Sam's School Chocolatada

Sam had his Christmas party at school on Monday, and it was precious!  They call it a "chocolatada" and had hot chocolate (although it's a bit different here - with cinnamon and cloves, but yummy!) and serve paneton also.  Paneton is a special sweet bread with dried fruit, and it originated in Italy.  At some point the custom of eating paneton at Christmastime caught on here in Peru, and it is a big deal!!  I'll post a picture of some paneton later!  But the BEST part were the cutie pies all dressed up to act out the story of baby Jesus being born!

Sam was supposed to be singing a trio, but he was pretty quiet!  I did notice he knew the words to the song - in Spanish!

Miss Lina, his favorite teacher

Sam was showing me their nativity scene.  Each child brought a piece of the nativity, and he was trying to find his lamb that he had added to the set. 

We are thankful for Sam's school, but sad the school year is ending for summer break!!  They start back the new school year in March.   It's really strange to be celebrating Christmas with "summer break", and to see Christmas ornaments for sale at the same time as beach towels and swimsuits!  Only one of the adjustments we are trying to make!  And it is about 65 to 70 degrees every day right now (and I hear it's pretty cold in Mississippi now!!).

Our December Update

You can click here for our December  family update: https://app.e2ma.net/app/view:CampaignPublic/id:1351964.6210808786/rid:bc835d64c27b0b9a73e29ed04f1090c3

Goodbyes, Hellos, Lots of Change!

We left Arequipa on October 30 for our final move to Trujillo.  We were all a bit nervous and excited about all that was ahead for us!  The goodbyes to our friends in Arequipa were sad.  We had become attached to our new friends there, and were so thankful for the blessing that these relationships were during our school!  We were so thankful for our teachers, friends, and the children's teachers.  Although I do have to say we weren't a bit sad to leave our little apartment!

Sarah Caroline's friend Alli and Pedro, the Director of ABC Language Institute 

Marcus and me with Julio, our grammar teacher 

Conchito, the lady who cooked for us while in Arequipa - she taught me how to shop in Peruvian grocery stores and markets, which is priceless information now!! 

My friend Suzy (she and her husband Rick will be working in the jungle with Pioneers)

David, our grammar class friend, who is from Korea 

Laura, one of our friends from Germany, playing at a "despedida" (going away party) 

Steffi, also from Germany, and Laura

After a over a year of planning, packing, praying, cleaning out and moving to Peru, we are finally in Trujillo!  We are thankful to be here and are blessed to be living in a home that is more than we deserve, and bit by bit we are getting more settled!  We are enjoying our new friends that are a part of the mission team, as well as other friends we are meeting every week.  Marcus has started strong working in the medical clinic, and has lots of goals set for the next year.  All that is going on there deserves a blog entry on its own!  The older three children have started homeschooling, which is certainly an adjustment for all of us!  Sam is in a wonderful preschool in our neighborhood, and he loves it!  

We celebrated our first holiday in a foreign country, and although Thanksgiving isn't a holiday here, we had a nice day of celebrating with our friends!  We had a great afternoon of worship, food, and football at the Baker's home.  We had a traditional Thanksgiving meal of turkey, dressing, cranberry sauce (sent by my mom with a friend who visited), sweet potato casserole, and much more, plus lots of yummy desserts.  For the most part it was pretty normal - except for trying to make cornbread dressing without cornmeal (had to use polenta) and using carrots for "pumpkin" pie and "pumpkin" bread pudding.  It sounds terrible, but it actually turned out pretty good - you cook the carrots with lots of spices and puree it, and voilee! you have something that looks (and mostly tastes) like canned pumpkin.  Now we are gearing up for Christmas, and trying to adjust to how to celebrate with new traditions.  Thankfully my parents are coming for a two week visit starting on Christmas, so we are really excited about that!!

Wes and Jami Baker, the hosts for our Thanksgiving meal 

Marcus with Stuart Mills, Wes Baker, and Dale Ellison

My new friends Susan, Jami, Susan, and Sara

Stuart and Meg Mills, who lead us in worship every Sunday afternoon when our team gathers for lunch, and they also led us in this special day of thanks.  I am so thankful for Meg's friendship!

Heidi, Lydia, Tyler, and Seth, some of the fellows that work with our team

Sam's new buddy Lulu - they go to school together and love playing together in the afternoons too

Photos of Peru

A few weeks ago Peru Mission had  a team visit from Savannah, GA and were blessed to have Nate Henderson photograph some amazing pics of everyday life in Trujillo.  Take a look at where we will be living and working!

http://www.openlightstudio.com/blog/?s=peru&searchsubmit=Find

Beach Weekend

Not exactly the same as checking into a hotel in Destin.....

