Esperanza de Ana

Posted on February 16, 2017March 14, 2019 by Lark

Now that I’ve been here for almost a month, I figure it’s time to finally get around to explaining what exactly Esperanza de Ana does.

This is a description of their work from the website:

Our passion is to strengthen families while offering a place of healing for the hearts and minds of each child and parent who has experienced trauma or is suffering crisis. Through the education center we focus on the integral development of each child while we work to encourage parents to value each child and discover their gifts.

We offer part-time residential care for a limited time when intervention is necessary for child safety, if there is a crisis in the family that warrants the need, and/or for a time of teaching children the routines of a healthy life-style that they can take back home with them each weekend.

Above all things, we remain committed to being a hand that guides on the way to restoration and eternal hope. Systems come and go, but children are individuals created and called by God. Only He knows the future He has for them. We are to be committed to uphold their rights as children and to bring justice and mercy as our Heavenly Father directs for each child and family…to bring eternal hope through Christ’s love.

The truth is that we do not know how the journey will develop for each child. But we cling to the verse that we memorize with the children, “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil to give you a future and a hope.” Jeremiah 29:11.

That’s a lot to take in, and to fully understand it, I think it’s important to go over some of the history of the ministry. Throughout the 5-year construction period (2006-2010), there was a changing vision of what the mission of Esperanza de Ana would be. By the time it was ready to begin operating (2011), the thought was that it would be a children’s home. An existing children’s home across the street was closing, and the nine children who lived there were taken in.

Quickly, the missionaries and national staff realized that the children they were taking care of weren’t orphans in the literal sense of having no living parents. They were “social orphans” – kids who were separated from their parents due to trauma, crisis, or other strains on the family unit. This realization, plus the belief that every child has the right to grow up in family rather than institutionalized and feeling unwanted and unloved (abuse and other extreme cases aside), led to a shift in mission. Esperanza de Ana transformed into a family restoration and preservation program. The children’s parents were brought into the children’s lives again and became responsible for taking care of them on the weekends.

As you might imagine, this wasn’t an easy path for anyone. The parents were faced with getting to know and care for children who they had given up and hadn’t interacted with in years. The kids were adjusting to changes in every part of their lives. The missionaries and national staff were trying to figure out how to manage a program that was completely different from what they were expecting. The families all met weekly with a social worker and psychologist and slowly adjusted to the changes and new expectations.

Kids playing on a tire game that can be used to help with spelling.

Fast forward to today, and all of those original kids are living full-time in family. Pretty amazing, right? Even after kids move out of part-time residential care, the kids and parents remain in the program and continue to receive aid, including scholarships and emotional support from the staff.

The program has evolved even more and is now divided into three parts: Launching Leaders (the scholarship program), La Escuela (the after-school program), and Strong Families (the program for parents). Launching Leaders includes kids who are in part-time residential care and kids who are living with their families full-time but are still receiving support in other ways. The kids receive scholarships and school supply support as needed and attend the after-school program. La Escuela also includes kids from the community and provides lunches during the school day and education reinforcement after school. Strong Families works with the parents to develop action plans and set goals and supports them as they strive to reach those goals.

The summer school that is going on now includes both program kids and community kids. It’s cool that the ministry is really becoming an integral part of the community, through this program and the after-school program. The summer school is seriously awesome. The kids are being exposed to so many different things, and it’s fun to see how excited they get and how brilliant their ideas are. They all have so much potential inside of them, and when they have opportunities to explore their interests, learn new things, and be creative, it’s amazing to see what they’re capable of.

There are some amazing views from the property.

After meeting the people who are/were a part of making it all happen, I can see how this seemingly impossible story came together. The missionaries and national staff have such a love for God, for these kids, and for the work that they’re doing. They’re motivated and practical and have taken on challenges that seem insurmountable. I’m amazed by the team that God has assembled to do His work here and by how faithful He has been in providing exactly who and what is needed. I know it kind of sounds like I’m making them out to be saints, but that’s not my intent. They’re normal people who have listened to the call to use their skills to build this ministry, and God has equipped each of them with what they need to do so.

In conclusion, it’s a cool place to be a part of, I’m learning a lot about myself and about helping people effectively, and I’m beyond happy that I ended up here for however short a time. If you’re interested in seeing more of the work they’re doing or getting involved, definitely check out their website or their Facebook page to see updates.

