Thanksgiving 2009

Yesterday we celebrated “el dia de accion de gracias” here in Cusco. Even though we were thousands of miles away, we tried to have everything as “americanized” as possible. We even watched football, which was nice, although I could have cared less about the game! We went over to the Cooks’ newly furnished apartment. Their entertainment center was actually delivered just a few minutes before we got there! We had a great time watching football, some episodes of Everybody Loves Raymond, and playing Guitar Hero. By the way, I think I am officially the worst Guitar Hero player ever! We had to put it on the easiest setting and I still did awful. It was still fun, though! For those of you curious about the menu, we enjoyed turkey, dressing, sweet potato casserole, ciabatta bread (from a local bakery), squash casserole, green bean bundles wrapped in bacon, mashed potatoes, gravy, pumpkin pie, strawberry cheesecake, holiday tea, sweet tea, and several soft drinks. Charla found Lipton tea here and so the sweet tea tasted just like home! As far as the turkey goes, none of us had the slightest idea where to begin with preparing a whole turkey from scratch, so Gary found an American restaurant here to cook it for us. Today I was telling my Spanish teacher about that, and she said it’s fairly common to do that here with turkeys, especially for Christmas (when is when most Peruvians eat turkey). I made the pumpkin pie from a recipe from a friend of mine who is a missionary in Arequipa, Peru. We don’t have pumpkin here, but we have a vegetable called zapallo that’s very similar, although more yellow in color. It turned out great! I gave a piece to my Spanish teacher today and also to our doorman and both of them really liked it. I was really pleased that all of our foods turned out so well, especially with cooking at such a high altitude (we’re at 11,500 feet here). We missed spending time with our families yesterday, but it was a blessing to be able to enjoy the holiday with our teammates. We got to talk to both of our families last night and they all had a good day yesterday.

Today Barton and Cole went over to Matt and Charla’s place while I was in Spanish class and they were able to watch the Iron Bowl (they have a Slingbox). We hope to go back over there to watch the SEC championship because my cousin Beth will be featured during a contest at halftime. She won a contest off a Dr. Pepper bottle and she will be throwing a football during the halftime show for a chance to win $123,000 scholarship! She’s in med school at the University of South Alabama. She’s been practicing with the football coach there since she found out she would be competing!

Barton and I both are really enjoying our language classes so far and I think our Spanish is coming along pretty well. It really makes a difference when you’re around it all the time. Of course, we still have a long way to go, but we are improving in big strides day by day.

~Allison

Our Barrio (neighborhood)

In a recent post, I mentioned how much we love our new neighborhood. We have discovered all sorts of restaurants and shops within walking distance. Yesterday we walked to a pasteleria (dessert shop) nearby and got some fantastic strawberry pie and ice cream. On the way back we noticed a little shop that sold mainly dairy products. If we don’t want to walk all the way to the grocery store (which is about a five-minute walk), we could stop in this store and get some milk, eggs, or cheese. Speaking of cheese, it’s good here but we haven’t been able to find a lot of the kinds available back home. I saw cheddar cheese slices in one of the larger grocery stores the other day, and it just didn’t quite taste the same. It may be out there, but we just haven’t found it yet. We’re still discovering what all is available here. So far we’ve learned that you just have to shop around more here to find stuff. And just because it’s a bigger store doesn’t necessarily mean that they have a certain product from the states. Sometimes we’ve found more imported stuff in some of the smaller shops.

This week Barton and I both found our language schools. We start classes early next week. Barton will be going to his school in the mornings, and I’ll have a teacher come to our apartment in the afternoons for private lessons from 2:00-5:00. One or two days a week I’ll travel to my school, just so I don’t have to stay at home all the time. Barton will be in a small group class for 2 hours and he’ll have a private class for one hour each morning. We’ll take turns watching Cole while the other is in class. We’re excited to get started, although I know it will be a lot of work and we still have a long road ahead of us with learning Spanish.

Below are a variety of pictures of our neighborhood and a few of Cole.

~Allison

Adamsville Elementary Contest

My brother Ashley is a 5th grade teacher at Adamsville Elementary. His class has entered a video into a national contest to receive funding for $30,000 worth of technology for their classroom. His class has already been in the Birmingham News. It is a much needed win for his class. Please take just a few minutes to login and vote for their video. They’re in first place now, but it’s a tight race. Link is here:  http://eimakeover09.shycast.com/submission/show/385.

Also, you can find the story in the Birmingham News here.

Thanks for your help!

