Rest and Relaxation? Hah!

Ok, this is a long one. Lots to tell about the last few days. You might want to go get some popcorn.

What a wonderful 4 days. I have had a lot of fun being a tourist during my R and R weekend. My Lampa team and the research team met with Mike Weaver and Ryan and Amanda Bush (two other missionaries from Lima) at Hotel Maison in Juliaca on Monday. We all went out to eat at the Royal Inn restaurant for dinner and had a good time just laughing and sharing our adventures. After dinner, our two teams went next door to a karaoke place and had a blast singing all kinds of awful old-school songs, like "Can You Feel The Love Tonight," "Born In The USA," and "I Will Always Love You." At first we were the only people in the karaoke room, but then some Peruvians started coming in and watching us. Bad thing was, on some of the songs, the background images that came up with the words on the the screen were extremely inappropriate. During these songs, we all kept our eyes downcast, and when we didn´t know the words, instead of looking up to find out, we usually just made something up. The Peruvians who were listening couldn´t tell the difference. Some drunk guys sang songs in between ours, and they were always funny. Now, I know someone is thinking, what were we doing in a karaoke bar in the first place? I mean, that´s not a place Christians should be, right? Well, we feel like we showed everyone there that we could have fun without drinking beer. And we also made it very clear that we didn´t like the inappropriate images. At one point, Jenn from the research team yelled, "No me gusta desnudo!" which means "I don´t like naked!" It was funny, and eventually the images stopped.

After the karaoke, we went back to the hotel for some sleep. Ahh. Warmth. I actually took my socks off at one point in the night. Then, the next morning, I TOOK A SHOWER! It was a long one, not only because I enjoyed it so much, but also because it took awhile to get all the dirt off. At one point, I looked down, and the water around my feet was brownish. I am not exaggerating. Gross. It was so nice to be clean again, though. Sigh. I thought that needed its own paragraph.

During breakfast the next morning, we all had bread and weird omelettes while we watched Star Wars: Episode Three on the TV in the restaurant. All you wannabe Jedis know that this movie isn´t even out of theaters yet. Piracy is huge here in Peru, and vendors very blatantly sell copied movies and CDs for cheap in the markets. They are usually bad quality, though. Our evaluations after breakfast were good. Mine was with Amanda Bush, and we just talked for a good 45 minutes about what all we had been doing in Lampa and how well our team was working together. After all the evauluations, we had chifa (Chinese food) for lunch, then went roaming around Tupac the market until late. Jenn´s friend from back home had dared her to drink a glass of frog juice and so we went to the part of the market with all the "health food" and got a lady to fix her one. Several poor little frogs were swimming around in a fish tank and the lady grabbed one and chopped its head off. Then she skinned it and tossed it in the blender, along with papaya chunks and lots of other weird herbs and grains, making it more of a frog juice cocktail. Supposedly, frog is good for your brain. Jenn chugged two glasses of the stuff, got it all over her face, and much to our surprise she kept it down. I wanted to try some too, but didn´t want to be a copycat...yeah...right...

Wednesday morning, everyone minus Mike got up at 5:30 and went to catch a combi for Puno. We all piled in the back of one and headed out. As soon as we got off the combi in Puno, a very eager travel agent practically ambushed us. He said he would take us to a restaurant and then arrange a boat trip for us onto Lake Titicaca. We got to the restaurant in one piece (nine people in a small car) and then he gave us his price. It was too high and so Jenn and I slipped out to find another travel agent with a better price. We did find one, and she followed us back to the restaurant. The other guy got mad and left, so we ended up with a great deal with the lady: A boat trip to the Uros floating reed islands, a night on Amantaní island, and then a day trip to Taquile island, all for 45 soles a person, which is less than 14 dollars.

The Uros islands are man-made from reeds that grow in the lake. I´m not sure if people still live on them, but when we visited, they were all there selling their wares to the tourists. Walking on the reeds is a strange feeling. They are kinda spongy but firm enough so you don´t sink through. We actually got to taste the reeds too, kinda like organic styrofoam. Chris from the research team got the bright idea to try falling straight backwards onto the reeds. He said it didn´t hurt, and so me and Jenn tried it too. My spot must not have been as soft as Chris´s, but it didn´t hurt too bad and we laughed a lot about how stupid we were for falling backward voluntarily.

