A Day To Remember

I feel like everyday I start each journal entry with the following line:

I LOVE PERU! Today was the best day ever!!!

Because it's true. Everyday is the best day ever. But today, was EXCEPTIONALLY awesome and here's why.

1. We saw the sun. We haven't seen it in days. It's been raining and raining and raining, but we saw it this morning on our run.

2. We went on one of our “hill run”, straight up and enormous hill and then all the way down the long way followed by P 90 Ab Ripper X. 

3. After a delicious breakfast of eggs, tomato, garlic, gouda and avacado we showered and became clean!

4. We had an awesome day with the ninos. We split up into three teams and did relays. I had team Anaranjado and let me tell you, we were bomb. I loooved my team and they did so well at just about everything (except they pretty much stunk at leap frog :).

We decorated our score sheets/banners to promote team spirit

Here's what we played: (I had to make up spanish names for all of them...so they're kind of odd :)

-Piedras y cucharas:  Where you carry a rock on a spoon and run with it.

-Salta como un conejo: Sack race

-Lava Caliente: Where you have to get from start to finish using only two pieces of paper and without touching the ground

-Matematicas Maestria (something like that): See which team could complete the most math flash cards in two minutes. Abby TOTALLY cheated for her team, but it was needed :)

-Rana Rapido: Leap Frog

The kids loved it and totally got into it. And my team came in second place overall! I was so proud :)

After all the points were tallied up, we gave out the trophies. By this time it was only about 2pm, so we still had another hour with the kids, but we were worn out! So we sat and let the girls braid our hair while we read stories. 

Tender Mercy: It didn't rain one single drop during our whole time outside. Seriously this is remarkable and we were so grateful. However, the moment our festivities ended today, the rain came, and it poured and poured and poured! Coincidence? I think not.

5. We went to a bake-sale-ish type fundraiser. We didn't know what was going on really and ended up sitting around for two and a half hours (when in reality, we could have been in and out in 10 minutes) Oh well! We got these yummy fried things called Picadoras? Something like that. They were delicious!

6. While we were sitting and waiting during the aforementioned bake sale, we met three new friends. Jorge, Robert y Charlie. Robert and Charlie were both R.M's studying in Cajamarca. Kayla Starbuck, if you're reading this, tell your brother that I met a boy who served with him! Jorge! 

We found out that they are going to the same YSA convention later this month as us, and we decided that we wanted to make friends with them, and so we did! It was so fun talking to them, and then it was time to go. So they left and then we left maybe 30 seconds later.

This is where the story gets good.

7. While we were walking out, we noticed that it was a little after six, which is about the time places to eat start opening in Banos, so we decided we wanted to treat ourselves to Pizza! Brittany says, "Lets invite our new friends!" who at this point were several hundred feet in front of us. Without much thought, Brittany runs down the road to stop our friends and invite them to pizza. As she was leaving she yelled to us, "Is it, 'Nosotros Pizza Comer?' " Before we could tell her that, no, that is not how you properly invite someone to eat pizza, she was off and running.

Me and Abby started busting up laughing. Then we noticed that we were right in the middle of a bus stop with people all around us. And guess what? They were all cracking up too! There was a tall, white, blonde girl blabbing off some random Spanish words and running down the side walk after three Peruvian guys. EVERYONE was laughing. I was dying. 

8. Well, a minute or two later, Brittany returned! With our new Peruvian friends! They had miraculously been able to decipher her message and off we went to get pizza. The pizza cost us about ten bucks, and it was probably half as good as a $5 Little Caesars Hot and Ready. Peru and pizza? Not the best combination, but it was so much fun! 

And here's what else, we're counting it as a date. Now, don't get too excited, because 1. We Planned it 2. We were Paired off (well not really, but there were three girls and three boys) and 3. We Paid for it. 

So the three P's of a date were there....but we were the boys in the situation. But we justified it because we're south of the equator, things are all sorts of scrambled up down here :)

Over all, it was a way fun day! We loved every minute of it!

Also, Happy Birthday Trav! We have a present for you, but didn't have time to ship it off to you today!
-Elia

Death By Way of Confession

If I happen to die during my time here, I blame it purely on our night of confessions.