Baby Food…?

Yesterday at church this sweet old lady came up to me with a hot little brown hard boiled egg. I was pretty confused as to why she would be handing me an egg. I thought maybe it was some Peruvian tradition I didn’t know about, and I was trying to figure out if I was missing some cultural cue or something. I must have looked confused, because my English speaking friend, Maria, was standing nearby and she proceeded to ask the old lady about the egg. She said that she had cooked it for the baby to eat. I smiled and told her thank you and hugged her for the gift. It was a very sweet gesture even if Cole is not at all ready to eat eggs! Later I couldn’t help but laugh a little as to what I would do with this egg for the rest of the church service. I ended up sticking it in my diaper bag and hoping that it wouldn’t crack and get all over everything! After church the lady asked me if Cole had eaten it yet, and I just had to tell her, “Not yet, but thank you again for the egg.” Hopefully she won’t ask me next Sunday if he liked it. I actually ended up eating it for lunch. I must say, it was pretty tasty. The whole thing was pretty funny to me, but at the same time I was a little humbled by the thoughtfulness of this lady to cook and bring something to someone who had only visited her congregation a few times. Yet another example of the kindness of Peruvians towards babies!

Last night we had our first team birthday party. Gary’s birthday is this week, so we celebrated last night with cake and pizza at our apartment. It was a lot of fun. Today we went to price some appliances and other items to get ready to buy them in a few weeks, and we also checked out a language school that Barton will probably start next week. It was a good school, but because of the baby I’m hoping to have a private tutor come to our apartment most days and this particular school didn’t offer that option. I have two other good choices, though, so I will probably start my lessons next week as well.

Cole has always enjoyed bathtime, but lately it’s been hard to get him to stop playing when it’s time to get out! He’s a lot of fun these days although he is into everything and he always manages to go after the most dangerous things in the apartment. Since everything was already set up here when we arrived, I’ll have to wait until we get to our other place to fully childproof everything. I think he’s just around the corner from walking, and I know then things will get even more crazy!

~Allison

And we’re set-at least with internet…

After about a week of being in our new apartment, we finally have internet! It was so nice to finally talk to some of our family members on Skype and MagicJack earlier today. You miss internet even more when it’s your sole method of communication to home!

It’s been another busy week, and it ended with Ron and Georgia leaving today for the airport. We can’t begin to express what a tremendous help they were to us, and we’re so grateful for all the things we got accomplished while they were here. Some or all of us now have: apartments, cell phones, health insurance, home phones, internet, furniture, appliances, bank accounts, and we are almost set to start language school as well. That’s quite a lot of stuff to fit into two weeks time-especially in Peru where everything normally moves a little slower! One example of this is the process for getting an apartment. I won’t go into all the details, but you have to have a contract signed in front of a notary, and before that you must get a little stamp in your passport (which you receive after several hours of waiting in line) that they may or may not check at the notary’s office. And we have also found that the contract will not get signed on the first trip to the notary’s office…you probably will have to go back a few times until the little errors are tweaked and you have the corrected contract typed out. But I really say this as more of a humorous anecdote than a true complaint since we have been so fortunate with everything else falling into place! It has been interesting to see the different processes in place here. Some things are more complicated, yet other things are much simpler. For example, we got our bank account set up in about 20 minutes and we walked out with our debit cards in hand! This never happens in the states. I think we waited for more than 3 hours last time we set up an account back home, and then we had to come back again later. And I might add, bringing your baby along on errands is a huge plus in Peru. Not only do you get lots of friendly conversations and compliments from those around you, express lines form out of nowhere to get you and your baby through the process as quick as possible! This may not always be the case, but so far we’ve found that Peru is definitely a baby-friendly country. We are getting a lot of stares and smiles when we walk around town, which surprised me a little since Cusco is a very big tourist center and it’s not at all unusual to see Americans walking around. Our friend Juan Carlos informed me, however, that although Cusquenians see a lot of Americans, they never bring their babies along since they are here for tourism. I think it will be a very good thing for our work in the future to stand out so much, because I have had so many friendly conversations with complete strangers (albeit in my very broken Spanish) all due to Cole!