After we left the floating islands, we headed off for Amantaní, a natural island where we were going to spend the night with a local family. The boat trip there was 3 hours long, and in that time we talked to many of the other tourists that were on the boat with us. Many different countries were represented on our trip, and we talked to people from Mexico, Spain, Japan, Canada, England, and other parts of the US. We talked a lot with two girls from London, named Angeline and Katie. They were cool and we all kinda hung out together the whole trip. When we got to the island, we were divided out and given to various "host moms." Me, Jenn, and Heather from the research team were together. Our host mom was only 23 years old, the same age as Heather. Our room was small with three very hard beds, but at least we had electricity, unlike the boys´ room. After a lunch of soup, rice, and potatoes that our host mom made for us, we went climbing up to the top of the island. The view from the top was incredible. We would have been able to see the lake at 360 degrees if there hadn´t been some forbidden temple built right on the peak. It was still cool, and we got some great pictures. The pictures just don´t do the view justice, though.

That night, after dinner (same as lunch), our host mom came in with armfulls of local clothing and dressed us up for a party that was going on that night for the tourists. We looked and felt a lot like nuns, and as we were climbing up the side of the island for the party, it felt like we were going to Mass or a funeral or something. The boys showed up in ponchos and chullus, those knit hats with the earflaps. A three-man band started playing eventually, and the dancing was more running around in a circle holding hands than actual dancing. Fun though. After awhile we all went outside to look at the stars. Unbelieveable. We could see Venus and the Milky Way easily. We left the party early because we wanted to get in bed and also the party was kind of dead. We found our host mom and asked her to lead us back to the house. These island women must have night vision or something because the hillside was pitch black and she flew down it, leaving us to poke our way along. Our little room was surprisingly warm when we got back, and I was comfortable all night, temperature-wise anyway. My bed was a slab of concrete with a reed mat and a thin matress. I woke up with a horrible neck-ache. Breakfast more than made up for it though. We had what she called tortillas, but were really little fried blobs of funnel cake, minus the powdered sugar. We put granulated sugar on them, and were in heaven for at least five minutes, which is about how long they lasted.

The boat ride to Taquile was cold and took about an hour. We had to hike the length of the island to the other side where we were going to eat lunch. The tour guide told us that lunch was 10 soles in all the restaurants and the prices weren´t negotiable. Not used to tourist prices, I thought this was terribly unfair. We could get the same food in Lampa for 2 soles, and so when everyone else went to the restaurant that the tour guide told them to go to, my little group went to a different restaurant. Some young kid was working there and I asked him how much lunch was. He told us 10 soles. Then I asked him how much Peruvians pay, and he said 7. So the owner came out and we told her that we didn´t think it was fair that we had to pay more because we´re white. She gave in and served us for 7 soles apiece, but told us not to tell anyone else. We heard the kid getting chewed out in the kitchen after we sat down at a table. I still think the price was too steep, but at least we didn´t have to pay 10.

The boat ride back to Puno was long and filled with good conversation. When we got to the mainland, we said goodbye to our English friends and went to eat dinner at the same gringo restaurant that Rick and Kelly brought us to. On the way there, we took Trici-Taxis and got the drivers to race. Wade left to go back to Juliaca and get a nice expensive room at the Royal Inn for the night, so the other five of us each got hamburgers and pizzas for dinner. We ate sooo much, and even after all that, when we got back to Juliaca, we went to Meli Melo, a pastry shop, and all got huge slices of cake and milkshakes. We ate a ridiculous amount of food, almost made ourselves sick, and had great fun doing it. Then we went off to find a hostel for the night. We found a very cheap one, but it wasn´t to Chris´s liking, and so he left to get his own room at the Royal. We pulled an extra bed into one double room, and me, Jenn, and Heather stayed there, while Dave had his own room. The bathroom at the hostel was absolutely the nastiest room I have ever been in. The toilet wouldn´t flush, so over the course of the night, almost everyone staying in the hostel added to it, and in the morning, the smell was taking over the entire place. I guess that´s what we get for being so cheap. We had a good laugh about it though.

This week has been great. It´s so good to be able to hang out with other girls again, especially ones as cool as Heather and Jenn. We have had a lot of fun and laughs over the past few days, and I am sorry it is ending.

This evening, I am going back to Tupac to a Christian bookstore and buying a box of Quechua Bibles with the money that my church has given me for such things. I am looking forward to distributing them, and am also going to buy some little prizes for the memory-verse contest that we are going to try to hold at Moquegache school. Please pray that our attendance at the Mother´s Club meeting tomorrow yeilds something. Also, continue to pray for our health, not that we´ve been doing a whole lot to preserve it ourselves lately. Thank you, Gethsemane, for the money. It will be well used. Tonight, it´s back to Lampa and the daily grind. Like there´s such a thing here in Peru...