Rising to the Challenge Like a Helium Balloon (thanks Lucas)

It's been a good few weeks.

The main event of the last few weeks was our Lares Trek. A friend of ours, who we work alongside at the hospital, also owns a travel company and very generously offered for us to go on a 3 day trek. So on Sunday we got up at 4am, and drove up winding roads through herds of llamas, streams and waterfalls, spotting Andean deer, to Lares, at 3200m, where we boldly got into our swimwear (who said 8am is too early to get your kit off?) and to the amusement of the locals, joined them in the hot springs. (The ginger merits special mention at this juncture, as the object of attention with her luminescent skin, who had to be shielded from wide eyes by Kira.) The trek had a strong start - a scramble up the side of a mountain on all fours - but the rest of the walk was mainly over streams and through valleys, so we finished in half the allocated time, met by a delicious lunch of pumpkin soup, trout, fried banana, guacamole, rice and corn and cheese, and a good cup of mint tea. It was all we could do to fight to stay awake all the way to dinner, before shooing a dog out of the sink, brushing our teeth and finally crawling into our tent.
Day two was a lot harder. We were woken up with a cup of coca tea, and a "Morning Senoritas!", ate a huge breakfast of banana pancakes, omelette and toast (not to mention the Italian filter coffee, the Lord does indeed provide for our every need), and after a bit of confusion as to whether we'd moved in the night, because the cloud had receded to reveal some pretty unmissable snow-capped peaks surrounding our campsite, we started our uphill walk. I can report that the pins were out by 7.45am. We passed beautiful green and black lagoons on our way up to Jesus on a cross at 4200m, stopping for sun cream stops, quick lie downs and chocolate. The altitude was pretty hard work - for once Sarah was at a height advantage - and we were gasping by the time we reached Jesus, and the incredible views of a horizon of mountains, snow-capped peaks, valleys, and lagoons. Fortunately, after that it was steeply downhill, which was painful on the knees and ankles, but preferable for the lungs. Every 100m we descended, there were more and more trees and flowers, which was beautiful to see again after being at an altitude where there is only rock. We had lunch by a stream, and a little paddle. Then we walked through what can only be described as the Narnia set, with trees with bark of tissue paper, a beautiful stream, and huge rocks. We had a quite competitive game of Pooh sticks, after which Kira demonstrated her inability to lose well by throwing actual poo at me... (Thank you, Kira.) After 9 hours of walking, we reached our campsite, located about halfway down a waterfall, with a breath-taking view of the starry sky.
Our last day began pretty much in a cloud, with the usual cup of coca tea, but this time accompanied by pancakes with caramel, peaches and quinoa porridge. It was a lot more chilled: mainly downhill, through small forests, spotting hummingbirds, and beautiful little glacial streams which merited a paddle until the coldness bit unbearably at our ankles. We walked down through little villages and fields to finish our trek by having one last incredible lunch in a lady's garden, playing cards, before leaving in our personal coach, which took us all the way back to Cusco, through stunning scenery of mountains and fields (so beautiful in fact, that at every turn in the road, Sarah changed seats to get a better view). We were very sad to say goodbye to our guide, cook and horseman, who we were kind of hoping we could keep long-term in some capacity (preferably marriage). Blister and sun-burn-free (is that even possible?), we returned home, and we're already looking forward to the Salkantay trek to Macchu Picchu we've booked for the beginning June!


Now we're back to 'normality'.

Church is going well. Before we started our Sunday School session last week, we cleared the area of pieces of sheep skull, and played 'hunt the dog poo, and stand by it so Jenny can scoop it up with a trowel into a bag' - which was such an easy game that everyone simultaneously won and lost. We also made a new friend, who we now help to teach a bit of English to, and he's promised to teach us some Quechua. (We've already had our first Quechua exchange with a Mum from the preschool!)

We went with a friend to the concert of Mexican Christian singer Jesús Adrián Romero, where between us, we were undoubtedly the tallest and most ginger of the thousands in the crowd. The music was actually brilliant. He had us line-dancing, and later reduced the whole Colosseum to tears, talking about fatherhood, which was a sad reminder of the commonplace domestic violence in Cusco, where there is a safe house in every community.

We seem to be making progress with the pre-school kids - yes, some of them still cried (mainly at Sarah's firey locks), but they didn't shriek with terror this week. And in the other pre-school we only had 25 of the 34 of the week before, which made it a lot easier.
In one of our kids' groups last week, we were discussing Zacchaeus. The pastor asked the group, "Who's the smallest person in the room?" They correctly identified the 4 year-old. Then he asked "And who is the tallest?", to which they all respectfully replied "You!" "No, no, no," he said, "I am not the tallest. The tallest person here is Hermana Alicia!" Thank you, Peru. (I'm so (comparatively) tall it's pretty much a disability: I have to sit sideways on the buses because my legs won't fit, and I'm far too tall to stand.)

The hospital has been a bit harder, as we've got to know the kids a bit more, and some new patients have been admitted in bad condition. Some of our favourites got discharged from hospital last week- one girl gave me a card before she left, addressed to "las personas que nos alegran dentro del hospital" ("the people who cheer us up in the hospital"). We played some active games, like balloon volley, in the Burns unit to get them doing stretches and exercises to keep them moving the affected areas of their bodies, and getting them to heal with better mobility (not that we've mentioned our aim!).

We're getting more acclimatised, 8 weeks in: I know the day is coming soon when I won't need a little lie-down after running up stairs. We've eaten pancakes, cut Sarah's hair in the garden, and went to a missionary prayer and worship session. We arrived to help at a group last week and led it off the cuff because the leaders didn't turn up, and got stood up for a meeting so played all the old favourites on the keyboard in the church for an hour. On our day off we took the guitar to the hills and had a good sing at them. We went on a 30 minute walk that took 5 hours, and raced the sun back down, and got so covered in dust that it looked like a serious tan. Sarah's washed off. I've got blisters from mixing play-dough to take to the kids at the hospital, and am two for two at Monopoly.
As I write this in the garden, there is a man singing loudly along to a backing track a few houses away, and the Ginger is to my right, working on her essay for Durham. It's such a privilege to live here and learn Spanish in this beautiful place, where people wear 4 or 5 layers of fleece in the burning sun, and address everyone as "mami" and "papi", and where our arrival is announced with shouts of "las gringitas vienen!" - "the white girls are coming!". We've been assured this isn't half as rude as it sounds.

We're missing people, a little bit eh, but we're learning lots and having a good time.
Hope you're well.