This week has been a lot easier since we are in an apartment now instead of a hotel, and it’s also been nice being in a furnished place because it gives us a little more time to pick everything out for our new home. We love our new neighborhood. The apartment we’re in now is actually only a few blocks from our future apartment. It’s surrounded by parks and it’s very near a lot of stores and a main avenue, yet it’s not too close to where we hear noise from the traffic all the time. We are close enough to walk to our grocery store and a variety of nice restaurants, and we feel very safe with security guards all around the neighborhood. Our apartment complex is gated (very common here in Peru) and we have 24-hour security with a doorman which is a nice bonus. The only downside is that the Reaves’ and Cooks’ live all the way across town, but in Cusco that’s not such a bad thing since it doesn’t take too long to get from one end of town to the other. This morning I met Charla and Jennifer in their neighborhood and we all went to a big open air market for fruits and vegetables. It was a lot of fun. At first it was pretty intimidating-the vendors are all shouting at you in Spanish to try to get you to buy their wares-but we eventually got over it and bartered for lots of great produce! I think we definitely need to beef up our food vocabulary-there was a lot of pointing going on today since we were at a loss for some of the Spanish names of things. Next on our list of things to do is to get a plan for our Spanish school (there are several good ones to choose from here) and begin classes.

Here’s a variety of photos from the week.

~Allison

Goodbye, suitcases!

Well, maybe we can’t completely say goodbye to our suitcases, but we did decide on an apartment today! Actually, we decided on two. I mentioned last post about an apartment I liked that won’t be ready for another month. We decided to go for it, but we need a place to stay until then, so we are moving in a furnished apartment tomorrow until our new one is ready. Both apartments are very nice and we feel extremely blessed and grateful to have found them! We had a full but good day again today with more apartment shopping, contract signings for our teammates, negotiating, and even some furniture and home decor shopping. Peruvians like to take long lunches (with a nice siesta at the end!) so today in the midst of all our errands we stopped at a great Brazilian-style rodizio restaurant. For those of you unfamiliar with this type of restaurant, they give you a little block of wood or card at the beginning of the meal that is green on one side and red on the other. They come around with different kinds of meat on swords and they slice you off pieces of it until you switch to the red side. Also with the meal came a good salad bar, cheesey bread and other appetizers, and ice cream for dessert. All for around $10 a plate-and that’s expensive compared to most meals here!

We may be without internet for a few days until we get set up in our new place, so I thought I’d go ahead and do a quick post with some pictures until then. By the way, our apartment looks over a field with sheep and chickens-Cole was loving them earlier today when we went by for negotiations!

 

Great Helpers

We have been so blessed by all the help we have received in the settlement process. Ron and Georgia Freitas, from Continent of Great Cities, are here with us for a total of 3 weeks to help with a myriad of things, including documentation, apartment searching, furniture and appliance purchases, car shopping, etc. In addition to their help, several church members here have given us a lot of their time and energy. One of them I mentioned in an earlier post, Maria Ysabel, has been a real blessing. She has been with us all day everyday since we arrived searching diligently for apartments, helping us find a good cell phone plan, setting up a post office box, and many other things, including making us a wonderful Peruvian lunch yesterday. The main dish was causa. The filling was similar to chicken salad with some potatoes (kind of like mashed potatoes) surrounding it casserole-style. It was garnished with Peruvian olives and it was delicious. She also made some great soup and then for dessert we had mangos and vanilla yogurt. I am a very picky eater so God was really looking out for me when he sent me to Peru! The food here is so yummy. It was a nice break to go to her home for a meal because all of our other meals have been in restaurants, which is nice, but a little tough with an 8-month old! So far Cole has knocked over everything from bread bowls to soup bowls (luckily he didn’t spill any soup on himself-just on his parents)! We’ll be glad to get back to eating at home with Cole in his highchair. All the kids on the team have been real troopers so far with the settlement process, especially considering that they have to ride on a van for the majority of the day! Logan has kept us entertained with his singing on the van. I think we’ve heard the theme song from “Speed Racer” about 500 times!

We have been really blessed in our apartment search so far. Matt and Charla and Gary and Jenn will soon be closing on their apartments, and we are fairly certain that we found our apartment today. I never thought it would go so quickly! We’re going out once more in the morning to be sure we don’t see a better apartment, but I feel really good about the one we saw today. I’ll be sure to post pictures when we decide for sure. The one downfall to the one we like is that it is very new and it won’t be finished for about a month. But, we may try to find a furnished apartment in the meantime (we’ve seen several) and rent it short-term until ours is finished. We also got a post office box and cell phones today. While we were shopping for cell phones, a parade of school children crossed down the street in their colorful costumes. Cusco is very big on parades-I think we’ve already seen about 3 in the short time we’ve been here! Tomorrow is another very full day, but hopefully we’ll get a lot accomplished. From what I hear, it’s very unusual to make progress as fast as we’ve been able to make it in South America. I know a lot of folks back home must really be praying for us.

