned that Josue likes: to wake up Erin by staring at her an inch from her face, he like soccer but not swim lessons and he enjoys singing along to David Archuleta. 

We left Lima yesterday afternoon on a "baller" tour bus- according to the other intern Jake. It has cool reclining seats, dinner, and an odd choice of music. We were on it for 16 hours...

Hanging out with Josue.

We arrived in Pulyucana this morning, thanks to more help from the Bishop here. It is so beautiful in Cajamarca; misty mountains, rolling green hills and a lot trees I don´t recognize. I am excited to explore more of our new home, but for the past few hours we have been pretty busy meeting everyone. Our new friend Jake is hilarious. He showed us around "El Bichito" where we are working for the next three months, and had great commentary on all of it´s oddities. Sorry for the scatterbrained post, and Erin will tell you all about where we live and more about the wonderful kids we get to work with next time!