Running

Posted on February 15, 2017March 14, 2019 by Lark

I’m sure you’ll all be happy to hear this… We didn’t have any classes today, so I actually had some time to pull myself together!! You have no idea how much better I’m feeling mentally. There’s not too much to report about today (sitting at my computer accomplishing things doesn’t make for the most interesting stories).

One thing I haven’t talked much about is our morning runs. Aside from team week last week, we’ve (we being Debbie, Julie, and me) been consistently running Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and just this week we added in extra Tuesday, Thursday workouts. It’s nice to have some time to clear my head in the mornings, plus then I can eat cookies every day and not feel bad about it.

The running is always a bit of an adventure. We just run around the neighborhood, and that leaves us with the same choice each day at the first intersection: left, straight, or right? Each direction has its pros and cons.

Left is okay, but you have to run past a chicken farm for the first block. There are inevitably some of the worst smells ever during that part of the run. Otherwise, it’s almost totally fine, but it’s hard to get past the horribleness of the beginning smells.

Straight is fun, but last time (the only time…) we went that way, there were tons of dogs at the end of the street. There are stray dogs all over the place here, and I’m not keen on getting attacked by a crazy dog. No matter which way we run, we always come across stray dogs. Some of them are perfectly friendly, but others are mildly terrifying. We stop running when they start following or growling at us (annoying in the middle of a workout) and try to ignore them so they don’t feel threatened. Debbie makes this “CH!” sound that they apparently don’t like, and sometimes it does make them leave us alone. A few times, we’ve picked up rocks just in case, and they usually get the picture and go away. It’s pretty annoying though, so I’m not the biggest fan of running straight.

Right is definitely the best option, even though there are some speed bumps to go over that require you to actually pick your feet up off of the ground. The smells aren’t quite as bad as they are to the left, and there are always stray dogs, but not as many as straight. I don’t like going the same way every time, so we do sometimes go left and deal with the horrible chicken farm smell. I bet you had no idea that running could be such a dilemma, huh?

Debbie and I did take a little time to accomplish class-related things this afternoon and went to stock up on paper clips and solder for the robots. We also had an exciting quest to search for bottles and plastic caps that could be used for beetle shells on our robots. Some of the stuff we ended up with is a bit random and weird, but there’s only so much we can do. We’ll get to decorating on Friday, so that should be a whole new fun and exciting adventure.

Bear Boats

Posted on February 14, 2017March 14, 2019 by Lark

The more I think about it, the more I realize how much the team week threw me off. I’m currently feeling a little stressed and overwhelmed, and I was trying to understand what is different about this week that has me feeling that way more than usual. I think that it’s partly because I didn’t accomplish much of anything last week since we were so busy, and now I have an extra week’s worth of things on my to do list. The other part of it is that I’m in the planning stages of a few different things (including my trip to Machu Picchu before I leave Peru, some stuff for my time in Armenia, and some randoms), and that always gives me a feeling of unrest until the planning is finished or at least underway. No need to worry about me though… I’ve done a re-write of my to do list, and that’s making me feel a bit better. Now I need to get to crossing some things off!

Robot construction in progress! Debbie has been making the kids wear safety goggles even when they’re not doing anything that even remotely requires them. It makes them look like they know what they’re doing though, doesn’t it?

Otherwise, things are going well! We had our second robot class with the oldest kids this morning, and the excitement of making robots hasn’t worn off yet (thank goodness!). The half of the class we worked with today hadn’t even started their robots yet. We got them through the entire assembly process, and they had time to get started on cutting and stripping the wires to prepare them for soldering. They all did a great job with that, and I was excited because I want the kids to do as much for themselves as possible. The older class is definitely capable of doing most of the work with just a little guidance. Soldering will happen next class, and hopefully we can figure out a way to get them involved in that as well without having any safety issues. I think they can handle it, especially if they keep behaving as well as they have been. They’re taking this project really seriously.

Spaghetti, chicken, yuca, and carapulcra.

