Wednesday!!!

I never thought I would enjoy a Wednesday so much, but I guess whatever day you start feeling better is a great day.

Today was pretty fantastic with the exception of some screaming kids during school. I woke up and finally got back into some yoga, had a hot shower, (very exciting, trust me) and made my way to school feeling pretty refreshed. Cherry, Jan, Jorge, and I went out for some pretty exceptional Chinese food for lunch and then Jorge and I went back to school for part 2 of his GMAT tutoring. We are trying to help get him into the MBA program as MSU for next semester. He has both the GMAT and the TOFEL scheduled for November, so it is going to be a pretty strict tutoring schedule.

After tutoring, Jorge took me down into town to go grocery shopping via a ride from his friend who had even remembered me from the Lion incident at the circus. I'm apparently famous in Pacasmayo already :-)

We came back to church for the young adults bible study/ English lessons led by Cherry, which was actually a lot of fun. The guys are from 16 to 24 and definitely full of energy making the class kind of a riot. They each go around reading the bible in English and then Cherry tries to put it in to lamens terms for them. I pretty sure a lot of them don't really understand what they are reading or what she is saying for that matter. Paulo on the other hand is pretty awesome. They were supposed to go around the circle and tell me a little about themselves and he starts off by saying that he really enjoys languages. He completely reminds me of one of my friends, Jarrett that I met in the beginning of college. He just started learning English about 11 months ago and speaks better than most of the guys who have been studying for years. We ended up playing a cross between hangman and wheel of fortune but no one ever gets out and you don't win any money, but there is definitely some English learning going on. They actually get to use and practice their English, which is why I think learning a foreign language has been so hard for me in the past. I never had the desire or even need for it until now. I was never around anyone that didn’t speak my own language.

I definitely have the desire and the need right about now so I guess I will be testing my own theory. Hopefully I have the capability because everything else is in place. No more excuses.

Hidden Peace

Deep up into the mountains of LaLibertad (the department that I live in down here) is a place called Huaranchal... this place that had taken us about 18 hours to get to. Better have been worth it right?? With nothing but a rocky dirt road to reach it, this little city thrived on the earth and definitely appreciated it. It was a lot cleaner up there than here in Pacasmayo. Granted it is just habit to throw your trash on the ground for some down here ( I don't think I will ever get used to that), but it just seemed like a happier place to live. There weren't a million mototaxis buzzing around. We could leave our combi unattended without fear of theft or vandalism. Everyone seemed to be fairly healthy and there was always some athletic event to look forward to in the evening. Huaranchal had an amazing outdoor football/soccer field, which was surrounded by breathtaking mountains, an "indoor" or more like covered football arena where they could go when it got too dark to play on the actual pitch, a volleyball court, and children running around making up their own fun. I even saw some kids rolling tires across the field in a race. Tops were also a main attraction for the 6-10 crowd as Miller the Maestro as we named him showed off his mastered talent.

So what were we doing there if to me it seemed like a place of hidden peace? For one, they are completely isolated and could probably use a little excitement every so often. I think for the kids of Huaranchal we definitely provided that. Two, it was a mining town and the kids were either already working in the mines or had parents that worked them, leaving them free to wander the city alone during the day.. not all that different from Pacasmayo actually. It is definitely different here seeing kids as young as 2 walking around by themselves.

Fred came up the mountain in tow with his huge box filled with a dvd player, speakers, projector, sound system, and even an energy converter for a car battery if we couldn't get an electrical hookup all for the sole purpose of creating a little movie theater for the kids. He played all of his fairly outdated kid’s bible story movies, which actually turned out to be quite a hit. This excitement kind of took away from the real reason we had come to Huaranchal.. Pastor Auden was invited by one of his friends to come minister in his home town, which unbenounced to us was going to be more of an experience just getting there than we could have ever imagined. They had set up a worship concert in the indoor football arena which gathered a fairly good sized crowd but was a little overshadowed by this outdoor movie that we had set up a good 200 yards away.