This past weekend we decided to join our friends Steve and Dianne for a getaway to a nearby beach town.  They were celebrating their anniversary, but ended up having our family and five other fellow students join them!  Altogether this was a different sort of beach trip!  We rode a bus (my first time to ride one for travel other than for a school or church trip) for about 2 1/2 hours to get to the beach town...hmmm...village is a better word!  And we were looking for landmarks for the homes we would be staying in, and we found them we quickly had to yell "baja" to get off.  So we all pile off the bus, grab our luggage, and look at each other with thoughts of "now what"? as the bus drives away!  We thankfully choose the correct dirt road to walk up to arrive to our homes for the weekend, but tried to laugh about our long walk on a dirt road with lots of backpacks and bags.  

 

Our house on the "campground".... we did have a great view of the Pacific ocean from our porch!

Our friends enjoying spaghetti prepared by Dianne!  

Possibly the BEST part of the trip... chocolate roasted bananas!!  Our German friends taught us this... you split a banana down the center and slide in small pieces of chocolate.  Then you roast the bananas over hot coals.  The German version of campground food.  Yummy!  Hint:  Best to eat with a spoon!  

Laura and Lisa preparing the bananas.

Although by far this was not the most luxurious trip we've ever had, it was a great break for the kids!  There was a large farm around the Norwegian mission campground where we stayed, and the kids were free to roam around and play and scream, without worrying about getting run over in the city streets or bothering our nearby neighbors in our apartment.

Sam thought it was a little cold... he's running back to shore!  The water was FREEZING!! 

The boys helped Mr. Steve build a castle.

Sarah Caroline enjoying the sand at night

It was COLD... actually much cooler than in Arequipa.  We are at 8000 feet above sea level in Arequipa, so we had the idea that being at the beach would be warmer.  But we didn't do our research well before we went - it is only warm at the beach for three months- in December, January, and February.  So, lesson learned!  We did have about 4-5 hours of sun on Saturday, which we loved!

We also toured the lagoons of Mejia, by walking about 5km.  We saw lots of birds, but the most interesting were Chilean flamingos!

The best part was the fellowship with our new friends, getting to know about other cultures, and having worship together.  Sam liked it - tonight he started crying because he wanted to go back to our house at the beach!

Poco a Poco...

We continue to study Spanish, "poco a poco" (little by little), or maybe it's a lot??  We are covering 6 months of curriculum in 3 months, so it's pretty fast, I suppose!  It is fun learning a new language, but not necessarily an easy task alongside caring for four children!  I'm not sure that I am absorbing all of the Spanish that I hear and learn every day, but I am hoping that one day it's going to all come out a little easier!  It's in my head somewhere!  But we are progressing....  And we have only four more weeks of school until we move to Trujillo!!

The kids are learning too!  Today I heard each of them speaking Spanish phrases without realizing they were doing it.  Some things are becoming more natural for us all.   Some of the children have had some homesickness, and we've all had our share of culture shock and adjustment.  There are days it seems normal to live here, and others my spirit is rebelling against all of the changes.  I struggle with feeling like we have so little, living so basic, but then am so thankful for what we have!  We see so a lot of poverty here, even in our little bubble of going to school and not ministering directly to others right now. We pass by homeless men every day, one who cleans his feet in the running water in an open water line under the sidewalk.  I think he may have some open sores he is trying to care for.  Others have enough to get by, but every day they wonder how they'll make ends meet.   Not in the way we all worry in the US - can I buy a new car, or a tv, or some new clothes, but truly - can I eat today?

We will have a lot of thoughts to process while we serve here in Peru... thankfully God led us here to serve, but we are also learning so much ourselves!!

Fiesta De Primavera! and Fiesta De Familia!

We have been busy celebrating the many "fiestas" here!  It seems that they Peruvians like to celebrate!  On Saturday, Sam's "jardin" (preschool) had  a "fiesta de primavera" (party of the springtime).   The Saturday before that, the other children's school had a family day (possibly also to celebrate spring?).

Sam's party was a typical Peruvian children's party!  We arrived about 10 minutes late, which really was about 30 minutes early for them.  We were only the second family there, and the clown was just beginning to set up.  Each child was asked to wear a costume, and thankfully we had packed a few for the boys to play with!  There was a clown to provide entertainment, and he kept it going for three hours! He had a puppet show, lots of dancing, and story telling.  He included the parents in the dancing, so we were sure not to get bored either!  It is also interesting how they have food at a party... you don't fix a plate of food at a party.  They pass around bowls and plates of snack food throughout the party and you take one bite of each thing.  They had a lot of food - chips, cheetohs, rolls, tiny sandwiches, waffles (no syrup), chocolate cake, little pizzas, jello, and popcorn.  They drink was chichi morado, which is a Peruvian drink made of purple corn, pineapple, limes, and sugar. It looks and tastes a little like grape koolaid.  Most of this is pretty traditional for a child's party.  They also had a beautiful cake, but they never serve the cake at the party!  They slice it and send it home with the child.  They also gave Sam a cute little bag and a pin with his name on it, and a bag full of candy and more snacks.