Lunch today was spaghetti, yuca (which is apparently the same as or similar to cassava… which I spent all of my time in Ghana not knowing what it was – even though we had it at the farm and I planted some – and too lazy to look it up), chicken, and carapulcra. Carapulcra is a Peruvian stew that probably varies dramatically depending on who makes it and where you are. From what I could gather while eating it, Delia’s carapulcra consists of potatoes, sauce that I couldn’t identify even if I tried, pieces of chicken (watch out for stray bones), garlic, and I have no clue what else. I know, that description couldn’t possibly be more unhelpful. All I can say is, I’m no food connoisseur, so that’s the best I can do. In summary, it was pretty good, even though I was sure I was going to choke on a hidden chicken bone.

Julie’s class loading their boats with bears.

Tuesdays are little kid engineering afternoons, so Julie and I teamed up to make aluminum foil boats with the two youngest classes. It’s questionable how much the kids actually did in her class (the 2-4 year olds) vs. how much we did for them, but it kept them interested for close to an hour, so that’s all that really matters in my book. Each kid got a piece of foil and as much tape as they needed, and after they finished, they put their boats into a tub of water and loaded them with these little plastic bears we found in the supply closet. Julie even fit in some teaching about how the bigger boats with higher walls held more bears and got the kids to compare the numbers of bears that each boat held to see which boat worked the best.

In the slightly older class (4-6 year olds), there was a bit more chaos, but the kids actually built their own boats (some with a little help from us). They had way too much fun splashing around in the water, but somehow we survived and the kids possibly enjoyed it and learned something? We’ll just say they did. None of you were there, so I can make things up like that. Let the records show that class today went perfectly according to plan and the kids were totally under control and engaged and they built fabulous aluminum foil boats and now they all want to be engineers. Wow! We did a great job, huh?

Robotics Class!

Posted on February 13, 2017March 14, 2019 by Lark

We started the robot project today! It went so much better than I was hoping for, and thank goodness for that because my expectations were incredibly low. We had the oldest kids (C4) in the morning, and it was nice to have a chance to figure out the best process and work through some of the kinks while having a more controlled and engaged class.

I didn’t take very many pictures because I was mostly running around and trying to help different kids with the assembly, but here’s one of the two that I managed to snap.

We decided that the best approach was to split the class in half and have one group working with us on the robots while the other group watched a robot-related movie (today’s pick: Wall-E). Things went extremely slowly in the morning, and we didn’t get nearly as far as I thought we would (shocking, I know. One of the hardest parts of teaching is managing your own expectations of what you’ll be able to complete in a day). We wanted to get all of the assembly finished for all of the kids in the class, but we only managed to do it for half of them. We’re going to need to alter our plans a little if we want to have a chance of finishing these things on time. Good thing we have those flex periods next week!
The process went a bit more smoothly with the younger kids (C3, Vanessa’s class of 7-9 year olds), and we were shocked by how well-behaved the kids were. Her class especially is at that age where they’re usually running all over the place and kind of out of control, but today they were waiting patiently for instructions and did an incredible job of listening!

How cool does this look? There’s something about electronics and wires that makes anything look impressive. As soon as you have some wires in front of you, it looks like you mean business.

I think that a big part of the reason for the good behavior is that all of the kids are super excited about this project. When we showed them the demo of our robot, they all got wide-eyed and were clearly pumped about the fact that they were going to make the same thing. Even the kids who act like they’re too cool for school were getting excited. Hopefully this good behavior lasts the entire time that it takes to make the robots because this isn’t exactly a quick process, and having a bunch of kids running around and screaming would make it about a million times more painful. All in all, I’m very happy about how things went, and I can’t wait to see how the robots turn out!
In other news, I’m falling asleep at the computer again, so please excuse me if anything I wrote makes zero sense because it probably happened when I was asleep. I think I caught all of them, but my brain isn’t functioning quite well enough to go back through and process everything. I need to see if I can find time to hibernate this weekend.

Lima Sightseeing

Posted on February 12, 2017March 14, 2019 by Lark

This weekend has been completely packed. I didn’t get a chance to write yesterday because it was crazy from morning to night… we didn’t get home until after 11PM! I, of course, was a total mess and couldn’t keep my eyes open, so I decided it was better to just go to sleep rather than attempt to write something (that inevitably would have been incoherent).

Yesterday was the team’s last day, aka my last day of coffee duty! I rolled out of bed just in time to get the coffee started at 6AM, took a quick shower, ran back to the kitchen to make breakfast, etc. etc. etc. until after worship when I took a 45 minute nap because I knew there was no chance of me making it through the day without one.

