Wednesday, December 28, 2011

November

November was a month full of loose ends. Some are tied up in a pretty bow, and others are still flapping in the wind, starting to Frey.
I'm trying to feel better after our trip to Huamachcuo
We've been working on getting furniture and any other home goods still not aquired. Most furniture here is made to order, so we took in pictures of what we wanted , gave them measurements, picked out fabric, and now we're just waiting. So far one couch has arrived.( Whitney from the future says that our living room furniture will not arrive until December 20th, 2 months after ordering it, and three months of living with out it!)
I'm still working on spanish(when i feel well enough). James has been working with salt lake a lot for the temple Project, still not much movement on land. He organized 2 site clean up projects with the institute program in the area.
We're gearing up for the holiday season- I'm currently trying to figure out how to make a moist turkey. I'm  on a mission. We'll see how it goes!
We're planning our first trip to Macchu Picchu.
 It's been a crazy month!  We're excited to feel more settled in  once our house is put together.  Sigh, that will be so nice!

Halloween!

There is no Halloween in Peru. BUT they know that he Americans living here will give you candy if you dress up and go door to door. Well, some of them didn't dress up, but we told them to scram! So, about 4 o'clock we had hoards of the CUTEST little kids at our door every few minutes. They don't say "trick or treat", they simply announced "HALLOWEEN!!!" James tried to teach them, but they didn't quite understand. A few sketchy punks showed up and lipped off to James, but other than that people were pleasant and the little kids were having fun! Sierra Talbot and her friend Abby asked me to "dress like a hippy" with them for the party. I was glad they asked me to do that instead of-"dress like an athlete" or something else I could never pull off. I, of course, am up to my neck in "hippy cloths" so I not only dressed myself for the Party- but I dressed both of them too! James dressed as a soccer player with the boys! ( Yeah, you read correctly, James dressed up for a costume party!) We had a good blend of Americans and Peruvians- lots of cakes, candy, dancing and decor. It was good fun!
We carved pumpkins with them a few days before-and by we, I mean, Kathy and I cleaned them out and carved them-The kids thought it was too gross!











Getting to Huamachuco

We traveled roughly 120 miles to a beautiful town on a mountain top. It sounds idyllic, right? Had we flown it would have been! 120 miles is no big deal, right? I mean, that's like driving from Bigfork, to Missoula. It normally only takes about 90 minutes for me to drive that! But that's on nice, paved, barely hilly roads in the U.S.. Our 120 mile trip was first of all- a 13000 foot elevation climb(sounds cool right? AND yes, we did take our altitude sickness pills). It also was on a road that EVEN in Montana would have been qualified as a forest service road. It was ROUGH to say the least! It ended up being an over 5 hour drive each way… we also had to stop 3 times for our car sick friend to, well, be sick. The only tiny silver lining on the drive was the pavement we hit about 45 minutes before town.
Now, don't let that be a big downer on the highlights of the trip. Granted, it was a tough go, and we probably won't be heading back up for a very long time, but we ended up seeing some amazing things!
Once the mountains turned green, we saw herds of alpaca and lots of sheep. Terraced farms and people dressed in traditional attire. The 1st impression of the town was that it almost looked like pictures of Italy- steep cobblestone streets and tiled roofs-but the bright rainbow colors of the different houses were a dead give away that we were in  south America.
We drove straight through  town and headed up to the top of another mountain, to the Marcahuamachuco, ancient ruins.  Because it is such rough traveling to get here, this town rarely sees tourists, and Marcahuamachuco is barely on the radar. ( More about it here- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcahuamachuco )
We were excited to get up there and start hiking around. Alas, the altitude was too much for us. Only part way through we had to head back. we were both panting for air, and I was seeing dark spots and thought I was going to throw up! It was so sad! We kept trying to truck on, but I really didn't want to be sick on some sacred ground. It was a bummer.  The security guards whom live up there even said that the thin air effects them! So we headed back into town and checked into our Hostel/hotel, and went to eat at the only open restaurant in the town.
The next morning we headed to the Central Mercado to check out the local "scene".  We FINALLY saw live Guinea pigs being sold as food. She even had 3 different sacks-Small, Medium and large. A little kid walked up to me with hand out, and in perfect English said-"Give me money".  We finally found white wheat! It was hard to find any here in Trujillo, so we were excited. Now I can get my Ezekiel  bread on! The Market was neat-they also sold the traditional cloths-which you mostly only notice the woman wearing- Layers and layers of skirts, a bright colored cardigan and a wide brimmed hat. I wanted one of the sweaters so bad, but because I am about a foot taller than any woman there, they would have hit me at my rib cage. I loved looking at all of them though!
We had a rough ride home, being stopped at 2 different construction sites for about an hour each. People here know an opportunity when they see one, so plenty of snack vendors were walking up and down the stops with all sorts of  treats. We bought a little bag of popcorn, and it was DELISH!