I know I’ve mentioned this hundreds of times. But our house is covered in mold. Mainly our ceilings. Black mold, green mold, grey mold, fuzzy mold, And to be honest, it scares me to death! I’ve been reading up/studying it and have found that when you breathe in mold it begins to colonize in your lungs and grow there!  And then I’m sure, shortly after… you die. I also read that you are a bit safer if you don’t disrupt the mold by trying to scrape/scrub it off. Brittany however is just itching to get to work on the ceiling and take off that mold in any way that she can. So I have had to sit her down and make her PINKY PROMISE not to disturb the mold. And she has obliged, because she knows how much I would really love to not die!

This picture does not do it justice. It was taken on our first day here. Since then, it has multiplied 100 fold. No joke.

Anyways, last night was a night to remember (and it will be, because we got it all on video). We were whipping egg whites (by hand) to try and make them into some sort of dessert, but we were not having very much success. So I whipped out my video camera and asked the other girls questions and what not about our time here. While we were talking, Abby let a confession slip. 

We were telling our video diary about the mold, and Brittany was telling it about how I would not let her touch the mold. Then Abby says, “We’ll blame it on Feliciana!” I didn’t really catch on to what was going on until the confession totally slipped out.

Here’s what it is: That morning, Abigail had run upstairs (where our bedrooms are) to grab something and found Feliciana, with a broom in hand, scraping mold off of the ceiling!!! AKA: Horribly disrupting the mold and sending it into the air where it could oh so easily find it’s way right into my lungs!!!!

Abigail was shocked when she saw this and needed to tell somebody, so she told Brittany and made her promise not to tell me. How sweet is that? She knew that I would be totally freaked out if I knew that Feliciana was taking a broom to the moldy ceiling every day! So she didn’t tell me, until it slipped out last night.  Brittany topped it off with her line of the night, “Yeah Noelle, you were going to be saved by ignorance, but now that you know… you’re going to die”

And it was downhill from there. As soon as Abigail’s confession slipped out, Brittany says, “Wait I have one! Yesterday, when I took the chicken out of our fridge for dinner… it dropped all over the floor! But we still ate it!”

Then Abigail replied, “Remember when Pedro gave us those chocolates? Well… I dropped those all over the floor!” And then went on and on from there (most confessions of which cannot be posted here J )

So we’re a bit worse off than I thought we were…but alas, we’re still up and kicking and having a great time!

Also, have I mentioned lately how great Abigail and Brittany are? Cause they are purely amazing. We are 3 COMPLETELY different people. The more we get to know each other and see each other in different situations the more we realize how opposite we are. But the compilation of the three of us is something beautiful. We truly complement each other so nicely.  And I love them!

Who Says You Can't Have It All

I do.

Here's Why:

Yesterday (Monday) we had the most perfect day in the whole world….almost. At around 3 o clock, I was ready to pack my bags and leave Peru for good. I was done.

Here’s what happened. It was the perfect morning where we went on our run without being viciously terrorized by one single dog (see previous post). We got all our shopping done for the week and we sat outside and basked in the beautiful sun while we prepared the day’s lesson.  

Today’s lunch menu consisted of lentils AND a fried egg. My favorite lunch by far. Melchora even let me get two helpings of lentils! My favorite little boy Antony (who only comes on occasion) was there that morning, happy as ever.

 Life was so good!

Until one punk kid came and ruined everything. 

He was maybe 15 or 16 (it’s hard to tell ages cause lots of people are short). He had a leather jacket and a mohawk with stairsteps shaved on either side of his head. All he needed was gages and a tongue piercing. Anyways, some of my little boys were playing outside and before I knew it, that punk was chucking rocks and throwing punches at my ninos. Now, my little ninos were at fault as well I’m sure, they were spitting and trying to fight back. But I was so stinking mad at this punk kid (I think his name is Jose) and one of my older boys (Luis) who were just being big, fat bullies. I was super disappointed in Luis, because I really like him and he has potential.  Long story short after much loud talking at them and trying to hold back my kids and lock them in the center, I finally got the boys to leave. I was exhausted though. I had crying boys, I had yelling  boys, I had angry boys trying to get past me and find a way back outside. Keep in mind that all of this was going on in a different language.

Finally 3 o clock came and the kids left. I went upstairs and laid on my bed, so exhausted. We had plans to go see a waterfall with our friends at 3:30 and I just did not want to go. 

Well after about 15 minutes of wallowing and napping, I hopped out of bed and we headed down into Banos to meet up with our friends. We ended up going to Cajamarca and had an amazing time! We had our first red meat in a long, long time and ate some amazing hamburgers. Later that night (like at 8ish, our friends (Liz, Miguel, Pedro and Alecksi) came over for FHE or Hogar Noche.. (I think). It was so much fun, we did it half in English and half in Spanish. We played Nertz, ate popcorn, had an awesome discussion on the scriptures and Liz and Miguel brought us some awesome sweet bread that was SO good!
 

