Thursday, June 6, 2013

Happy happy happy anniversary!

4 years? Already!? That's crazy talk! Wanna know what is MORE CRAZY? That of our 4 years of marriage, almost 2 have been spent living in Peru. Looking back now on us making the decision to apply for this job, we were a little crazy! I mean, we had been married for 1.5 years when we hd our interview! But we were also the exception. This year has been WAY better than last year- it was BRUTAL trying to adjust to life down here, with a bunch if other curve balls thrown in with it! 4 years down, we're pretty much experts.... Not. But we still really like each other- so that's good. We came to Lima to celebrate with a tiny get away. Normally we only come to Lima to work in the temple, or for James to take meetings. We fly in, run around getting stuff done, then fly out after a few days of madness. Today, we just hung out. Spent the day doing all the things we love here, but can only do one per trip.
We slept in, went to one of our favorite restaurants for breakfast, and just about had one of everything on the menu. We stopped at a yarn shop so I could buy alpaca yarn by the pound-and ended up leaving with way more than we had intended. Next we hit a store James liked for their running shoe selection, but alas, he didn't find anything that spoke to him. We wandered through a grocery store looking for fun imports from home-like twizzlers! Yay! Had lunch at Burger King (James lunch choice-because we don't have one in Trujillo.). We then wandered through the Peruvian culture museum. It has 3 floors of exhibits. One floor was dedicated to the inca trail. It's a LOT longer than people think. They also had a cool exhibit of artifacts that had been found at construction sites throughout the city. Next stop was a hippy/Indian clothing store and an Asian market. I finally found a sushi roll mat! It's ON now! Came back to our hotel, freshened up- then walked to our favorite Italian restaurant for dinner. Isn't it weird when you're served food that looks questionable, but tastes amazing? We both ordered pasta dished with the same sauce-and it came out brown.... On pasta.... It just didn't look right. But it was incredible. This restaurant is owned by an Italian couple who have lived here for a long time. From what I hear one of the 2 of them still doesn't speak Spanish? Anyways, it's pretty authentic. 2 big brick ovens- it's so cool.
We made a list if our favorite experiences over the last 4 years. I'll update tomorrow. And edit this whole post. I'm falling asleep and kinda don't know what I'm writing! Nighty night!

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Thanksgiving 2011- Our first in Peru!

   Wow. What a day. This has been an amazing Thanksgiving! 2 days of cooking like a mad lady! Kathy and I split the food between us, and it was STILL a lot of cooking! The food was all good(and yes, I NAILED the turkey! I mean, NAILED IT!), but that wasn't what made it great for us.
We invited  5 Peruvians, only one of them had experienced "American Thanksgiving". We also had 2 sub contractors for the Temple come. One from Mexico( this was also his first Thanksgiving) and one American. We're glad we were able to catch Doug to celebrate with us, since he missed it with his family!
We feasted and laughed and talked for 2 hours. We shared with them the tradition of saying what we are grateful for.  It was all in Spanish (Kathy and I had our trusty, attractive translators help us out.) There was a very good feeling in the room. The Peruvians loved the tradition, and had a great time. It was WONDERFUL!
Then, it took 2 hours for a whole group of us to clean the kitchen and Rob to do ALL  the dishes ,(because we don't have a dishwasher). It was all so worth it!!!
This was a day we will always remember.
Sadly I took only one picture that day-I was too busy in the kitchen. Bummer!

Well,HELLO!

...Sooooo....this is awkward. Almost 2 years have gone by since we last updated this thing. We started it thinking that we would be updating at the very least weekly. So, for those of our lovely friends and family that were hoping to follow us here....we owe you our deepest apologies. (Especially Melinda-our most devoted follower! Love you,Mel!) I won't go into a long drawn out thing here, but suffice  it to say that our first year here, was a little brutal. Don't get me wrong, we have enjoyed a LOT of incredible experiences, also. We knew it would be tough- that's why we wanted to do it, well , part of the reason. We wanted to do something challenging and new. But, they kind of sent us down here about a year too early, so we kind of had nothing to do...and well, it just ended up being a little different than we had originally thought it would be. I (Whitney) was also sick about 75% of the first year.  All in all, it was just plain ROUGH, and that last thing I wanted to do was to get on here and blog about how wonderful everything was. I don't like blowing smoke. I didn't want to bum people out, or worry people, and I hate acting like everything is peachy while I am violently ill. So, I just avoided it all together. Looking back on the last year and a half now though, it's a lot easier to pick out all the good times. All the exciting things. And trust me, THOSE are the things you are gonna want to read about, not awkward doctor visits. SO, I have decided to do a bunch of "flash back " blog posts of some of our adventures. Like out 2 trips to see Machu Picchu!  (I actually just found 2 drafts posts in my archive-so  I will start with those!)
AND an update on what day to day life is for us right now. That part will be super boring. I hope we can redeem ourselves a little!
Love from Peru, James and Whitney