By the time we were home, we both had major whiplash, and I had some kind of food poisoning/bacteria thing from the food. I was down and out for about 2 weeks.
Huamachuco was awesome. It was a rough path to get up there but it was well worth it to see it all once. I'm sure we will go back again to see Marcahuamachuco, but not anytime soon. If anyone ever asked us, we would tell them to get there buns up there and see it. It really is beautiful. Now that we are prepared for the trip, the next time will be much better. (like, I will pack a cooler of food from home because I don't want to risk being that sick again!)  Work smarter, not harder, you know?
We loved seeing the Mountains for the first time, and getting another look at Peru. We look forward to traveling  a lot more rough roads to see more amazing things.

Marcahuamachuco











Huamachuco town plaza





The Famous bell tower



Our "Hotel"

Sunday, December 18, 2011

I know… I know…

Sorry for the LOOOONG lag in posts. We apparently forgot about the adjustment period our bodies would need for all of the different "stuff" floating around down here. Almost everything has been on hold for me over the last 6 weeks. Even Spanish class has been hit and miss. The couch has seen a LOT of me though, so it's happy. I had a two week long bout of something that I originally thought might be food poisoning… and a week later knew that it was something more. Just when I started feeling normal after that we both caught a ROUGH cold that even had James down for a week. Then on the tail end of that cold, we caught another. ( with some kind of lower stomach bacteria thing mixed in for 3 weeks)I swear I am so good at washing my hands constantly and keep a bottle of germ-x in the car for the times when a sink isn't available. I don't think that will do it though- because in this culture you hug and kiss on the cheek everyone you see. So we are just loading up on all of the vitamins and minerals to try and brace ourselves for the next set of who knows what. I guess we should have known this would happen! BUT! I am catching up on the posts over the next few days, because we have some exciting adventures coming up!!! Stay tuuunnneeeddd!

Friday, October 28, 2011

Chan Chan with the Talbots.

Today a visit to yet another awesome archaeological site here in the Trujillo area(we haven't even scratched the surface...no pun intended....seriously). Chan Chan is the largest Pre-Colombian city in South America and the largest ancient adobe city in the world! Well--just read about it  HERE!  All of the guides were already out on tours, so we just walked around ourselves. It was pretty incredible and we plan on returning to learn more on a guided tour.

We took some of our friends and their 5 children with us! It was for sure an adventure! They are CA-UTE kids- 4 boys and 1 girl(she being the oldest). They are all toe head blonde, and are routienly mauled by the locals here, asking to take pictures with them, feeling their hair, KISSING the baby. So our tour took even longer because almost every tour group that passed us had to stop for pictures with the whities! It was SO funny! I just kept thinking- If someone showed up in Montana from Peru, or India or something like that, we wouldn't be stopping them on the street like they were a side show! It was NUTS! I've included some pictures of that too! 
It was a fun day! We can't wait to share it with the friends and family that might come to visit! Check it out!



