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!
miércoles, 29 de mayo de 2013
martes, 21 de mayo de 2013
Mother's Day, Friends....and Guinea Pigs.
VEGETARIANS AND THE SQUEAMISH: SKIP TO PARAGRAPH TWO FOR YOUR OWN SAKES.
I'll cut to the chase. We ate guinea pig. It had been a long time coming, and Kira has been talking us through it (admittedly, not very persuasively: phrases like "crack open the ribs" featured). So we went and sat amongst many deft locals and ate a guinea pig each. I went for a deep-fried one, so if i squinted I could only 90% tell it was a flattened guinea pig. Sarah went for a roasted one, which was unmistakably a rodent from all angles, regardless of how much we shut our eyes. I'll spare you the details of the consumption, and the details of our mealtime conversation, save these two gems:
"You really learn a lot about the anatomy of a guinea pig"
and "Kira, I've nibbled the leg. Would you like the foot?" *Crunch* "Mmm, yummy!"
Anyway.
Mother's Day is bigger than Christmas. For well over a week we had various Mother's Day celebrations, or preparations for celebrations. During the morning church service we were outside with the kids, but that didn't stop the church leaders calling us into the service at the end to hug all the mums, who were standing at the front. But the funniest thing was without a doubt the Sunday evening Mother's Day service at church, where we began with a very interactive sermon by the church's president, during which we had to keep relaying various encouraging sentences to the nearest mother to us. The lady nearest us kept creasing up when we spoke to her, which we at first we put down to shyness, but in hindsight, was probably because the child in her q'ipi (multi-coloured, child-carrying sling) was not only not hers, but she was actually sub-20, unmarried, and childless. Age and life-stage of Peruvians is very hard to judge.
When the sermon finished, we moved our chairs into a circle, and the party games began. I'm not sure many gringos ever have the experience of watching Quechua women playing balloon games to win mother's day gifts (mostly tupperware, tea towels and place mats - no word of a lie: we wrapped them at the youth service the night before). The 'solteras' ('singles') in the room had a part to play too - we were given roses, as 'future mums', and also competed in some rounds of egg and spoon races. They loved watching the gringitas race across the room and back, spoons in mouths, eggs falling on the floor.
The evening finished with the two of us having to hold up the banner, which, after a slight correction of accent placement, read "Happy Mother's Day" (instead of "Happy Breast Day"), and people joined us for photos. It started with just the mums, but when we'd cycled through all of them, soon escalated to being everyone in the building, one by one. They also brought out a birthday cake, and sang 'Happy Birthday', which appears to be standard procedure at every celebration. I'll admit: we laughed twice as much and loudly as anyone else in the room, and that was only when we were about to burst from holding it in any longer.
On the plus side, that evening we left with the president of the church's number, and an invitation to our first church date! On Tuesday we went with a group to a church service, then went for a cafecito (little coffee) afterwards, where we laughed all evening, and got invited to go with them to Plaza de Armas, the main square, on Thursday night. We prepared a mugging plan on the way there, thanks to Jenny's warnings/stories (Sarah had all the valuables hidden in her secret coat pockets, the decoy purse on the outside one, and I would take the hits). It was as beautiful as they had promised us. We had a good laugh at all the gringos in the vicinity, and played a very intense game of stuck in the mud. Saz and I held our own, considering the altitude, for which the six natives had no sympathy. (I tried to explain that not everyone is born at 3300 metres but they didn't seem to get that as a concept.) They're now actively praying for us to stay here: when I told the 24-year-old president I quite liked my family, he told me to fly them over, and offered to find me a Peruvian husband, seeming unfazed by the time-restriction (6 weeks) and my criteria of preferable attributes (the most difficult to fulfill, of course, being "taller than me"), telling us how to say "how beautiful your eyes are -they are like stars" in Quechua, then asking if we wanted to marry a Quechua speaker...
We've been learning Quechua, to enable us to speak just a little bit to the patients in the hospital who don't speak Spanish, so we've been diligently practising it at all spare moments, much to the amusement of everyone on the buses. (Which reminds me - 'Sara' means 'corn on the cob' in Quechua, so we've taken to calling her the Spanish version: 'maíz'.)