Cajamarca

Three of our AMAZING new friends

Cajamarca is an interesting city

We died and went to heaven whilst eating this burgers!

FHE!

After our friends left we just basked in how great that day had been. The three of us stayed up and told embarrassing stories and laughed all night long. Finally we popped in a chick flick and hit the hay.

It was a nearly perfect day. It had a fantastic beginning, an amazing ending and just a minor bump in the road somewhere down the middle.

Sickness Strikes

So as we were contemplating the fact that we had spent one whole week in Peru, we were so amazed that none of us had gotten even the slightest bit sick yet! They told us that within 2 or 3 days our systems would freak out and get us down, but we were all feeling strong… until we said that.

We’ve had a contest going on to see who could go the longest with out getting sick. I must regretfully inform you that I was the first to go.

Last night as we were story swapping I began to notice that my throat was really sore and my nose was stuffed up. I woke up the next morning feeling like I had been hit by a truck, but decided to try and shake it off. We went on our usual morning run down into Banos and that was quite the mistake. I was ready to collapse/throw up/ cough up a lung/have my head explode/shiver to death/die… you name it, I was feeling it. But, not wanting to be the weak link, I kept trying to shake it off and suggested that instead of taking the bus up the very incredibly steep hill home, we should climb up it. What were you thinking Elia?!? 

One foot in front of the other. Just keep moving. You’re almost there.

 And finally, we did make it back to El Bichito. I staggered up the stairs and made it half way onto my bed before I collapsed and slept for who knows how long. I woke up to find that the kids were here and lunch was almost ready. Not wanting to miss a day with the kids (especially since it’s Friday and I won’t get to see them til MONDAY!!!) I decided that I was feeling well enough to go down and play with them. Mistake number three. It was soooo good to see them and have them tease me and hug me and beg me to read to them, but the chaos and moving around did me in. I ate my lunch of rice, arvejas and a deep fried egg and then headed back up to bed. 

How could I not want to spend the day with these kids??

They even do my hair for me!

 I’m feeling pretty good now, except for the fact that I have zippo energy.  Abbi and Brit are in Banos getting some groceries and I miss them already! I haven’t done hardly anything productive today, although I did make my bed and I uploaded a lot of new posts and pictures to facebook. Enjoy!

One Week Celebration!

Last night we celebrated our one week anniversary in Peru. We partied hard, get this:

We treated ourselves to one funsized candybar each… BEFORE dinner! Best Reeses cup I have ever tasted in my entire life.  Then we made tuna veggie patties for dinner along with fresh avocado and pineapple. We also broke into our milk (which is chalked full of sugar!) After that we popped us some popcorn over the gas burner and covered it in cinnamon sugar. 

We took it upstairs and the three of us plopped down onto Abigail and Mine’s bed and cuddled up in our blankets and ate popcorn as we watched 2 full episodes of Full House. It was bliss. 

By around nine o clock (we have a strict 10 pm bedtime) we turned off the laptop and laid in bed and swapped more boy stories. The cute ones, the embarrassing ones and I shared my “Worst Date Ever” story. I felt like I did pretty much most the talking last night, (Abigail has been going to town with boy stories the last couple days ago, and we still need to get more out of Brit) but it was so fun to remember some of my stories and share them. I have some pretty good ones.

And then I believe we were all asleep by 10:30. Which is pretty impressive seeing as Abigail and I have stayed up talking til about 11:30-12:00 the last several nights. It was a great way to celebrate our one-week-iversasry. Don’t worry, we have even bigger plans for our one month anniversary. We might even plan our weddings that night….oooooo!

Love Notes

It is inevitable. I am in love with small Peruvian children. And from the looks of it,  they kind of like me too! 

Today I got five different love notes from my lovely little friends. 

If I had to choose a favorite child for today, it'd by Luz Elena. She is amazing!

From my mischievous little Aurora

This is from 16-year-old Marco, such a sweetheart!

From little Erlita, it came in a cute homemade envelope

They all pretty much say the same thing, things like, “ I love you so much, you are my best friend, you are happy, beautiful and nice. You are like a Princess” (Thank you google translator for telling me what the children are saying to me!) It was also nice to see that they wrote my name "E-l-i-a" I wasn't really sure how to spell it, cause I keep thinking it's "Ellia". Ohhh they make me so happy! 