I think just being there let the town know that they were definitely not forgotten. The kids had attached themselves to Kevin and I being probably two of the first gringos (white people) that they had ever seen. Gringo, being not always the nicest of terms for us but it’s usually pretty harmless. I'm going to try and not take too much offense to it. They were completely enamored with Kevin because he could actually talk to them in Spanish as well as tell them everything about the United States and about English. We even had 8 and 9 year olds talking politics with us, asking us who our president was and telling us about the state of their country's government. I, on the other hand have no idea why they were so interested in me. I was surrounded by kids every single time I walked outside. They would try to talk to me in Spanish, which completely started my crash course into Espanol. After a couple of hours of blank stares on both our parts we were finally starting to understand a little bit of each other. I had taught them every Spanish word that I knew in English and I was starting to remember some of my questions phrases from middle school Spanish so I could ask them their name and how old they were. It’s so funny interacting and playing with kids that have no idea what you are staying. There is definitely an international children's language that fortunately I still speak. :-)

So in the middle of all of this crazy hoopla, I start feeling my lympnodes swelling, my throat becoming red and inflamed, and a slight fever coming on. By Saturday night I woke up in a cold sweat and my lympnodes had grown to the size of grapefruits. Sunday was not a good day for me... The rest of the worship team had gone to the hot springs that were about a mile's hike away, which is completely up there on my fun list. I begrudgingly went back to the hotel and slept from about 8am until 4pm.. waking up here and there to take some ibprophen to try and break my fever.

Somehow I managed to get up and back down to the rest of civilization just so I could be mad rushed by a group of kids trying to ask me what their name was in English.. We finally just started making up names when they weren't happy with the answer, "it's the same in English". Kevin had started this game the day before and we decided that it was just easier and a lot more fun to make up names. This definitely took my mind off of the sickness until I got to dinner that night and was served a big bowl of Chicken Foot Soup. Thankfully during the prayer, Fred swapped our bowls so that I wouldn't have to stare at the foot that took up half of my bowl. Thankfully, my fever broke during the night because we had to get up at 3am to start our journey back to Pacasmayo. I was no longer going on with the group to retrieve birth certificates and just wanted to go back home to my horrible bed here in my apartment and sleep for the next couple of days. That's basically what I did seeing as that I didn't really leave my apartment from 11am on Monday until 9am this morning (Wednesday). I still can't really figure out what I had/ have but it seems to have worked itself out with the help of some antibiotics and a whole lot of sleep.

At Least I Wasn't in the Back

The second night in Peru Kevin invited me to the "jungle" with him and I almost jumped at the chance to go on that adventure and turns out this trip will forever be remembered as "the adventure". It wasn't actually the jungle and more of a mountain/camping adventure.

Five AM on Friday morning I hopped into the combi (what they call vans down here) along with Pastor Auden, seven members of the worship team, two of the house moms at the orphanage, three of the kids, Kevin, and Fred. That's right there were 16 people in the combi.... Fortunately we were only taking one of the house moms and two of the kids to Trujillo so we only brought 13 up the mountain... Still doesn't sound like a comfy ride does it?? Well being one of the token tall white people around.. they all took pity on us and let us sit in the front for most of the trip, which was a little less of a squish than the others in the back. The only bad thing about the white people sitting up front was that we kept getting pulled over by the cops looking for a reason to bribe us out of some money. Too bad for them we were all legit and never really had any problems. Auden was the only one that they wanted to question more about his driver’s license.

Auden is the token Mexican by the way and apparently the only Mexican to have ever come to Huaranchal (I'll get back to that later on.)


