Q/A for Rachel

First, excuse this very long blog post. I'm planning to post again later today about events that have been going on, but I can no longer ignore my sister's repeated requests for a question and answer session. If these small details don't interest you, feel free to skip to the next post! If they do interest you and you have more questions, feel free to leave them for me in the comments.

1. What do you eat? Who cooks your food?

Katrina and I eat our meals with our host family every day. For breakfast, we usually have some bread from the market. Most days, we have this really good cheese that I like to put on it. We also have yogurt—but in Peru, you drink yogurt, it’s more liquidy, so you just forget the spoon. Humorously enough, we keep drinking this brand similar to Activia that is full of fiber. It's the only one that is strawberry flavored! Generally, we eat some of the same things for lunch and dinner. A large portion is made, then reheated later that night. We usually have white rice and a vegetable, like peas. Potatoes are big here, so sometimes we usually have something with potato mixed in. Chicken is really big here and if we don’t have it at lunch, we’ll typically have it for dinner. We also have a lot of soup because everyone is always chilly! There’s always fruit around for snacking on, mainly bananas and oranges, but also some stuff we don’t have in the states. I love bananas, so that’s usually my go to choice.

 2. What are your living arrangements? What are the people you live with like?

Katrina and I share a room that’s small, but has space for everything we need (afterall, we each only brought one suitcase and carry on items here.) I sleep in a bunk bed, but right now, nobody sleeps on the top bunk (Laura slept there when she was here.) We live with the Paz family. I don't remember everyone's ages, so I'm going to give you some estimates here. Graciela (60) and Gumercindo (70) live on the bottom level. Graciela is the mom of the family and serves most of our meals, but other people cook also. The second floor is where Graciela's children live. Rosio (40) has her own room, Karen (22)  and Sandra (20) share a room and Jose (37) has his own. Sandra is actually a cousin, not Graciela's daughter. Katrina's and i's room is on this level. We all share a bathroom and living room area. Generally, we can only get internet in the living room, so it’s our hot spot at night. There’s a TV in there, but there isn’t cable on it—it’s just used for movies. The other day, Katrina and I were able to hook my computer up to it and watch Netflix, which was wonderful (and a much more greater accomplishment than it sounds like.) Everyone works during the day, so the house is usually pretty quiet, but at night it comes alive. Dinner is my favorite meal here because it’s when the most people are home and we usually get to watch a telanovella. The third floor of the apartment is rented out to other tenants, and I've never actually seen them (though I hear their music every night and day.)

3. What do you do on a daily basis?

We don’t have a routine nailed down yet. Last week, we spent most our free time doing some touristy things—checking out Lima, Miraflores, etc. Then our weekend was packed—we taught a women’s class on Friday, two children’s classes and an adult class on Saturday, then had a workshop all day and were in charge of the service (sermon included) on Sunday. This week were doing a bit of recovery from all of that. Soon, we’ll set more of a schedule, but we can generally assume we’ll be highly involved in the weekend activities and visiting church families and planning things during the week.

 4. Does anyone else speak English?

Yes and no. No one is completely fluent in English, but it seems like nearly everyone knows a few words and phrases. A few people, like Karen and Gladys (a church member), know quite a bit of English—probably more English than I know Spanish.

 5. What’s the weather like?

It’s COLD. Okay, it’s not that cold—but it’s a type of cold that creeps into your bones and doesn’t leave. I’ve felt truly warm twice since I’ve been here—once while running and the other time while walking up the HUGE hill at Monte Sion (thankfully, we usually drive up this hill.) The thing about the cold here is that not many places have heat so even though it never really gets below 57 degrees here, you feel every bit of cold in the air. I FaceTimed a friend the other night and they said, “Are you wearing two hoodies right now?” Yes. Yes, I am. Sometime else interesting about winter here is that it’s always foggy—not so much in the roadways, but up in the sky. Lima is a desert, so it never rains, but what I didn’t expect is that it’s never sunny here either. So when the sun does peak out—you celebrate it. Anyway, spring gets here in October and we’re definitely ready for things to warm up! Until then, we're bundling up with layers and blankets and drink lots of hot tea.

