Welcome to Peru, where you´re living in dirt, the houses are stores, and the lines on the road don´t matter.

Ok first I´ll touch on a few highlights this week.  We went and climbed a mountain of sand, which was really fun, but we had to take our lunch, so we ate fried rice on the top of a mountain in the sand.  It was very much a "This is Peru" moment. 

 

 

 

Then we had a dance at the church for Halloween, but seeing as how we can´t dance, we just basically sat at the food table and ate...we´re helpful. 

 

But, it was an alright week, not the most successful, but I have a feeling that this week we are going to find more people.  We set two baptismal dates this week, but they failed to go to church, so we are back to square one, but we keep working!  

 So now I´ll describe a little bit about Peru, for those of you who don´t care, you can stop reading.  Alright, here we go.  Just a disclaimer, I´m not complaining about anything in Peru.  I love it, I´m just going to give you a better picture of how it is here.

First of all, it´s really really dirty.  There is dirt EVERYWHERE. You can´t walk barefoot in the houses because the floors are dirty pretty much immediately after you sweep.  There are also a lot of people that don´t shower real frequently, so they´re aren´t super clean.  They´re also not real big on being sanitary.  It´s kind of an "anything goes" attitude.  One time I bought cereal from the mercado and there was a rock in it....it was a good time.  Also, I mentioned before there are dogs everywhere, which means that there is also dog poop everywhere.  It´s a little gross, but you just gotta watch where you step.  

 Typical breakfast - drinkable yogurt and cereal. 

 Street Market. 

 

Secondly,  there are little stores in the houses.  In the U.S. stores are stores, and houses are houses.  Here there are so many houses that have little stores in their living rooms that sell snacks, some have household stuff like toilet paper, shampoo, or dish soap and you just buy it through the front window.  Really, probably every two or three houses has a store.  Which also makes you want to buy snacks all the time.  The best is teaching people who have them, so then sometimes they give you free food.  It´s awesome.

 

 Getting around in style. 

The parades that they do here where they carry around a saint with music and stuff.  The other night they were talking to the saint. 

Thirdly, the traffic.  There has been a study of the places with the worst driving.  Somewhere in Ghana, Africa was number one.  Lima, Peru was number two.  It is crazy.  I touched a little bit on this before, but there are no rules.  You just have to hope for the best.  I´m super grateful that I don´t have to drive here.  There are speed bumps every 1/4 mile because if there weren´t, the people would be going 100mph down the roads.  Also, in places like New York, you have to hail the taxis, here, they hail you.  If you are walking down the street, they will honk or shout something to see if you need a taxi.  They aren´t road signs, so they just drive however they want.

Hermana Rios and Hermana Ahern - always smiling!!  The bottom picture is the view from the roof of their apartment building. 

 

Alright, there´s is a little bit of Peru, if you have any questions feel free to ask. Everyone have a wonderful week!