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.