I seriously fall more and more in love with them every single day, although they seem to have forgotten that we don’t speak very much Spanish. On the first day they were really good about only using small words and not talking very quickly, but maybe it’s just because they were shy. 

Nowadays they are totally comfortable with us and talking at a million miles an hour. 

This sounds weird, but I love to study their faces. They are all so unique and so beautiful in such a natural way! Their skin is gorgeous and their hair is the thickest stuff I’ve ever felt in my life.

These are my boys! I eat my lunch with them and they tease me like crazy. Today they told me that my boyfriend was in love with another woman. When I began to cry they all hugged me and told me I was pretty :)

These dolls are SO good to us. They are so patient with us and help us speak correctly.

This is Ana Maria showing off the bracelet we taught her to make!

 They love to give hugs run up and tickle me when they think I’m not looking. They can be such pills at times and be getting into things they aren’t supposed to, but I can’t even get mad at them (I don’t really know the right words to do so and by the time I find some suitable words, I’m already over it because they’ve melted me with their sweet, little, mischievous smile.)

At night time we can hear them banging on our doors and shouting our names, begging for us to come out and play with them. It's adorable! 

Ahhh I just can't say it enough. Coming to Peru has got to be one of the best decisions I've ever made. I'm learning and changing so much everyday. The things that once meant the world to me are just details that have completely faded away. I've become so grateful for the little things like running water and  electricity (ours are both shut off every day with out notice, but we've learned to do without). 

I can't believe it's not even been a week since we've been here. For sure the hardest week of my life, as drastic as that sounds, but I wouldn't trade it for the world!

Sheer Exhaustion and Our Very First FHE

We had our first FHE this past Monday. It was an exhausting day to say the least. We sorted through lentils for hours ran around with the kids and then had to go into Cajamarca (a huge city) and try and figure out what the man who took us was saying. When we talk to any adults, like Hermano Sandro, they usually direct their words to me, so I am in charge of trying to figure out what they say and then try to figure out an appropriate response.

After about an hour of that, I feel like I have just sat in the testing center for 3 hours taking a test that I knew nothing about, yet I needed to try super hard because my life and two other lives depended on it. It is the most mentally exhausting and draining thing I have ever done. 

 As soon as we got off the bus from Cajamarca I found a chair and just sat. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t think, and when I went to offer a prayer on our dinner I couldn’t even find the correct English words to begin the prayer. I felt as if my brain had literally turned to mush.

After a lovely dinner of dry fish, celery, bean sprouts and mushrooms  we went upstairs to our bedroom for FHE. We wanted to sing our opening song in Castellano so we went to LDS.org and just picked a random one. It happened to be “Lead Kindly Light” Appropriate song for our situation? I think so! “The night is dark and I am far from home, lead thou me on.” We then read out of the second half of 2^nd Nephi 4 and applied what we read to ourselves and found ways that we could use it to improve our time here. For our closing song we sang, “I’ll Go Where You Want Me to Go Dear Lord” I’ve come to LOVE the words in all three verses.

For activity we accidentally stayed up all night to tell each other about our past and current love life situations. Without giving too much away, lets just say that I have never laughed harder in my entire life. Turns out we've all been in the same boat in multiple ways and we're a lot more alike than we thought. Perfect way to end an exhausting day.

#14 Obtain a Spanish Nickname

This one came sooner than I was expecting. I introduced myself to Feliciana as Noelle. She said, “Ahhh Noellia!” So I went with it and became Noellia. When the kids came on that very first day, I introduced myself to them as Noellia. They quickly shortened that to “Elia”( El- lee-ah). I absolutely love it! I’ve always wanted a nickname and now I have a super cute one! 

There is a group of boys that have taken a liking to teasing me, but they call me Belia. One of the boys told me that it was because I was “Bella” or beautiful and my name was Elia, so they combined it.

That same group of boys also called me “Pared” for about an hour. 

This is the ring leader of my squad of attackers. We think his name is Diego.. but we're not sure :)

My boys!

 Here’s how they justified it:

Pared means wall, the walls in the center are the color yellow. They know their colors in English and the way they pronounce yellow kind of sounds like Yell-oh-ah. And that kind of sort of sounded like Elia (me) to them. Thus they called me pared, but only for a bit. I’m back to Elia or Belia, or Elia Belia. Either way, I have been given a Castellano nickname and I love it!