There's not much to report from the hospital: it has been quite empty because a lot of the kids had gone home for Mother's Day. They might be back. One man tried to surreptitiously photograph us on his camera phone, but the shutter sound was hilariously loud. Oh, and one girl asked if I was Sarah's mum.
We're making progress with the kindergartens: We sang with them for half an hour on Friday. They loved it, and, for the first time, their excitement to see us was more evident than their fear! And our classes of 40 kids were as hilarious and unpredictable as ever: in the first, we told the teacher we'd take a group of six, expecting to end up with 10. Within 2 minutes of us leaving the room, we had all 40. The week after we had yet another new teacher, who had absolutely nothing prepared, so we turned our small group lesson into a full-class activity. Our Sunday afternoon kids' group is still super enthusiastic, and can't get enough of the singing. We're still waiting for our ears to stop ringing and heads to stop pounding. We were talking about the widow and the jar of oil, so we got the kids to write or draw what they wanted to pray for. One boy (7) drew a picture of some sheep and an angel in some clouds. He explained "I don't want to be a shepherd anymore. So I want an angel to come and kill all the sheep so I don't have to be". He also gave me the biggest hug when I told him he could take his worksheet home...
Other highlights include performing onstage with an incredible Peruvian band, naming the church, and managing to get actual Sarah Stewart to watch Django. (She didn't even hate it!) We had a free house last weekend so maximised by toasting marshmallows on a fire of mainly newspaper (a short activity), trying some Cusqueña and having another round of Monopoly. I performed my first song (on the Fruits of the Spirit in Spanish) infront of an audience with a choir of Sunday School children. We've spent a bit of time with some Latin Link STEP teams that have been over this way, we've signed up to help clear the Sunday School builders' yard at 5am on Saturday (we thought they were joking. Joke's on us: they weren't) and it's been raining a lot, but other than that it's been business as usual: we're still getting hit on by every taxi driver, small children on the bus still point at us and shout "look, mum!", and we're still confused as to why they stare at me as much as the main event (the redhead to my right).
We're on for another church date and cafecito tonight. Sarah's been challenged to a sprint race. As soon as we have a day without anything bizarre I'll let you know.
I'll cut to the chase. We ate guinea pig. It had been a long time coming, and Kira has been talking us through it (admittedly, not very persuasively: phrases like "crack open the ribs" featured). So we went and sat amongst many deft locals and ate a guinea pig each. I went for a deep-fried one, so if i squinted I could only 90% tell it was a flattened guinea pig. Sarah went for a roasted one, which was unmistakably a rodent from all angles, regardless of how much we shut our eyes. I'll spare you the details of the consumption, and the details of our mealtime conversation, save these two gems:
"You really learn a lot about the anatomy of a guinea pig"
and "Kira, I've nibbled the leg. Would you like the foot?" *Crunch* "Mmm, yummy!"
Anyway.
Mother's Day is bigger than Christmas. For well over a week we had various Mother's Day celebrations, or preparations for celebrations. During the morning church service we were outside with the kids, but that didn't stop the church leaders calling us into the service at the end to hug all the mums, who were standing at the front. But the funniest thing was without a doubt the Sunday evening Mother's Day service at church, where we began with a very interactive sermon by the church's president, during which we had to keep relaying various encouraging sentences to the nearest mother to us. The lady nearest us kept creasing up when we spoke to her, which we at first we put down to shyness, but in hindsight, was probably because the child in her q'ipi (multi-coloured, child-carrying sling) was not only not hers, but she was actually sub-20, unmarried, and childless. Age and life-stage of Peruvians is very hard to judge.
When the sermon finished, we moved our chairs into a circle, and the party games began. I'm not sure many gringos ever have the experience of watching Quechua women playing balloon games to win mother's day gifts (mostly tupperware, tea towels and place mats - no word of a lie: we wrapped them at the youth service the night before). The 'solteras' ('singles') in the room had a part to play too - we were given roses, as 'future mums', and also competed in some rounds of egg and spoon races. They loved watching the gringitas race across the room and back, spoons in mouths, eggs falling on the floor.