The team was ready to go around 11:30AM, and that’s when our adventure started. Most (if not all) of the flights to the US from Lima leave in the middle of the night, so we had the entire day to spend sightseeing in the city. Our first stop was for lunch, at a hotel in Punta Negra where Jim and Tony used to live before the EA buildings were complete enough to move in. Tony ordered a bunch of different dishes so that people could try a few things. I had some arroz chaufa (basically fried rice), lomo saltado (beef stir fry), sweet potato slices (potatoes are very popular here), and a piece of corn tamale (ground up corn and some other things all mushed into a rectangle). The sweet potatoes and tamale weren’t my favorite things… The potatoes had a confusing bitter taste to them, and the tamale wasn’t my favorite texture. It was nice to have a chance to try some different things without committing to a whole plate though!

Plaza San Martín. The statue is of José de San Martín, Peru’s liberator.

The beach at the hotel was also nice. There’s no beach access without going through one of the hotels/restaurants in the strip, so that makes it into a kind of private beach. It wasn’t very crowded there, partly because of the “private-ish beach” thing, and partly because the waves are huge which makes it a less desirable location for people who want to go in the water. I had no interest in touching the sand or the water though, so I was happy to have less people and get to see the big waves (from afar).

The Palace of Justice, home of Peru’s supreme court.

The rest of the day was filled with sightseeing! We drove into central Lima, checked out some of the historic stuff I saw a couple weeks ago (though all access to the plaza was blocked, so we didn’t get to go back there to see the President’s house, etc), and then drove up the coast to an overlook where you can see the city. The coast is awesome because there are these huge cliffs between the city and the beaches. They’re probably a pain to walk up and down and to deal with (and they’re all covered in netting because I’m sure they have rock slides all the time), but they’re definitely beautiful.

The overlook was one of my favorite parts of the day because I don’t think I fully appreciated the size of Lima before seeing it from that vantage point. When I say that the city stretched as far as the eye can see, I am not exaggerating. In every direction, the buildings just looked like they continued on forever. There’s also a massive statue of Jesus at the top (Cristo del Pacifico), and you can see him standing on top of that mountain from miles and miles away.

Buildings everywhere. If I had turned my camera to the right, you would see more of the same type of congestion.

The last part of the day before dinner and heading to the airport was a stop at the Inca Market, an artisan market that’s great for souvenirs. We split into groups, and I enjoyed walking around, seeing everything that the stores had to offer, and practicing my Spanish. A lot of people spoke enough English to say prices and such, but they were definitely happy when they realized that they could speak Spanish to us instead! And I even spoke a little! And no one looked at me like I was speaking gibberish! Maybe they were just being polite, but we’re going to go with “I nailed it” instead.

Lima on one side of the mountain, and this on the other side.

Dinner, the drive to the airport, and the drive back to EA after the airport were completely exhausting. I was falling asleep in the van all the way home. I even started doing that thing where someone talks to you and you can understand them, but when you go to answer, you’re way too tired to put words together so it just sounds like gobbledygook. Needless to say, the discoteca is going to have to try harder if it wants to keep me awake because I’ve been having some exhausting Saturdays recently!

Today was one of those days where you have a lot to do, make a to do list, work on things all day, and realize that you actually completed zero of the things on your list, despite the fact that you were running around all day. I don’t even know how I filled the hours today, but I blinked, and the day was close to over. I spent a decent amount of time doing laundry, cleaning my room, and moving from the room I’m in right now into Debbie’s room because Kait, the last missionary, is coming back this week, and I was in her room.
Okay, I should get to bed now… Tomorrow is bound to be another hectic, nonstop kind of day, and Debbie and I have to start our robot lessons in the morning. I’m keeping my fingers crossed…

No More Vinifan (For Now)!!!

Posted on February 10, 2017March 14, 2019 by Lark

You’ll never guess what happened today… we finished wrapping all of the notebooks!!! I seriously thought there was no chance of us finishing before the end of the week, and I’m still not completely sure about how it happened. The total notebook count is 266, and maybe about 50% of those are double wrapped (paper then plastic)… that means that we wrapped notebooks about 399 times over the last 5 days! That’s crazy.

