Living in the Present

It is so hard to live in the present sometimes. We are always thinking about the exciting things that are to come or we let the horrible things of the past take over our thoughts. The important thing with traveling is living in the present or else you start to miss out on the good things that are in the here and now. I think that is what I love the most about traveling, I appreciate the random volleyball games in a the middle of the city, the million parades, traditional dances, traditional foods, or even just the fact that I can order breakfast in Spanish... of course I said juego(game) the first time instead of jugo (juice).. A pineapple game doesn't sound as appetizing as pineapple juice. I have actually successfully ordered meals without making mistakes though. I have learned that I can get around on the basic phrases that I know and I surprise myself sometimes with the Spanish that I do know. I definitely want to continue learning and feel frustrated that I haven't gotten a better grasp of the language thus far.

I finally got the courage to travel by myself down here last weekend. I went to Cajamarca. Vaguely translated as the box market as my students and I were joking about. Cajamarca is a mountain town with the most unbelievable skies that I have ever seen and a lot of history. It's claim to fame is the final battle between the Incas and the Spaniards and all of the ancient historical landmarks and ruins that accompany the two cultures. My favorite was probably the silla de Inca (the seat of the Inca King). It was supposed to have been the throne of the Inca King as he watched over his people and troops when they were in battle. It just looked like a flat rock jutting out of the mountain side. Never the less, the view from this "landmark" was absolutely breathtaking. I could see the entire city of Cajamarca and all of the countryside surrounding it. I walked up an intense, Rocky like, staircase filled with artisans and markets with Peruvian souvenirs that led to a small beautifully restored blue and white church. After reaching the top, completely covered in sweat and realizing that I am way out of shape to work out in high altitude I took in the view of what I thought was the top. Like always some little Peruvian man began to talk to me so I wasn't alone for very long. This guy was in school for business and tourism so I guess he was out practicing his tour guide skills. He tried to describe the history of Cajamarca and show me around, but I'm pretty sure I only understood about half of what he was saying. To me half is actually an accomplishment. Although half can be really bad when you are making plans with people of trying to get information out of them. I also went to see the Ventanillas de Otuzco, the burial grounds of the Incas, i guess. The tombs were carved into the wall of this huge rock wall making it look like it had windows (ventanillas). The sky here was also strangely breathtaking. On one side it was so vividly blue and then across the valley the grey skies of a storm were forming over the mountains. The rest of my weekend was spent exploring the city, which is probably less touristy for some, but it felt really nice just being in a bigish city. Talk about being in the right place at the right time, I was walking up to the plaza de armas with my german friend that I had met in my hostel and saw this gringa staring at me from the corner of a shop. After paying more attention to her I began to think that she actually looked familiar. Somehow it just clicked and I said, "Katie?" and we ran up to each other like we were best friends who hadn't seen each other in years. Katie is Maria's roommate from college and has been living in Trujillo for the past 4 months. We had been in contact on FB but had never actually met until this exact moment in Cajamarca. Crazy how things work out. I had been planning to come to cajamarca the weekend before and Katie's trip was also a little last minute so it was definitely fate that we met that weekend. The girls and I sat in the Plaza de Armas for a few hours talking and snacking on wine and Cajamarca Cheese. It was all very European. I'm sure we were a big spectacle being a big group of gringas having a blast in the middle of the Plaza. It was just so nice to finally hang out with girls my own age and get to talk about our shared experiences with living and working down in Peru. A view of the countryside

In the campo hanging out with the cows.. Yes I really was that close to them. My lunch on Saturday.. Somehow I enjoyed this after pulling away all of the skin and trying really hard not to look at the eyes. The potatoes were really good though.

Why wait until tomorrow when you can do it today.

Why wait until tomorrow when you can do it today: just one of the many lessons that I learned from Loly, the second of my installments of roommates down here. Loly, the hermana de Ecuador(sister from Ecuador), as they kept calling her was visiting Pacasmayo on her way through some of the coastal cities to minister about God and give testimony about her life. I really felt bad for her at first. She was basically dumped into our already cramped apartment (Ginny and Shar were still here) without much of an introduction. She came out to dinner with all of us and the guys from bible study the first night and no one really talked to her. I guess no one knew she spoke English at that point. Loly had just finished her first class in English and with my broken Spanish and her fairly decent English we managed to touch one another's lives. On a very basic level, I taught her how to use the microwave and helped her send some emails to her sister back in Ecuador. I’m sure it was also pretty cool to be dropped in the middle of “Camp America” to practice her English. A goal of hers is to come to the United States in order to share her testimony. Everyone has a story, Loly’s just happened to be pretty miraculous. She told me all about her walk to God, which began 8 years ago when she was called to the front of a church. Loly had been battling leukemia and had been called down to the alter to be healed. She told me that at the moment she gave her life to God, she felt the sickness lifted. Sounds completely unbelievable, but there she was standing in front of me, completely healed. She showed me the video of her healing and it was definitely the woman standing in front of me, but completely emaciated and bald under her hat. I don’t really know how I feel about the evangelicalist healings, but this was definitely a God thing. She kept calling me her sister (I think that’s a missionary thing) and invited me to come up to Ecuador insisting that I stay with her when I do. Apparently Ecuador is amazingly beautiful and I can’t miss out on that. Fun fact, Ecuador uses American money. Who knew?? They even have their own Ecuadorian coins that are the same sizes as American coins as well as using the American coins.

