Chicken and Rice and Everything Nice

So Thursday ended up being a little different than we had planned.  Instead of going to the park we took showers, ate lunch with Zara and her family and helped Zara's nephew weed their garden and dig up the grass.  It was fun since Sebastian knew English fairly well and we could ask him lots of questions.

The bus ride was great!  It was like flying first class expect you're on a bus.  Have you ever gone to the bathroom on a plane with turbulence?  Well windy Peru roads are not the smoothest so that was an adventure.  We had our third chicken and rice meal in 24 hours on the bus!!

When we arrived in Cajamarca there was supposed to be someone at the bus station to get us.  Nope.  Nada.  We didn't know what to do so we waited for a while and after 20 minutes Hermano Sandro showed up for us.  He was great and although he spoke no English we were able to communicate well with him and he helped us get a taxi to El Bichito.  He explained the taxi/ bus system to us and how much to pay, showed us where some things were around town and gave us a bunch of just general information.  Boy, we would have been toast without him.

This is going to sound super lame but I already wrote all of this in my journal and I don't want to write it all again so I'm going to put a short version on here and maybe I'll expand thoughts in later posts haha

Here's what's happened so far....
- We moved our stuff into the center
- Hermano Sandro took us to Banos del Inca to exchange some money, show us where church is and help us get some groceries.
- We helped prepare our first meal by peeling potatoes and sorting through the rice for any bugs or rocks
- We unexpectedly had kids come on Friday so we dove right into the reason we're here!  My Spanish is terrible but the kids just laugh, shake their heads and try to figure out what I'm trying to say.  They are great and so adorable.
- Two of the girls wrote me the sweetest little note!  I will post it later :)
- My name pronounced in Spanish is A-bee-guy-eel which is way too long for little kids so I'm going by Abbi (memory lane to eighth grade hahahahaha)
- An hour after we sent the kids home a bunch of them showed up at our door knocking and yelling our names.  We ignored them, not wanting to encourage them to be over here after hours, and figuring they would leave after a few minutes, but they stayed for over an HOUR.  It was hilarious.
- Our first night we didn't have running water or electricity AND we thought someone was breaking in but it was just Feliciana's (the woman who does the food for the center) husband and son.  Regardless, I don't think I've been more scared in my entire life.
- My biggest worry so far is the sanitation/ food situation.  Our kitchen is disgusting in American standards.  I thought being a health science major would be good for this but it's more of a curse as I am fully aware of 30-40 diseases I could easily pick up.
- Yesterday we went to Banos del Inca and explored a little.  We are definitely the freak shows on the street.  We did see one other white guy though!  Everyone is out to heat us out of money and I have a feeling we'll be swindled many times during our stay haha
- Today we went to church which was excellent!  I followed most of the Sunday School lesson since I already know the story and can follow along in the scriptures.  Most people were super nice and we met the previous intern from El Bichito who married a Peruvian guy and they both speak English!!!  HUZZAH!  They were so sweet and I'm glad we have an American and Peruvian friend now.
- I saw a lady herding cows down the middle of the street.
- We cooked a fantastic meal last night...quinoa, beans, peppers, garlic, onions and celery.  Our current refrigerator is a large bowl with freezing cold water.  We do have a fridge but it's not plugged in because it has three prongs and they only have two prong outlets.....
- We discovered we have an oven yesterday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Oh it was a happy moment.
- We did P90X last night to try and get hot before taking an ice cold shower.  Noelle and Brittany did get in the whole shower while I opted to just wash my hair last night.  The last time I had a full shower was Thursday morning.  Gross.  But we feel we've been blessed since none of us can smell each other.

The front of the center...they're putting in a street out front so we hear construction all day.

With a few of my new friends doing a puzzle! 

The crazy houses on the mountain in Lima.

I'm still in culture shock and wondering what the heck I'm doing here.  This will definitely be the hardest thing I've ever done.  I hope that in the next month we'll get the hang of things and how Peru works.

I will make sure to write more later and add more pictures but they take FOREVER to upload and I don't have a converter for my laptop yet so I'm borrowing Brittany's.

Keep us in your prayers as we most definitely need them!