So many notebooks, all fabulously wrapped

The wrapping process was down to a science today. All week, I’ve been tweaking things and working to make them more efficient. Today, we were on a roll. All of the notebooks were already sorted, the labels written, the papers and plastic pieces cut, so the only thing that anyone had to do was wrap! The less thinking required, the better.
By the end, some of the kids were helping, Julie helped me finish up the last few, and I was refusing to stop until they were all done. Those things put together are what made the final stretch possible.

Tonight is a night for celebration! So I’ll be going to bed… Oh to sleep 15 hours, uninterrupted. That would be the ultimate dream right now.

The team’s last day is tomorrow, so we have an action-packed day in Lima ahead of us. As happy as I’ll be to not have to make 6AM coffee anymore, it will be sad not having them around. It’s been nice having some fresh faces around.

Okay… I’m starting to type gibberish. That means it’s time to sleep. Chau!

Robot!

Posted on February 10, 2017March 14, 2019 by Lark

**This is from yesterday, but I literally fell asleep writing it.

THE ROBOT WORKS!!! This is BEYOND exciting news!! To sum it up really quickly, Tony got the idea that Debbie and I should teach a robotics class, and we gave in slightly and agreed to do one robot project in our class. We found an instructable online that doesn’t require any programming (because that makes things WAY more complicated) and decided that was going to be our project. We brought the motors, wires, switches, and battery holders from the States, figuring that the rest of the parts would be easy to find in Peru.

That was a bit of a mistake… We have managed to find the essential parts and pieces, but it certainly hasn’t been easy. We eventually tracked down a soldering iron, flux, and solder, but then we found out that the solder was too thick. Debbie bought some thinner solder this morning, and that has made all the difference. We also bought sheet metal here, which they didn’t have at the two big hardware stores we shop at, so instead we were directed all over Chilca to this construction supply warehouse where we bought a piece of sheet metal that is at least 20 times bigger than what we need.
Anyway, everything finally came together today, and we finished assembling our robot! We were having soldering issues which were quickly resolved after buying thinner solder. Now it works!! And thank goodness for that because I wouldn’t know what to do to troubleshoot if it hadn’t. The basic description of the robot is that it goes straight, and when it runs into something, it turns itself and keeps going. AND OURS ACTUALLY DOES THAT!! (You can watch a video of it on my Instagram @larakaiserian… If you’re on a computer, there’s a link on the right sidebar. The internet is too slow to directly upload it here.) Debbie and I are ecstatic, even though we still have some logistics to figure out, because we didn’t have a backup plan. No problem though because it worked!!

The rest of the day was pretty cool too. This morning, the team went into Chilca, got split up into groups of two or three, and had a shopping list of items that they needed to find. All of the Spanish speakers (myself included actually) were assigned to groups and told not to intervene unless someone was in desperate need of assistance. It’s a valuable exercise because it helps to give the group an idea of what it’s like to be in a situation where you’re completely out of your element and trying to figure things out without speaking the language. It definitely required some creativity (and charades skills) and confidence to go up to people and sound like an idiot while trying to find your things. If anything, the whole exercise made me realize that I know a lot more Spanish than I thought. I would have easily been able to ask shopkeepers about the things on our list. The groups all did well, and I was impressed with how willing they were to just go for it.

The afternoon was filled with more vinifan-ing notebooks. I’m getting good at it and have my pace down to a science. In about four hours this afternoon, I wrapped 15 notebooks that needed paper and plastic coverings and 10 that only needed plastic. That means, I did 40 wraps in 4 hours, 10 wraps each hour, or 1 wrap every 6 minutes. I had previously estimated my pace at 5 minutes per wrap, and I think that might still be correct because I probably spent about 10 minutes per hour doing other things like helping people, organizing notebooks, cutting paper and plastic in bulk for everyone to use, etc. Exciting because I now know my exact pace… discouraging because at that rate, it would take me close to one eternity to finish all of the notebooks… hopeful because the team is still here, and anything they get done is less for me to do. In conclusion, sometimes it might be better to know less.

Field Trip!

Posted on February 8, 2017March 14, 2019 by Lark

Today was so much fun!!! We went on a field trip with the team and ALL of the kids. The morning was the usual: make coffee at 6AM (my least favorite thing to do), run back to my room and pray/read my Bible for about half an hour before I have to get ready and run to the kitchen again to make breakfast for the team (I’m a professional bulk scrambled eggs maker now), eat, and go to worship with the team and the other missionary staff. After that, the day’s adventure started!