Chan Chan

Excerpt from today: Only having one month left somewhere makes everything come in to perspective. It's kind of cool how that happens, it makes you spend everyday as something to cherish and something to get the most out of. Also, a kid peed on me at open market yesterday. I guess he wanted to pee on the grina.. Story: I was just buying some veggies at the open market and felt some water splash the back of my leg. I turn around to see a little boy around 2 or 3 with his willy out peeing right behind me. I think if he was was older he probably would have had better aim so I mainly got that upsplash... I gasped in shock only to see his mother not even phased by the event. I think I said gracias very sarcastically and turned back around to pay the veggie woman, who seemed appalled and sorry for me at least. I don't know if he was trying to pee on the grina or if he, like many of the other kids here just pees whenever and where ever. I did see him peeing again about 5 minutes later and his mom just kept on walking by. So.. i guess we need to teach some manners and definitely some hygiene.

Okay back to Chan Chan and the roommates:

We held a bible conference at the church, presenting me two amazing roommates from Missouri for 10 days. It was really nice to have some new faces around here at the compound. These women came down to Peru to put on the conference. Ginny, one of Cherry's friends from Springfield and her sister, Shar had never been out of country. It was really fun watching them experience their time down here. Definitely brought some life into our lives down here as they took touristy pictures, bought things at market just to say that they did, and even packed sugar, coffee, and our special dishwashing soap with them to bring back to America. They definitely did not take their time down here for granted. Everything was an amazing experience. Exactly what traveling should be.

We traveled down to Trujillo with the ladies and even had Kevin in tow. Somehow I convinced him to get out of the compound for the day :-) (I'm just joking, if you ever read this Kevin, I know you get out). We went to see the Chan Chan ruins. Ruins being something that this country has a lot of, just meaning that it has MUCHO history! It's kind of wild being somewhere that was built in the 1300's. Now, mainly just adobe walls, that from above must look like a giant rat maze, is in the process of restoration. They are trying to recreate the wonder this empire with it's claim to fame as the largest adobe city in the world, according to my Lonely Planet guide book of Peru (2007). The best part was the beginning of our tour through the city without a tourguide. We all just started making up our own stories for the city and what each room was. We had a great time taking pictures with the giant monkey statues and tiny clay pots they had turned into trashcans. I will have one of those in my house when I grow up. :-) Halfway through our tour, we hopped on with the English speaking tour guide and her European tourists. Didn't really help all that much because of her THICK accent, but we did learn that they worshiped the pelican and sacrificed lots of virgins and other ritual sacrifices when the royalty died. A lot of the ruins were burial grounds and tombs, which were looted when the Spaniards came to take over the Empire. The succession of power as it was explained was the Chimu, Inca, then Spaniards, but was destroyed by El Nino floods. One of the sad parts of this tour was that some of the building here in Pacasmayo aren't much more advanced than the adobe huts that the Chimus and Incas were living in 700 years ago.
A very out of place pond in the middle of this adobe city in the middle of the desert

A model of Chan Chan in from the Museum

One of the tombs were we learned about needing to sacrifice young women. We also saw a horribily staged mummy in the back of the tomb.




Teaching the Peruvians and tourists how to throw away trash.












@ Huan Chaco after Chan Chan: I didn't try to throw this one back.. it was a little too big.

Halloween at Casa de Paz

Halloween... Well, there wasn't much of a Halloween done here for me besides devouring a bag of candycorn sent by my mother this past week and having the kids carve the pumpkin that Kevin found at Market. It actually turned out really well for being the strangest pumpkin that I have ever seen. It very likely could have been some other type of gourd, but it served it's purpose extremely well as our attempt to celebrate Halloween. I guess that pumpkin was more for us than it was for the kids.

It was so cute however watching the kids rip out all of the guts from the pumpkin. They had never really seen a jack-o-lantern before and for a lot of them they were under the impression that Halloween is BAD, EVIL... and so on. I guess it began as a pagan holiday but so did Christmas. I guess in that respect we should think Christmas is evil. Most of these pagan holidays have conformed into merely traditions or into religious holidays like Christmas. I tried to explain to some of my kids in Class last week how kids in the US celebrated Halloween, but they stood by their position that Halloween was Bad. We were trying to place a better connotation on the holiday. No idea if it actually worked, but they seemed to have a lot of fun carving the pumpkin. Most kids love getting to stick their hands into goo and being able to get a little messy in the process.

Danielo intensly watching Kevin carve the pumpkin

The lighting ceremony


The finished project which we left in one of the kid's houses for them to enjoy. It's still not broken miraculously.