The above creepy thing was down in black cave of the below picture. It was WEIRDDDDD! The kids loved it!
 These are the 4 oldest kids pretending to be figures- Dawson-in the green shirt- later jumped off of this ledge. WILD MAN!


There is a spring in the middle of the site. It was actually pretty amazing. You're walking through all of this sand and adobe and then this little desert oasis pops up out of no where.

 Here are some pics of the babies being mauled. poor Myles!





 There were 2 sets of these cool figures. We told the kids that they are called "The spankers"(pronounced"Esponkars")-and that if you climb on the walls they will come to life and paddle your bum.


 The Talbots-and the spankers.




 Kathy and I havin a goood goood time!





Monday, October 24, 2011

Spiritual Experience

By James:
For those of you who are not of our faith, you must already know that Whitney and I are here to supervise the construction of the LDS Temple in Trujillo.  A Temple in our faith is the culmination of our worship of the Savior and of our Heavenly Father. Temples are only open during the week and members go there to commune with our Heavenly Father on a more personal basis than we experience on Sundays in our chapels.  I use the word "personal" because in the temple it is quiet, reverent and individual.  In the temple one ponders and worships individually.  It is a wonderful place.  Please visit www.mormon.org for more information about temples.  
   ANYWAY:  because the temple is such a special place, it is unfortunate that there are not more temples around the world.  Members of the church currently may have to travel long distances and save for many years to attend the temple and may not be able to return to the temple as often as they would like.  Just to give you an idea, a trip to the Lima Temple costs around $25 USD for travel and food.  No lodging because you travel all night, go to the temple the next day, then travel all night to get home.  There are many members of the church here that don't have $25 extra dollars to go and can't ever save that much either.  So when a temple is announced in a new area, the members are very excited.  Which brings me to my experience:
  Last week, an elderly gentleman came by the house to talk to me about building some bookshelves and file cabinets (just as cheap to get them made as to buy cheap metal things!).  He asked if I was the "ingeniero" that was here for the temple (ingeniero is engineer, I'm not an engineer, but they don't have a name for a construction manager, so hence, I'm the ingeniero).  When someone brings up the temple it's apparent that they are members of the church.  I was excited to talk about the temple and responded by saying that I was indeed the ingeniero for the temple and asked if he had seen what the temple was going to look like.  He said that he had seen pictures of it.  We have a large (3'x4') framed computer image of the temple in our entry and I motioned behind him so that he could look at it.  He glanced at it, paused and then reverently walked toward it.  
   He was a small man, maybe 5'3" and slight of build, in his mid 60's.  He had traditional latin features and was well dressed with a polo type shirt tucked in, slacks, and polished leather dress shoes.  He also wore very distinguished looking glasses.  As he approached the picture, he slowed.  There was an immediate feeling that came into the room of awe and reverence. But the feeling wasn't coming from him, it was around us both as we approached the picture of what would someday be the temple he would attend.  He stared at the picture for what seemed like minutes, but was only about 7 seconds; totally silent.  He turned to me and looked up into my eyes and through his glasses, I could see tears starting to form.  He couldn't speak, and neither could I.  I noticed that I to had tears forming and a lump in my throat.    
   I had witnessed the love that this man had for the Lord and for the House of the Lord.  This humble man had taught me the importance of why I'm here, or in better words the importance of the work that is here in which I will participate.  I finally said to him "I feel the same way."  He gazed at the temple once more and then turned back to the office, took a deep breath, blinked a few times to rid the tears, and said "bien" -good.  We finished what he had come for and he left, but I will never forget the feeling that came over us both as we stared at a computer generated image of a building.  I will always remember that the building, the temple is the representation of that feeling I felt; it is the physical manifestation of our love toward God and His son Jesus Christ.  It is because of the love and testimony these people have that the temple is being built here.  What a wonderful opportunity in which to be involved.