The pictures below are from the past few days. Sunday we worshipped with the local congregation here, and they hung up the signs they brought with them to the airport. We have already made some great friends here!

~Allison

Halloween and Apartment Hunting

Just as many of you back home celebrated Halloween, we were able to do the same here in Peru! There are a few differences, but Peruvians celebrate in a very similar manner to Americans, with trick or treating and costumes and candy. Cole has a cute little dinosaur sleeper/costume so he wore it Saturday and he was a huge hit! The Peruvian children were so excited to see a little gringo baby dressed up and they were all talking to him and giving him candy (although he’s too young to eat it-but I didn’t want to burst their bubbles so I took it anyway)! They do a lot of candy exchange amongst each other so I was able to give Cole’s candy away to some cute kids in the big plaza downtown. We went down to the plaza after supper for some coffee and dessert and we knew it would probably be a big celebration, but it was even bigger than I had imagined. There were literally thousands of people crowded around and a marching band went through playing music. It was really fun. And everyone wanted to get their picture made with Cole! It was so funny!

Our search for apartments is going well. We saw several promising ones earlier today and we may make an offer soon. We’ll go out again tomorrow so we’ll probably wait a little longer to make a decision, but the good apartments get snatched up really fast so we are trying not to wait too long. The problem is that we all like the same apartments so it is going to be hard to decide who gets which one! Hopefully soon each of us will find our ideal place and it won’t be the same as the ideal place for our teammates. Otherwise we’re going to have to draw straws! The process for finding apartments is a little different because they don’t use real estate agents here. You just go directly through the owner. Luckily one of the ladies from the church has been helping us and taking us around to all the different places. Another of our friends at the church has offered to help with negotiations and closing and also to check the quality of the apartments to be sure we’re getting a good place. It’s such a blessing to come here with so many friends willing to help!

~Allison

Here are some pictures from the past few days:

Bienvenidos!

We had a wonderful welcome at the airport today in Cusco! We were so excited to finally arrive (again, with all of our luggage!) and soon after exiting the plane, we saw the familiar face of Juan Carlos, a friend from the church here in Cusco, in a window along the walkway. He pointed to the right of him and we saw a large group of church members holding signs up and cheering for our arrival! It was a very heartwarming moment. We proceeded to baggage claim, and after getting our luggage outside, we talked for a few minutes with all those who came to greet us. Just before we left on the bus to our hotel, a lady came by with Peruvian hats (chullos) for each of us-even Logan, Brody, and Cole! They said we needed chullos since we were now true Cusqueños! Another example of the warm Peruvian hospitality we have found here. This whole process of moving internationally has been challenging and frustrating at times, but moments like this make it all worthwhile. The church members here are so happy to have fellow workers come and join them and they are already showing us a huge outpouring of love. Tomorrow morning one of the church members, Maria Ysabel, will take us out for our first look at housing for a few hours.

Below are a few more pictures from our travels today. I never want to go through an airport with this much luggage again (and I wasn’t even the one who had to carry it all)!

~Allison

Lima

We’ve had a great week in Lima. It’s been such a huge blessing to have a team here who has already gone through the settlement process in Peru and who can help us navigate through everything much quicker and easier than we would have ever been able to do on our own. It’s also nice to meet the team and make friends and missionary contacts in another part of Peru. We finished everything up a little earlier than we had planned, so after a meeting with a shipping company here who will help us get our container through customs, we were able to do a little sightseeing. We ate lunch at a neat little pizzeria and afterwards we all took a tour of Lima on a double-decker bus. We saw an archeological site, several parks with some beautiful landscaping, and even some hangliders floating off skyscrapers near the coast and down to the beach. After that we had some coffee (or hot chocolate for the non-coffee drinkers) and desserts at a cafe and then came back to the hotel for a bit before going out to eat tonight with the Lima team. We met them at Chile’s (yes, the same Chile’s that we have in the states) and got to spend a lot of time getting to know them. We’ve enjoyed our time here but we’re very excited to be moving on to Cusco tomorrow to begin the fun part of the settlement process-picking out our new homes! All of us have been moving around a lot this year and we are more than ready to finally have a place to call home for more than a few months.

Also, in Cole news, he stood up on his own (without holding on to anything) for a few seconds at a time this week! Crazy!

Here are some photo highlights from the week.

~Allison