The evening finished with the two of us having to hold up the banner, which, after a slight correction of accent placement, read "Happy Mother's Day" (instead of "Happy Breast Day"), and people joined us for photos. It started with just the mums, but when we'd cycled through all of them, soon escalated to being everyone in the building, one by one. They also brought out a birthday cake, and sang 'Happy Birthday', which appears to be standard procedure at every celebration. I'll admit: we laughed twice as much and loudly as anyone else in the room, and that was only when we were about to burst from holding it in any longer.
On the plus side, that evening we left with the president of the church's number, and an invitation to our first church date! On Tuesday we went with a group to a church service, then went for a cafecito (little coffee) afterwards, where we laughed all evening, and got invited to go with them to Plaza de Armas, the main square, on Thursday night. We prepared a mugging plan on the way there, thanks to Jenny's warnings/stories (Sarah had all the valuables hidden in her secret coat pockets, the decoy purse on the outside one, and I would take the hits). It was as beautiful as they had promised us. We had a good laugh at all the gringos in the vicinity, and played a very intense game of stuck in the mud. Saz and I held our own, considering the altitude, for which the six natives had no sympathy. (I tried to explain that not everyone is born at 3300 metres but they didn't seem to get that as a concept.) They're now actively praying for us to stay here: when I told the 24-year-old president I quite liked my family, he told me to fly them over, and offered to find me a Peruvian husband, seeming unfazed by the time-restriction (6 weeks) and my criteria of preferable attributes (the most difficult to fulfill, of course, being "taller than me"), telling us how to say "how beautiful your eyes are -they are like stars" in Quechua, then asking if we wanted to marry a Quechua speaker...
We've been learning Quechua, to enable us to speak just a little bit to the patients in the hospital who don't speak Spanish, so we've been diligently practising it at all spare moments, much to the amusement of everyone on the buses. (Which reminds me - 'Sara' means 'corn on the cob' in Quechua, so we've taken to calling her the Spanish version: 'maíz'.)
There's not much to report from the hospital: it has been quite empty because a lot of the kids had gone home for Mother's Day. They might be back. One man tried to surreptitiously photograph us on his camera phone, but the shutter sound was hilariously loud. Oh, and one girl asked if I was Sarah's mum.
We're making progress with the kindergartens: We sang with them for half an hour on Friday. They loved it, and, for the first time, their excitement to see us was more evident than their fear! And our classes of 40 kids were as hilarious and unpredictable as ever: in the first, we told the teacher we'd take a group of six, expecting to end up with 10. Within 2 minutes of us leaving the room, we had all 40. The week after we had yet another new teacher, who had absolutely nothing prepared, so we turned our small group lesson into a full-class activity. Our Sunday afternoon kids' group is still super enthusiastic, and can't get enough of the singing. We're still waiting for our ears to stop ringing and heads to stop pounding. We were talking about the widow and the jar of oil, so we got the kids to write or draw what they wanted to pray for. One boy (7) drew a picture of some sheep and an angel in some clouds. He explained "I don't want to be a shepherd anymore. So I want an angel to come and kill all the sheep so I don't have to be". He also gave me the biggest hug when I told him he could take his worksheet home...
Other highlights include performing onstage with an incredible Peruvian band, naming the church, and managing to get actual Sarah Stewart to watch Django. (She didn't even hate it!) We had a free house last weekend so maximised by toasting marshmallows on a fire of mainly newspaper (a short activity), trying some Cusqueña and having another round of Monopoly. I performed my first song (on the Fruits of the Spirit in Spanish) infront of an audience with a choir of Sunday School children. We've spent a bit of time with some Latin Link STEP teams that have been over this way, we've signed up to help clear the Sunday School builders' yard at 5am on Saturday (we thought they were joking. Joke's on us: they weren't) and it's been raining a lot, but other than that it's been business as usual: we're still getting hit on by every taxi driver, small children on the bus still point at us and shout "look, mum!", and we're still confused as to why they stare at me as much as the main event (the redhead to my right).
We're on for another church date and cafecito tonight. Sarah's been challenged to a sprint race. As soon as we have a day without anything bizarre I'll let you know.
miércoles, 8 de mayo de 2013
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.
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.
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