All-Nighters and Chicken Crests

So the main event of the last couple of weeks was a sleep-deprived weekend of a marathon of church events across Cusco with our friends. Our initial church date has developed somewhat into a hilarious friendship full of cafecitos, tri-lingual conversations and beautiful Andean music.

We got a call on Thursday night asking if we were coming to church (5 minutes before it started). "You have to come so we can practise the drama for tomorrow?" "For what?" "For the vigilia"
The vigilia turned out to be a 9-5 church meeting. Through the night. That's 9pm til 5am. That, coupled with the builders' yard clear-up, scheduled for 5am that next morning, meant that at 9pm when we caught the bus to church, we were laden with coffee and a boxful of brownies, and a large spade-handle protruded ominously from Sarah's rucksack. (Needless to say, that featured heavily in our mugging prevention plan for the evening.) This meeting was packed full of overly interactive songs ("If you're happy and you know it, hug/pinch the person next to you/mess up their hair/stamp on their foot"), mini-preaches, which seemed to lengthen and intensify as the night wore on, I encountered some size issues when asked to kneel between the pews, and there was lots of singing.

Let's pause for a moment to unpack that word. I love to sing. Peru is different. Worship consists of the guy on keyboard hitting "beat" and then playing over the top of it, to a tempo of his own preference. There is no sustain pedal. Someone, who appears to have a lungful of helium, then shrieks a tune over the top. This is one of the primary uses for our, now very limited, paracetamol supplies.

Fortunately, we spotted a glimmer of relief: on the schedule was written the word of glory "REFRIGERIO". Everyone loves a refreshment to break up an 8 hour service. We should have learned to make ourselves scarce during times of mass dinner distribution in Peru, but we were caught off-guard by these guys, who started serving chicken and veg soup at 1am. I ate all the veg I could find, but refused to eat the chicken neck and foot and other unidentifiable sections I found bobbing in there. My friends made me explain myself to the chef. He was about a foot smaller than me so he dealt with it. I gave him a brownie and my best "what are gringas like?" shrug.

We did really well and didn't even fall asleep. A few did but put it down to being deep in prayer.
At 5.30am we left to go to move piles of bricks, tiles, and dog poo, but this being Peru, no-one else turned up. (It's rescheduled for this weekend: at least we can look forward to the sunrise!) At 1am our friend had mentioned that we should come with him to Chinchero, out in the sticks, to a youth event he was preaching at. That same morning. So we went to rest for a couple of hours before our 8am leave in their flat, conveniently located above the church. "Relax," they said, tucking us up in beautiful Peruvian blankets, giving us a mugful of quinoa porridge and then singing to us in Quechua (potentially my favourite time in Peru yet), and playing the guitar to us until we fell asleep. It turns out one of them is a semi-professional flautist. He played to us while we were brushing our teeth. Can't paint to you in words how hilarious and bizarre that was.

We got the bus to Chinchero, a beautiful village with a huge lake. "Do you want to go swimming?" we were asked. We were buzzing. He was joking. Instead, we listened to an Israeli man preach on the sinful lifestyles of English Christians. Awkward. Then we sat in a circle to eat a lunch of 3 courses of potatoes, one of which being yet another chicken and veg soup, where the chicken parts we identified, were, infact, crest. Our friend spoke, then we played some games in which I participated with so much enthusiasm that no-one could have guessed I only found out what the aim was a few days later. We taught them Cat and Mouse, and weren't allowed to leave until we'd sung to them in English.
We had a little nap in a shared taxi on the way home, then went straight for a joint service for all the churches in Cusco in the Coliseum. We lasted 15 minutes before we did one and went for a cafecito. At this juncture, we were told we had good cheekbones, which was a huge deal for us, considering Peruvian facial structure rivals that of Benedict Cumberbatch himself.


As for the rest of our lives:

We moved out this week. We got asked to look after some girls while their parents are at a conference in Lima, so we're living in Little America: feasting on fresh coffee, fruit smoothies, and waffles with bacon and syrup. The girls have made some root beer, and we're trying our hand at home-schooling. We're having a "girls night" tonight, so I have 6 hours to grow my nails...

Sarah and I flew solo running the Sunday School groups this week, and they went well. And in the afternoon we spent an hour or two sitting in the grass, playing and singing with the kids from the groups until it got too dark to see eachother and we had to part ways.

In the hospital, I ran out of conversation with a beautiful old Quechua couple in Spanish, so I got the Quechua big guns out and they loved it. Sarah got mistaken for a burned, poor Peruvian child by the Americans who came in to distribute gifts and tried to give her a Barbie... But generally, there aren't as many kids at the moment, which is good! It's hard to say goodbye, but it's better to see blank signs above the beds, instead of a scribbled name and the number pints of blood they owe (to be repaid either in money or in the literal blood of a friend or relative). We found some kids in Burns, so we sat and wrote out - at their request - the lyrics to the songs we've been singing with them so they can learn them for when I bring the guitar on Friday!

We're still dealing with a bit of a culture barrier with our Peruvian amigos. In the last week, they've asked us questions like "How much do you weigh?", "Do you watch your weight?" and "How many rolls of fat do you have?" and when they force bread upon us to eat with our late-night coffees, they tell us "This bread will make you fat." One asked me if I was married. I answered "Yes. Twice." He later pulled Sarah aside to check. Interpretation of sarcasm isn't in their skill set, but they're pretty hilarious so we've let them off. (Plus, they've invited us to go to the jungle! We're trying not to get too excited incase it doesn't happen, but we have plenty to look forward to anyway.)
I am winning so far at the "Where's Wally?" games we play, where we simply try to spot our friends in the crowds of black haired Peruvians before they turn up next to us. (Admittedly, I've only spotted them once. Peru usually beats us both.)

I got treated into next year by an incredible Treat Box from Walsall. Dad said about the boxful of Cadbury's "Do you think it'll last you until Joel comes? We got bored of the idea of you rationing yourselves so we thought we'd just send you a load."

We walked the monster of a hill behind our house, which is another kilometer up. When I say walked... We couldn't find the path, so pulled ourselves up the vertical hill with the grass for the last two hours, and came down on our bums on the descent. With Kira's encouragement, a dog followed us all the way up there.

Which reminds me - we've got our trek to Macchu Picchu next week. Obviously it was really kind of the Incas to put that on for us, but every day we have in Cusco is incredibly precious, so we're pretty torn about where we'd rather be for those 5 days!