Lima from every angle

Ello mates! A few updates from your favorite S.A. backpackers...

First of all, we have adopted a full-time teacher's schedule here at MCS. We start at 9 am and run around all day, bopping in and out of classrooms. We are kind of like teachers on reserve. Ms. Renae and Ms. Jenna. At any moment we can be hunted down and told to teach an English lesson, proctor a test, or take over the 1^st grade class for an entire day. (Which we did last week when their teacher called in sick. We tried to teach some of the lessons, but mostly just had them color about 6 pictures. Hey, nobody died so I'd call it a win.) Then, after we get done with 7-yr-old crowd control at the end of the day, we walk home to work on teachers' requests: grading, posters, etc. At the end of the days we're pretty beat, but it is so great to be able to help out the staff there, and get to know and love up on the kids. It's going to be hard to leave Lima in two weeks.

Then, on Friday, we bused to one of the outskirt neighborhoods of Lima called Manchay. An

 organization called Kids Alive started an elementary school there, in one of the poorest parts of town, surrounded by shack-covered hills and dusty, desert streets. We were welcomed in and put to work in the 3 and 4-yr-old rooms for the day. We also got to meet the women of their education program for mothers. Ten local mothers, some as young as 16, are enrolled in a year-long program to be taught childcare, trades like sewing and jewelry-making, and religious education. The day was filled with new faces and, as usual, more discoveries about the broad and diverse need for help in this world. Yet another expansion of my heart, mind, and world-view and being blessed with another opportunity to reach out to God's people... I could never get bored of this.

On the weekends, we get to check out what Lima has to offer: the beaches, the markets, some museums, and, of course, THE FOOD. We toured the catacombs in the basement of an old cathedral and saw piles of skulls from the 1600's. We went body-boarding on a beach called Los Pulpos (The Octopi) where I almost got sucked out to sea during a no-swim advisory in 6-ft waves. Good thing I'm such a pro-athlete/swimmer and paddled back in-shore before I was lost to the Pacific forever. Also, we joined thousands of Peruvians in the main market in downtown Lima this weekend and pushed and shoved through blocks and blocks of vendors with everything from replica jerseys and pirated movies to medicinal herbs and llamas. Busting through, a man attempted to unzip Jenna's backpack and scout for valuables, but luckily we both noticed him immediately and were spared. I watched him step away and dip down an alley, knowing there was nothing in her bag to steal anyways. Sadly, that stuff actually happens, no ignoring it.

Foodwise, we've been pretty loyal to our popcorn-for-dinner-every-night regimen, except for when we explore the city and end up eating mollusks, cow intestine, or whatever else random thing we find to try. Also, why has no one ever told me how delish Arabic food is?! There is something very wrong with the fact that I hadn't tried it until a week ago. And I now understand the South American obsession with it. YUM.

 

In animal rescue news, we adopted another pet bird last week. A baby flycatcher named Benjamín. The first graders found him in the park and we took him home to give him some food for a few days until he would be able to fly. Unfortunately, the cat got to him before he took off. All I found was a pile of feathers and a mini chicken leg one day when I went outside. That makes my bird adoption track record 0 for 2. Maybe I need a new hobby?

R.I.P. Ben

I almost forgot, we also celebrated Easter here last weekend as well. On Thursday night we were invited by one of the MCS teachers to another one of the poor neighborhoods of Lima for an Easter play about the Resurrection. It was put on by the church under a big circus tent that they use for medical missions in the jungle. The second we got there, Jen and I were swarmed by the scrubby neighborhood kids and asked a million questions: Where are you from? Why is Jenna's hair yellow? How do you say “Pedro” in English?... We realized they were the neighborhood street-rats, with dirty clothes and no parents in sight. BUT they were adorable, so we kind of adopted them for the next 2 hours during the show. By the end, we each had one of the littlest ones on our laps. 3-yr-old Liliana, scared of one of the scenes in the play, came and sat on mine and fell asleep half-way through. Adorable. The show was good. The costumes and music were pretty comical, but the story was, of course, powerful. At the end, the kids rounded each other up and left to go to their scrappy houses. Jenna and I were sad we couldn't spend more time with them. It seems like every neighborhood could use some extra volunteers to love up on the kids who are left behind... Then for Easter Sunday we went to church and came home to make a big brunch and Skype our families. It was so good to see them, and my little sisters look way too old...