Miss Sondra, Sam's teacher  (she is bilingual, but is now speaking only Spanish to Sam) 

Miss Lula, in the floral shirt, she picks Sam up every morning for school, and owns the "jardin" with Miss Sondra 

This is the clown trying to "present" Sam  - they had  a little parade "desfile" of each child in their costumes. 

The other blonde haired children are from Norway... so for Sam, he still has to speak Spanish to communicate with them.  I enjoyed visiting with the moms, who are able to speak English as well as Spanish, and Norwegian.

The family day was also fun at Rey de Reyes (King of Kings), where the older three children go to school.  They had a cookout and lots of food for sale, volleyball games, dance shows, and we enjoyed visiting with parents and teachers.

 Miss Edith, Luke's teacher - she is syrupy sweet!! 

this is how they were frying huge batches of chicken

a "bunela" - a special treat of Arequipa - think funnel cake... yummy!

the playground with some of their friends

the men grilling some pork - this photo is for my dad who loves every kind of grill invented

Sarah Caroline's teacher, Miss Fatima, is on the far left (she is so sweet) and Miss Maggi on the far right has helped translate, especially our first week getting the children adjusted in the school.

Also last week was the "dia de estudiante" (day of the student), and the children actually had two days of celebrating at their school.   One day they had special treats, volleyball and futbol (soccer) games, and no classes.  The next day they had more special treats - Luke's class had a clown for entertainment and a party all morning, and Sarah Caroline's class went to the movies for the day.  They got out of school early as part of the celebration.  

No Water!

It is very interesting to us that an entire city of one million people can go without water for  a day!  Yesterday our guard for the neighborhood, Julio, (or "watcheman" is what they call him) came about 6:45 AM  to tell us that the water would be turned off for the entire day.  For the ENTIRE city.  So we quickly gathered water in pots, took our last showers, and washed the last dishes for the day.  And there was no water anywhere in the city the rest of the day.  No toilets to flush, no dishes to wash, and no showers.  Thankfully, the water came back on about 8:30pm.  Evidently they turned it off at the treatment plant for some type of cleaning.  The kids were excited they got to skip showers last night - this is Sam's least favorite part of the day.  He is praying for a bathtub in our next house.  Not only does he hate a shower, but there isn't very much hot water in our apartment.  Bathtubs aren't very common in Peru, so will you pray too, that Sam may have a bathtub one day??

Shopping in the Market

Each Saturday, I head to the "mercado de antiquillo"  to shop for fruits and vegetables.  What a treat to shop there!  The produce is so good and fresh, and I have made some friends there.  Here, they have little stands set up (similar to a farmers market) and you buy potatoes from one person, fruit from another, and vegetables from another.  They also sell meat, eggs and cheese there, but I buy all of that at the real grocery store.  Adela is the lady I buy vegetables from, and she always greets me with smile!  They all are so friendly and know who we are now, and are very helpful and patient as I am learning spanish.  It is custom here when you buy from them they give you a small gift.  Adela gives me fresh herbs every week - basil, mint and/or cilantro.  The fruit lady gives me extra bananas.  At the grocery store last weekend, I bought sausage and hot dogs from one vendor, so they made me a sausage sandwich!  I didn't eat it there - I think one of the kids ate it when I got home.  Here is a picture of everything I bought last week at the market for $18!!!  (mandarins, bananas, pineapple, apples, kiwi, peaches,tomatoes, avocado, lemons, peppers, cauliflower, carrots, green beans, peas and a cucumber)

Marcus went on a tour of the larger market in San Camillo (near downtown Arequipa) as part of his conversation class last week.  We don't make it a habit of shopping there - it isn't in safe part of the city.

We wouldn't buy our meat here - but Marcus did say he saw people bringing the meat in fresh.  As in the entire animal... there are some really gross pictures of parts of all sorts of animals, but I will spare you the details!

Happy 12th Anniversary to Us!!

Today Marcus and I celebrate our 12th wedding anniversary!!  We never would have though 12 years ago that we would be celebrating in Arequipa, Peru!  We had never even heard of it.  But we are so thankful to be here together with our family, and so grateful to the Lord for bringing us together.  One of our teachers commented playfully - "lots of patience"!  We weren't sure if he was talking to me or Marcus, but we said it certainly has gone both ways over the last 12 years.

We were so happy to celebrate on Friday night by going out to dinner!  Our new friends, Rick and Suzie, from Colorado, came over to keep the kids for us.  They are in school with us and will be serving in the jungles of Peru with Pioneers.  Marcus and I had a wonderful time together, and had a great meal!!  We had a meal for two of a variety of meats served on hot stones, including ostrich and alpaca!  It was actually very good, and we had a great salad and dessert too!  Eating out here is surprisingly inexpensive, so we had this fabulous meal for very cheap!  What a treat!!