We loaded the 50 kids plus the 20 or so teachers, team members, helpers, etc. onto a coach bus, along with games and toys and food and water, and made our way to the beach. That wasn’t the ultimate destination, but we pulled off the highway for a quick pit stop. I thought it was pretty brave of the teachers to plan a “quick stop” at the beach with all of those kids.

Somehow, we got everyone off the bus and down to the ocean where they splashed around for about half an hour before we rounded everyone up again and went back to the bus. Also, when I say “we”, realistically, I played a very small part in making everything happen. My biggest beach duty was making sure no kids drowned, a task made much easier by the fact that none of them went in past their knees.

The main stop of the day was a pool at this hotel/resort type place in Mirasur. It’s about half an hour south of where we live in Chilca. Once again, my job was to come out of lifeguard retirement and make sure all of the kids stayed safe. I was nervous at the beginning, especially because that’s when kids are a little more rowdy. I had to grab a couple of kids throughout the day and pull them up, but they might have been okay without me. I just wasn’t willing to take any chances, so if anyone looked like they were even struggling, I didn’t give them a chance to keep going on their own.

Once things settled down, I had a lot of fun! I swam around with a few kids, helped them with their swimming, attempted to teach Eddy’s daughter how to swim (and speak English… we’re determined to make her grow up bilingual), and got a chance to hang out and spend time with the kids while finally feeling like I was in my element. Time flew by, and before I knew it, it was time for lunch. We kicked the kids out of the pool, changed, and ate.

We had about an hour and a half to go before we needed to head back to Esperanza de Ana, so everyone played in the hotel’s big grass field with frisbees, volleyballs, pool noodles, soccer balls, and some inflatables. I mostly spent my time having a frisbee catch with one of the kids, and by the time we had to leave, I was totally exhausted.

Some well-irrigated fields in the middle of the desert

The bummer of the day was that our soldering practice went horribly. We’re trying to get ready for our robot project with the kids, and we’re struggling. One of the guys on the team knows some things about soldering, so we asked for his help. He said that he thinks we have the wrong type of solder because it wasn’t melting as easily as it should. Part of me is feeling like, “Hooray! Maybe we’re not the problem!” and the other part of me is grumbling about the fact that they didn’t give us the right stuff at the store. It’s fine though! Everything will get figured out.

For now, I need to go to sleep before I fall asleep at my computer again… anddd too late… I just did. Okay! But I’m up again and will go to bed as soon as I get this posted.

Vinifan

Posted on February 7, 2017March 14, 2019 by Lark

The last two days have been one, big, notebook-wrapping blur. The team has been working on their service projects, and I’m in charge of the “vinifan” project. Let me attempt to summarize the ridiculousness that is this process:

The notebooks closer to the bookcase are already wrapped. The other ones need to be wrapped. A million notebooks everywhere.

The kids need notebooks for school, and it’s way more than you would ever think that someone might need. A 2-year-old needs 2 notebooks. A 4th grader needs 13. A 7th grader needs 17. What the heck are they doing with 17 notebooks?? Well, that’s beside the point. Each notebook is for a specific subject (geometry, arithmetic, algebra, etc. – even though those are all math, they all need a different notebook). There are a bunch of different line types in the notebooks – graph paper, blank, lined, 3-lines, bigger squares, even bigger squares, bigger 3-lines, etc., and each subject needs a specific type of lines and a specific color. Each notebook also has to get covered with plastic (vinifan is the brand of the plastic) to protect it. If the notebook itself isn’t the right color to begin with, you need to first cover it with paper that’s the right color and second cover it with the plastic. They also all have handwritten labels that have the subject, kid’s name, grade, and school written on them. I think that we have about 24 kids that we are wrapping for, and they range in age from 2 years to 8th grade.

Does that sound like a very complicated situation for some school notebooks? The correct answer to this question is “yes”, by the way. We figured out a system yesterday, after a little trial and error, and it ended up with me writing all of the labels, picking out notebooks, and leaving a note if their colors needed to be changed. I had volunteers assigned to me from the team, so at least I wasn’t doing it alone. By the end of the day yesterday, I think we had only done about 60, and we have over 200 to do.

The last two days have basically just been hours and hours of wrapping books in plastic. Actually, I spent most of my time writing labels. It was a fabulous moment when I finished writing and my hand could finally relax.