Well, I could go on about details and stories, but what is even more important to us right now has been an adventure that is not so easily-explainable. Our time in Lima has not been so much a physical journey, in the places we're seeing and things we're doing, but a mental one.  Along the trip, God has undoubtedly been changing our hearts, preparing us for this life. And with the trip heading into the final weeks, it is hard not to wonder what He has planned for us next. In the last 7 months, Jenna and I have been able to have deep conversations with people from every walk of life, collecting ideas and inspiration to help guide us. Now, working at MCS, we are surrounded by these amazing Christians all the time: a staff that does not hesitate to share their stories or to reach out and offer guidance to two young backpackers curious about the future. No doubt He is using some of them to help direct us toward something. I always tell God I am ready for the next thing. I will say yes to anything put in my path. Until then, I'll just hold on tight and enjoy every second of the ride. 

And as for making a real life plan, I figure I still have a couple more years before it's crunch-time...

 

51 more days as a Peruvian,

Nae

A Taste of the Teacher Life

First things first: we're officially lice free, woop! I still feel like that isn't an announcement I should be having to make at this point in my life but what can you do. After a week long quarantine we were pretty excited about it.

Since we are finally bug free, we have officially joined the ranks of teachers at Monterrico Christian School. And of course, we absolutely LOVE it. It is a bilingual school, so although the kids are all native Spanish speakers, they have most of their classes entirely in English. The school goes from preschool all the way to 11th grade, which is the year they graduate high school, so it's a good variety. Renae and I basically help with anything and everything the other teachers need: homework corrections, art projects, organizational projects, and classroom help. We spend lots of time in the library helping kids pick out books, and lots of time reading to different classes. Renae has mainly taken on the 2nd graders, whereas I spend the most time with the kindergartners. Don't worry, I've only gotten gum stuck in my hair once and had to clean poop off one shoe so far, so doing pretty good I'd say. We have been put on the spot multiple times to take over classes, and although we obviously haven't been trained to be teachers and usually end up improvising quite a bit, we love it! Today we even got to give an hour and a half long presentation to the 10th and 11th graders about our trip so far. They were especially interested in hearing about our jungle adventures and the backpacker lifestyle, and we had way too much fun getting to show them lots of pictures and everything we lug around in our packs. Basically, the kids are all SO much fun, the teachers are all incredibly friendly, and we've found ourselves adopted right into the amazing little community the school has around it. I can already tell you there's NO WAY we're going to be ready to leave in a month.

We've also had the chance to check out a couple other volunteering sites in Lima. Last Wednesday night we went with the principal Nancy and 2nd grade teacher Gail to visit the kids at an orphanage across town. It is mostly older kids, and lots of teenagers, so we had lots of fun getting to know them and plan to go back at least once a week to hang out there. Then on Friday we toured a prenatal center, which I was especially interested in seeing after my work at the hospital. We are definitely trying to take advantage of all the different site hook-ups we have here in Lima and plan to check out at least a couple more as soon as we can.

Don't worry, we've definitely had time for lots of fun stuff too, once all the correcting is done. We already feel like family with our roomie Natalie, and she and her Peruvian fiance are always dragging us around and showing us things. They took us to the mall (we now have school-appropriate-non-trail-clothes... pretty exciting), brought us to church, and introduced us to some of their friends. One veryyy early morning last weekend, Renae, Natalie, and I along with a couple other teachers from the school went for surfing lessons, too! We obviously made fools of ourselves but all managed to stand up at least a few times and had TONS of fun. We plan to rent some boards and practice on our own this weekend so we'll be pros before you know it. One day we spent over an hour talking to a man in the park about his pet vulture, which was a whole lot more interesting for Renae than it was for me, but still very cool. He had the thing trained to fly straight to his arm from across the park when he called it! We have also tried some new Peruvian foods, although I wimped out on eating the squid. It was straight whole; looked like it was alive just 5 minutes ago! So no thanks on that one.

Basically we already feel at home in this amazing country, and can't think of any better way to spend the next month than loving up on all the little cuties at the school and exploring the city. Let the adventures continue!

Eating popcorn on the daily (we're all of a sudden addicted, don't ask),
Jenna Flynn

Bugs

Our time in Argentina was filled with birds, but here in Peru we've moved onto a different creature. I'll get to that in a minute though...

