A little R&R

Well, folks, I think that I have finally acclimatized because I didn´t wake up this morning with a headache. Praise God! Kevin and Tom left early this morning to head back to the United States, and so now I have my own room in the hostel with a chiffarobe and everything. Señor Mendez even brought us a microwave to use. He is a very nice man and is doing everything he can to make us comfortable. We hope that eventually he will let us hold a Bible study in the hostel. The four communities outside of Lampa that we will be focusing on are called Puca Cuesta (pooka quest-a), Tusini Grande (too-see-nee gran-day), Huayta Central (white-a central), and Huayllani (why-ah-nee). The people are extremely excited about us coming and I am excited too. We have bicycles to use and are going to use them as often as we can to travel to some of the closer villages. We have also established a good relationship with our favorite combi driver, Jorge, and he said he is willing to let us lead a Bible study in his home also. I don´t think that I told ya´ll about the church service that we attended on Sunday morning. It was 3 hours long and partially in Quechua, so it was a real test of our patience. Not sure if we are going to go back there very soon. But after church we went to eat lunch with two of the church elders and talked to them about what we are here for. Today is our designated R&R day, because we feel like we have been going nonstop since we got here. We got to sleep late this morning and have just been hanging around Lampa making friends. It is good to relax, and I think we are all feeling a lot better now. Please pray that my language understanding skills will improve as that is the hardest part of this for me right now. Thanks for all your offers of help, and we´ll let you know if we need anything.

In Lampa

Here I find myself in Lampa, a little town 30 minutes outside Juliaca, Peru. This is where I am going to stay for the rest of my time here in Peru. My team is staying in a hostel that is only costing us 12 dollars per week. It isnt the swankiest place Ive ever stayed, but it is livible. We have visited four small communities outside of Lampa so far, and we are going to be concentrating on those places, returning in the coming weeks to visit the schools to tell Bible stories and teach conversational English. We are also going to lead some Bible studies in homes of several prominent adults in the communities. I am very excited about this and think we can make a big impact. Today, when we visited Huyca Central, our combi (bus) broke down and so we had to wait for an hour while the driver went back to town on a borrowed motercycle and got a new battery. While we were waiting, we climbed up the side of one mountain over some rocks and the view was incredible from there. It was a lot of fun and made my head feel better. I have been waking up in the morning with headaches because of the altitude (12,000 feet!) but I am really ok. Lampa is nice and all the people are very accepting. The kids do sometimes laugh at us though because some of them have never seen a gringo before. It is really cold here right now. Peru is in winter and I have heard that it is only going to get colder as the months pass. Water already freezes at night, and I am not looking forward to any more temperature drops. I am going to have to adopt the local dress in order to keep warm, I guess. I have already invested in alpaca socks and gloves. This Internet is very unreliable and I tried to post a blog Saturday but just as I pushed submit, Internet Explorer broke down. So I hope this one goes through. Please post comments as often as you can. Thanks.

¡Estoy aquí!

After what seemed like the longest flight in the history of mankind, we finally arrived in Lima at 11:00 pm last night. For some reason, our bags made it to the plane that we missed, and so they were waiting for us in storage in Lima when we got to the airport, having arrived the day before. Weird. Mike Weaver and Wade Arthur picked us up from the airport, and took us to the hostel where we are staying till tomorrow. It was ok. I kinda got stuck in a cot in the corner of a closet-tpye room because we arrived so late, but I got moved to a real room today, so all is well. I am not exactly roughing it yet. Today, during lunch break, Wade, David, and I walked around downtown Lima and ate lunch at a little chicken place that was cheap and good. We are practicing our Spanish every chance we get. I found out that our team is going to a town called Lampa, near Lake Titicaca, with five small villages surrounding the town, and we are going to spend the summer traveling through these five villages and trying to start small-group Bible studies. We are also going to help teach new Christians how to lead other people to God. It is a huge responsibility, and we have no supervisor or anything like that. We also have no translater. Wade and I are it. David has next to no Spanish, but he is picking up words and phrases pretty quickly. Tonight we are going to the Weavers house to have dinner, and then tomorrow morning, we are flying to Juliaca, which is about a 30 minute bus ride from Lampa.
I am going to try to put some pictures on here, if I can figure it out. I brought a USB cable for my digital camera, but I am not sure if that will be enough. I will try my best though. I am loving Peru so far, and I am sure I have many crazy adventures during my two months here. Stay tuned...

Houston, we have a problem.

Here I am, sitting in a little computer lab in the Clarion Inn in Houston, Texas. David (my flight buddy) and I missed our connecting flight to Lima because one stubborn man tried to force his oversized carry-on into the overhead compartment of our first plane, broke it (the compartment, not the plane), and thus delayed our flight for an hour and a half. There happens to be only one flight to Lima from Houston per day, and so we have to wait until tomorrow to try again. Continental was very nice and put us up for the night and gave us meal vouchers and such, but here we are with nothing to do for 24 hours. Sigh. This is the second time something like this has happened to me, but it's only the third time I have flown. Ha. Welcome to the world, baby girl.

Here I am. Yay!

Post Numero Uno

Only six more days till I ship myself off to South America. This is my first blog. Blog, blog, blog. Ha ha! Good word. Anyway, I hope this works and if all goes as planned, my next post will be from Peru. You guys can leave me some messages on here too, I think. Chau!