Lots of Fun and Throw Up

It has been a few days since I´ve blogged and a lot has happened in the between time.

A few days ago, we journeyed once more to Rick and Kelly´s house to celebrate my birthday, as you all already know. However, the research team unexpectedly showed up and we had a nice little reunion. We had lots of fun talking and catching up. Rick kept us busy by cleaning out his large concrete water resevoir, which had a sad dead little bird stuck to the bottom that we needed to get out. I don´t have pictures of our water-pouring line up the stairs, but Dave does, so look on his picture page for a good laugh.

That night we went to get chicken for dinner at a little restaurant that Rick and Kelly suggested. While eating, a police officer came up to our table with a little girl and started asking us questions in rapid Spanish. Since it was just us six summer missionaries, none fluent (the Martinez family had stayed home), we didn´t understand what he was saying. Finally he left with the little girl and a lady at the next table helped us understand what had happened. She said, much more slowly, that the little girl must have seen us walking in the street towards the restaurant, gotten scared of six laughing white people, and started crying. The police officer must have found her, asked what had happened, and thought we had teased her or something. What could we have done? We didn´t even see the little girl in the street anywhere. It was really the fault of the girl´s parents for letting this 4-year-old wander about in the streets unsupervised. But that´s the way of things here. 5-year-olds taking care of their baby siblings. Pre-schoolers roaming around in packs. It´s craziness.

When we got back to the Martinez house, we finished our game of Risk (Heather and I almost won). Then for some unknown reason, I started to get queasy, and spent the rest of the night puking my guts out, five separate times. The last time was in the middle of the night and I couldn´t even make it to the bathroom. Luckily, someone had given me an empty garbage can to sleep with, but it wasn´t empty for long. Later on, I was a little embarassed that all my friends had heard me puking, but at the time, that was the last thing on my mind. Dave and Jen were awake, but they said they didn´t know what to do. Wade told me he covered his ears and started praying. Thanks Wade. How sad that I couldn´t enjoy the largest co-ed slumber party I have ever attended. It´s ok, though. I can laugh about it now. Sorry, Rick and Kelly, for defiling your trash can.

On our last night by ourselves in the hostel, Dave, Wade, and I cooked our own dinner in the microwave. Dave and I had just both gotten packages from home, and I heated up chicken and pasta, while Dave and Wade cut up fruit for a fruit salad. Gatorade to drink. Fudge rounds for dessert. It was nice, and we laughed a lot about how ¨fancy¨our dinner was. One last game of Monopolio (hateful) and I had my final victory. They made me play, and I told then if I had to play, I was going to win. Oh well, I gave them fair warning.

The group from Lithia Springs, Georgia arrived yesterday. We went to pick them up from the airport early in the morning (ok, it was only like 9:00am) and then headed back to Lampa with a combi full of Americans and two Peruvian translators. After we dropped all their stuff off at the hostel, we walked to Maranatha church, and mercifully, the service only lasted 3 hours this time. We were actually a little late in getting there, and no matter, because none of us understood the service anyway, which like always, was partly in Quechua. One 13-year-old kid named Malcolm came with his mom, and got bored and itchy during the service, so I walked him back to the hostel where his mom was resting. For lunch, we went to the mean lady restuarant and almost everyone got chicken. I think they all enjoyed it, but I saw a few noses turn up when I explained about the foot potatoes in their soup.

I remember headaches when I first came to this altitude, but for some reason, the new people seemed to be afflicted with stomach problems. Yeah, I know. More about puke. Hostal Milam was upchuck central last night, and I spent part of it fixing endless cups of mate de coca, dishing out Pepto Bismol, and dodging pools of vomit. To spare them embarassment, I won´t name names, but please pray for the recovery and good health of certain members of our new team.

This morning, Jorge the stingy combi driver came by to pick up half the group and take us out to Puca Cuesta to show a children´s video about Jesus. It was me, Dave, Cheryl, Margaret, Malcolm, and Patty, one of our translators. When we got there no children were in sight, which is very unusual because Puca Cuesta is usually crawling with kids trying to "borrow" our bicycles. None of the people we talked to on the road seemed to know why the kids weren´t in school either. We assume it was because yesterday was a parade day in Lampa and Patty told us that public-school teachers here are very lazy and think of any excuse they can to cancel school. After putting a flyer on the school´s door about the video we are showing in the community center tomorrow, we headed back to Lampa.

Margaret had the idea to stop by the Lampa school and see if we could show the kids´ film there. She remembered some of the school directors from her last visit, and thought we had a good chance of talking them into it. We met with the main director and had a small chat, which revealed that he was a communist and very against the United States and its ideals. I hate it so much when we are trying to convince someone that we are just here to tell about Jesus and they throw our country´s mistakes up in our faces. It really makes me mad. I tell them, yes, we are from the United States, but we aren´t the United States. He started blabbering about Iraq and Cuba and all this other stuff. I really wanted to tell him what I thought about the bloody commies, but I held my tongue and he eventually agreed to let us come. I think I am going to start being from some other country, like Scotland, that just minds its own business.

When we got to the room where we were going to show the film, so started the trials and tribulations of hooking up speakers and the projector and the DVD player, all through a power convertor. It was pretty ghetto, but it worked, thanks to Dave´s electronical expertise. All I did was hang garbage bags in the windows to keep out the light. The kids started piling into the room, and on my last count, there were over 120 of them. I had to keep telling them to sit down and shut up, but they watched the entire film, for the most part. I remember seeing images of the ways missionaries out in Africa and other hard-to-reach places rigged bedsheets to show the Jesus film when it first came out, and it was cool to kinda be a part of that today. Tonight is our showing of the adult version of the film in Lampa´s plaza.

I can´t believe that I only have two weeks left here in Peru. It is a very sobering thought that I will have to return to the madness and commerciality of America very soon. I will definitely miss how laid-back the Peruvians are, not only about time but about all aspects of their lives. I really think that I have been changed in many dramatic ways during my two months here in the Andes mountains, some for the better and some for the worse. On the whole, I have grown closer to Jesus, which is something that has been a long time coming, and I have been told that I am a lot more outgoing and sure of myself than when I left the US. It will be weird to drop back into my old life. And I will miss living with Wade and Dave and seeing them everyday. They are two really great guys and I hope that we can continue to be friends after we get back, even though we all live far apart.

Completely unrelated, but relevant nevertheless, I have added more pictures on my Photobucket account, so check them out. There are more in the first album, and I also created a second album because the first was getting full. Chau!