Otuzco

The ride up the mountain was fantastically gorgeous and not too bad considering the restraining quarters that we were in. We stopped in the quaint little town of Otuzco where they were working on a gorgeous catholic church that was right in their town square. Too bad they weren't serving lunch yet though because that pushed us into the next town for lunch, which was about two and a half hours away. Even though I was pretty hungry at this point.. lunch was most unaesthetically pleasing to both my mind and my stomach.. It really wasn't all that bad, but it was basically rice, beans (which i don't like very much), a chicken carcass that i couldn't get any chicken off of, and potatoes. I thought I was doing pretty well by eating everything but about half of the beans and the gristal and fat on the chicken.. Auden still made the comment.. "Well you can tell who the newest missionary is here." Granted I haven't completely adapted to food down here just yet and I am still a little spoiled when it comes to food.. but seriously I couldn't get anything off that chicken bone. Maybe.. just maybe by the end of this I'm going to try and work up to trying one of the chicken feet that they put in their soup down here...

Anyway.. off that horrible topic, after lunch we continued on for what was supposed to be the last two or three hours of our ten hour journey and..... dun dun dunnnn..

How many men does it take to change a flat tire?????

Apparently it takes about twenty four hours and entire village.

One important factor was left unchecked before we left for this adventure.. Spare Tire?? Apparently not. :-( Seeing as we were basically off-roading for most of our road trip and didn't have a off-roading vehicle we really could have used that spare tire. A few amazing miraculous things happened in spite of our debacle.
1. We got the flat right in front of the only house that we had seen in about 15 or 20 minutes. The woman who lived there let us sit on her porch and even invited us in for dinner and some Spanish soap operas that were being run on a battery operated TV.. There was no electricity out where we were. Kevin and I didn't eat dinner in there though.. mainly because we saw that her little boy had scabies, which kind of put us off from eating anything that came out of that house.
2. Our combie buddies that had been traveling in front and behind us for most of our journey stopped to help. They lent us their jack and tried their spare on our combie, which didn't fit unfortunately..
3. Our combie buddies took Pastor Auden to Huaranchal to try and find a spare.
Unfortunately again.. none of the tires in Huarnchal fit the rim for our combie so Auden was going to have to get a ride to Otuzco to try and find a spare. We started making camp for the night in the middle of nowhere.
4. I laid out my sleeping bag on the porch and watched the clouds sweep over the moon as everyone tried to figure out where they were going to sleep. We just happened to stop in a breathtaking part of the mountains. I was pretty okay with my bed I had made when we got a call from Auden.
5. Auden had talked to the Mayor of Huaranchal who was sending the city comune out to retrieve us. Little did I know, but a comune or camion was in fact a dump truck..

That's right a dump truck :-). We loaded everything from the van, including a drum set, keyboard, speakers, guitars, all of our luggage and ourselves into a dump truck and headed on up the mountain to Huaranchal courtesy of the Mayor himself. The bed of the dump truck was amazingly clean apparently, which i didn't get to experience because they rushed most of the women up into the front cabin. This dump truck was pretty much a haus and had no troubles trekking up the rocky terrain except for some of the corners, which I’m sure was terrifying for everyone in the back looking out because we would have to back up near the cliff in order to make the turns. The ride was not exactly pleasant but the girls in the front actually tried to befriend me after I asked to learn some of their songs. Karen who is going to school for English even tried to talk with me a little bit. I told her that I would help her with her English and she said she would help me with my Spanish :-). It was a very squishy ride and extremely bumpy but apparently we had it pretty good in the front because the guys in the back were being thrown around pretty badly. They had to stand up and hold on to the top of the dump truck the entire time.

So after this CRAZYYYYYYYYYY(but in a good way) adventure up the mountain we unload our gear from the back of the dumptruck (.. its still seems really crazy just saying that) and settle in to the nicest hotel in Huaranchal for 15 soles.. about $5 dollars a night :-). I even got a HOT SHOWER!! and an amazing bed, which my back was definitely appreciative of after the ride of a lifetime up a mountain.

Auden ended up having to go all the way back to trujillo which would have been about 7 or 8 hours each way just to get a tire. He didn't make it back to Huaranchal until 2pm on Saturday. He was definitely working on the strenght of God at that point.