 6. What do you do during down time?

We haven’t really gotten into the routine of having free time yet either. Katrina and I are trying to get on a workout schedule and that’s definitely something we want to do in our free time. Other than that, we’ve watched a few movies on Netflix, work on our Spanish with an app called DuoLingo and get on the internet. The internet here is patchy, but it’s been really nice to be able to communicate back home with it.

 7. What are church services like?

From what I can tell, they’re pretty standard—but do remember that I don’t speak Spanish yet and I have left more than one sermon a little unclear on what we were talking about. The main thing that is different, from what I can tell, is the music. My home congregation's music was centered around the piano and we don’t have one at either congregation I’ve been to in Peru. Here, they’re really into clapping and doing hand motions with the music and let me tell you—it can be a little hard to sing words you don’t know or understand while trying to stay on beat with the clapping and hand motions (especially if you already had no sense of rhythm.) Regardless, music has been my favorite part of church so far, because it transcends the language barrier.  

 8. Have you seen dogs?

Yes—we see multiple dogs every day. There are quite a few that live in the streets here and even more when we go to Monte Sion. People also have dogs as pets and a lot of them like to hang out on the roofs—so at least once a day I’ll glance up and notice a pair of eyes looking down at me. Sometimes when we drive the dogs bark and chase the car, but really we’ve had no problems—and I prefer to keep it that way.  

9. Is there a Wal*Mart or McDonalds?           

I’ve seen at least three McDonalds and the ones here serve fried chicken too—and speaking of chicken, Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) is a big thing here. Like I said--they eat a lot of chicken here. I’ve also seen a few other American food places—Chiles, Papa John’s, Burger King, Tony Roma’s and Starbucks. I haven’t seen a Wal*Mart here, but we’ve gone to a place called Tottus, which is pretty much the Chilean version of Wal*Mart (and also happens to be in Peru.)

10. Other Tid Bits:

-Our host family has a cat named Tommy, and when I don’t finish my meal he gets my table scraps. I like Tommy, but he has a tendency to “MEOOOOOW” during the night—and in those moments, I don’t love Tommy.

-IncaKola is my favorite drink I’ve had here. It’s a Coca-Cola product that I believe is exclusive to Peru. It’s bring yellow, like Mountain Dew, and has a bubble gum-ish taste to it. I’m not big on soda, but it’s pretty good.

-There is a lot of American music on the radio—Pitbull, Beyonce, Ne-Yo—you never know what you’re going to get. Monte Sion is about 40 minutes away and Fildelfia is about 20 minutes away, so we spent quite a lot of time in the car listening to music. The only thing I don't enjoy that I've heard on the radio is Gangnam Style--that song can just go away.

-Cell Phones are supposed to get stolen like hotcakes in Callao, so if I seem like I don’t post a lot of pictures, it’s because I'm not carrying my phone on me. A member of our congregation said she’s had three cell phones stolen here, one while she was using it! That being said, Katrina and I went on a run with our cell phones in our hands and we didn’t have any problems.

-Fanny Packs seem to be more socially acceptable here. I’ve seen more than one man wearing them, including Wilfredo!

-Katrina and I bought a pack of these candy bars called Sublime on one of our first days here and I LOVE them. I have to limit myself on them because they are just TOO delicious. If you get a chance to try Peruvian candy, that's definitely my recommendation.

-I’ve taken more cold showers here than hot—Katrina and I have come to accept it as a fact of life, but that doesn’t mean that we like it. Generally, your hands start to get a little numb by the time you’re done in there. Also—the water here turns off at 10:00 p.m. So all showers must be taken before then. Hand washing? Get some germ-x. Brushing your teeth? Use bottled water. Can’t flush the toilet? There’s a bucket of water in the bathroom—dump it in and hope everything goes down!  

-If you want to stay in touch, there are lots of ways! I’m still posting on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Vine. If you’re into Apps, you can get What’sApp, Voxer and SnapChat—all are great ways for me to stay in touch abroad!