So, Jen's last blog left us spending our last of the 90 tourist-visa-permitted days of Argentina in the capital. We tried to cram in everything that we possibly could to make the most of only a few days in Buenos Aires: hands-down thee most beautiful city I have ever visited. (I know I say that a lot, but I'm dead serious this time!) Let's just say I completely fell in love with the city. It only added to the immense list of things I adored about that country. All of which made it harder to leave. And though it was bittersweet, last Thursday morning we packed up our bags, and lugged them (and 3 days worth of food) down to the street to grab a taxi to the bus terminal. We would be busing from Buenos Aires, over 70 hours, to Lima, Peru. I don't think it fully hit us until we were in the cab: "Wait...... 3 straight days on a bus!? The bathrooms on those things are disgusting after, like, one day! Are they even gonna feed us!? Did we bring enough food!? Do they ever let you off at all?!"... After a minor freak out, we decided it couldn't be that bad. Plus, we already bought the tickets, so our fate was sealed. "This may or may not be the biggest mental test we've come across so far..." 

And, at first, it was. Every other time we had bused in Argentina, we got these nice, double-decker buses, with big cushy seats that fully reclined, breakfast service, and decent tvs. (These people have their cross-country traveling down). This time though, after already waiting 2 extra hours, we climbed up the bus steps to a brutal reality. Small, plastic-covered seats which kind of halfway reclined. The air-conditioning BLASTING. A tv which cut in and out and had no sound... Yea, they definitely wouldn't be serving us breakfast either. Our home for the next 3 days could not have been any worse. Since Jenna and I know how our luck usually falls, it was pretty much already expected that we would end up on the scrubbiest thing possible to trek across the continent. How could it not be?

So, for 3 days, we sat on this bus. We were let out (I feel like I'm talking about puppies) at least once a day, to eat dinner, use the rest-stops (where people showered up... Do you think we thought of bringing shampoo? No.), and to cross the borders. We passed the Argentina-Chile border on Friday night, and the Chile-Peru border Saturday morning. During my final hours in Buenos Aires I had to go to the US Embassy to get an emergency passport to leave the country since mine was in the backpack I lost in Mendoza. They had handed me a flimsy passport book with a sticker printed with my information. So besides for some suspicion about that, we passed inspection and were let into Peru. It went by way faster than I thought actually, and the views on the drive were amazing. (And, by the grace of God, we switched buses half-way as well, upgrading to fabric chairs and fully-functioning tvs. Nice.) 

Sunday morning, we rolled up to the bus terminal in Lima. We had finally made it!!! "Okay, God, it was hard to leave Argentina, but I know you have more plans for us here in Peru, more lessons to teach, and more people out there for us to help. We said we would do anything you put in front of us, so we are ready for the next thing, whatever it is." He's funny that guy...

LICE. That is what the next adventure has been. For the last 4 days, Jenna and I have been getting to know the back of each other's heads better than we ever wanted to. Nancy, the principal of Monterrico Christian School, where we will be volunteering the next 4-6 weeks, picked us up from the terminal on Sunday. She drove us to the school's neighborhood, and dropped us off at the house that we are staying in during our time here. The place is beautiful, equipped with a living room, dining room, kitchen, enough rooms for everyone to have their own (for the first time in 6 months!), and thee most adorable roommate: Natalie, the 5th grade teacher at MCS. Jenna and I would get to know the house VERY well, considering the fact that we would be cooped-up, de-licing it and all the items we own. I came to the breakfast table Monday morning and told Jen, "I have bad news. I have lice. And since we just sat a foot away from each other for 3 days, you probably do too. I don't know where we got them (probably the bus itself), but we have to tell the school...". Great. Natalie and Nancy were so accommodating in collecting us and making us feel at home, which is why it sucked to send an email explaining that their new volunteers were "unable to come in... because we have lice". Kill me. We felt terrible that on our first week we would be unable to start, and very embarrassed for the extreme level of scrubbiness we had reached... They only laughed though (as well as our moms back home) when we told them. "At least you noticed it before you came into the school! Maybe God is telling you to relax a little bit. You can come in as soon as all your 'friends' are gone."  

Picking lice out of Jenna's hair isn't exactly under the heading: My Go-To Ways to Relax, but it hasn't been that bad actually. The quarantine has let us catch up on some non-bus sleep and take a few breaths after all the insane moving around at the end of Argentina. So other than the 5 hours a day we spend searching, and getting searched, for little lice eggs, life's good as usual. Needless to say, we haven't exactly experienced Peru yet, so no cool cultural stories, but Jen will have to fill you in on that next week (assuming we're able to rejoin society at some point soon). We did eat cow heart last night though, which was so delish.

And just to paint a picture for you...

The Combined Lice Count:

Monday: Over 100, for sure (Yea, 3 days on a bus without a shower... it was bad.)

Tuesday: 16

Wednesday (today): 8, Definitely making some progress

Oh yea, and the tsunami didn't hit Lima. We're still alive.

Wondering how many other 23-yr-olds have lice right now,

Nae