The team sang a couple of songs at church tonight!

Tonight, after dinner we went to the church where the kids are taken during the school year. The music was really fun and upbeat, and I knew some of the songs in English. The sermon was also really well done. Dina was translating it, so it wasn’t that hard to follow, but I tried to translate the Spanish and then only count on her for help when I definitely couldn’t figure out what was going on. I’m going to put my comprehension level of that service at about 85-90%. I’m definitely improving!!

I’m exhausted and have to wake up at 5:45AM again to put the coffee on before breakfast, so ciao for now!

Pucusana

Posted on February 5, 2017March 14, 2019 by Lark

Secret beach! El Boquerón. I love the view of the buildings in the background.

Despite losing a Sunday of personal time because of the team’s arrival, today was a great day! Since the team is here, there’s a whole plan of things to do and see to give them a picture of Peru and its culture. They’re all things that I haven’t done yet either, so I’m totally fine with being responsible for a couple more things over the next few days if that means I get to do all of this stuff with them!

Here’s a view looking towards the direction of the ocean. You can’t see through the tunnel from this angle, but it’s a little bit out of frame to the right.

My responsibilities over the next week include making breakfast each day (putting out cereal and milk, making coffee, cutting bread, and scrambling an incredible number of eggs), so I headed to the kitchen around 8:15 to get it ready for 9AM. I can now say that I have scrambled 35 eggs at once! Life skills, right? After breakfast, we had a little community worship where Jim and Tony talked about how they ended up here and Jim gave a mini-sermon. Then, Debbie walked everyone around the property and explained what the ministry does (which yes, I know I still have to write a post about more of the details of that… I’ll do it soon! It’s good that I waited though because I’m still learning more and more about how things work every day).
The coolest part of the day was going into Pucusana for lunch! Pucusana is a fishing village that’s only about a 10 minute drive (if that) from where we live. We had lunch at a restaurant right next to this place where there’s a tunnel through a hill that lets ocean water pass into a little beach area. I liked watching the waves come out of the tunnel, wash over the rocks, and fill the pool that creates what feels like a secret beach (besides the fact that it’s clearly not a secret, but that’s a minor detail).

The cancha (to the left) and lomo saltado (to the right)

For lunch, I had lomo saltado. It’s another typical Peruvian dish and is a beef stir fry served with rice and french fries. The stir fry included beef, onions, tomatoes, and maybe some kind of pepper? I’m not the best at identifying foods, but I think that’s right. They also put out cancha as an appetizer. It’s a popular snack food here and is supposedly similar to corn nuts, but I can’t confirm because I don’t think I’ve ever had corn nuts. It’s definitely not exactly the same though because the corn here is different from the corn at home. It’s called “maiz chulpe” and has massive kernels… like nickel sized probably. The texture of cancha is baffling to me (my mouth can’t figure it out), but I think Debbie nailed it today when she said it’s like inside out popcorn. For the seasoning, I think it usually just is cooked in oil and has salt on it.

Our post-lunch activity was a boat ride around Pucusana Island. There’s not much happening on the island, people-wise, but there are a bunch of animals hanging out there. We saw sea lions, penguins (!!!), starfish, some birds that I should remember but don’t, and a few other things. We also saw a lot of yachts and rich person vacation houses. There was one that had part of the house next to the bottom of a cliff, another part at the top of the cliff, and an elevator connecting the two. There are also a few beaches which were completely packed. I’m really glad that I got to go on the boat ride. It was interesting getting to see everything from the water!

On the right side, you can see the house I was talking about with the elevator!

This person has some serious landscaping… A speck of green in a sea of brown, brown, brown. It looks like it got plucked out of somewhere else and plopped down here.

When we got back, I spent some time attempting to build a practice robot for our class (let’s just say it’s still a work in progress) before Julie and I had to get dinner ready. We made pasta salad for the team, and I was totally lost. “Pasta salad” isn’t even in my vocabulary. Why would you take the perfection that is pasta and sully its reputation by associating it with something like salad?? Sorry, side rant. Anyway, like I said, pasta salad = not really my thing, but I think it turned out fine (thanks to Julie and her exceptional dicing skills). At least all I have to make for the rest of the week is more scrambled eggs! That’s something I can handle.