I Shall Never Complain Again

The following is a list of things that I never thought twice about having my whole life. And now that I'm doing without, I have vowed to never take them for granted again.

Washer and Dryer- Have you ever tried to dry your clothes outside in a humid place where it rains EVERY SINGLE DAY? It’s pretty difficult, because your clothes never truly get dry, and they never truly smell the same ever again. It’s unfortunate.  Also, washing clothes in the sink was fun for the first… ohhh 12 or so articles of clothing. Try ringing out a pair of jeans. Followed by two jackets, a blanket and 6 BYU-Idaho T-shirts. It’s a work out.

Clean water- 

Making top ramen? Hot Cocoa? Soup? Brushing your teeth? Anything that you “Just add water” to? No big deal in the States. Big deal in Peru. The water isn’t clean and must be boiled before consumption. This was also kind of fun at the beginning, now it’s kind of a nuisance.

Children who speak the same language as you- 

Disciplining children is hard enough as it is. Try disciplining a child in a language you don’t really know. Even if you do find the right words to say, the child is going to say something back and while you’re frantically flipping through your Spanish/English dictionary trying to figure out what they just said, the child has already fled the scene of the crime and is beating up some other kid. Ooof. Help.

How do I get them off of me?!!?

Hot Showers- Last Friday Brittany went on an intense run uphill in the sunshine and finished it off with P90 Ab RipperX. I thought to myself, “ok I am dirty, I am sweaty, my blood is pumping, I’m warm, this is a perfect time to hop in the shower!” So I do, as soon as Tony said that we were done with our 335^th ab exercise, I bolted for the showers thinking that the ICE COLD water wouldn’t phase me as much. False.  I jumped in full force and the breath was literally knocked out of me. It took me a second to realize that the reason I couldn’t breathe was because I had sent my body into shock. Not fun, not fun. Ohhh what I wouldn’t give for the chance to sit in an oversized bathtub filled with scalding water and bubbles for several hours.

 Breathing- Have I ever mentioned that I am living at 9022 ft above sea level? That’s pretty high.. it doubles Rexburg’s altitude.  For the first two weeks, it was kind of hard to breathe…especially when walking up hill or up the stairs. I also got super light headed every single time I stood up.  I still do every once in a while, but it’s not nearly as bad.

Those are just a few that were on my mind today. I definitely have a new found appreciation for MANY things that I have taken for granted for years and years. To think.. just a few months ago, I thought it was such a pain to have to carry all my laundry down the hall to my apartment complexes' laundry room. Or when I complained about it being hard to run in Rexburg because of the altitude. My how things have changed.

-Elia

"Today I Don't Feel Like Doing Anything"

Don’t judge us for the following events that transpired.

Wednesday morning we woke up and decided that it was time for us to explore the natural hot springs in Banos and take our first hot shower. But we were feeling kind of lazy, so we power walked instead of doing our usual run. We showered a most amazing shower (it reminded me so much of the showers that you go to when you’re camping. Dirty stall, but the warm water is so amazing!). We then took the bus back up and it was downhill from there.

We didn’t feel like doing anything! We had some stuff planned for the kids that day, but didn’t do a single thing we planned. Instead we just let them color and do puzzles and pretty much whatever they wanted. But it was so nice and relaxing! 

After the kids left, I had serious plans to do some studying, cleaning, laundering etc. Here’s what we did instead.

We watched a whole movie. Letters to Juliet.

Then, we started another movie. 10 Things I Hate About You.

It was dirty, so we turned it off and started… yes ANOTHER MOVIE. Enchanted.    

                 

As we were watching it, there was a knock on our door and it was Pedro. He had brought us Torta and Chocolates! So we went down stairs and ATE and hung out with him for a couple hours.

Then we went back upstairs and watched Enchanted for the rest of the night.

We literally did nothing productive that day. Don’t worry, it gets worse. Check out what we ate.

Breakfast: Sweet Bread.

Lunch: Fried Speghetti and Rice

Snack: Tea and Popcorn with Cinnamon Sugar

Snack: Chocolate Cake with lots of frosting         

Snack: Sweet Bread and Milk. Normal Bread and cheese

Snack: Graham Crackers

Dinner: Chocolate Vanilla Swirl Cake with lots of frosting (and lots of it)

Snack: Half an avocado

Shoot We Should have Eaten Something of Substance Today: Leftover Chicken Quinoa Soup

Lets Just Try One Piece of Chocolate: 15 pieces of fancy chocolate

I Need to Get This Chocolate Taste Out Of My Mouth: More Sweet Bread

Are you judging us right now? You probably should be. But we don’t regret it one bit. It was a GLORIOUS DAY! Every girls dream come true. Filled with warm showers, chick flicks, chocolate, cake and a slumber party. 

Although, last night for scripture study, we read Mosiah 4:30 and decided that starting the next morning, we were going to exercise some serious self control.  Our new phrase (that we stole from that verse) is: Oh Man, Remember!

Meaning, when we’re craving some of that cake that’s tempting us (one in the fridge, one in the freezer) we say to each other, “Oh Man, Remember!” Remember how sick we felt going to bed that night? Remember how chubby and sluggish we felt waking up the next morning? Remember how nothing tastes as good as being healthy feels???

Oh yeah. We remember. And we’re determined to be better.

So determined, that we woke up the next morning (at 7:30) and went on a super steep uphill run, followed by a nice run down the mountain and did P90 Ab Ripper X. We were then sweaty and nasty and ready to submit ourselves to an ice cold shower when just as I was about to hop in the shower, I discovered that our water had been turned off. Just our luck. So we stink, but we are well on our way to being sugar free and fit for life!

“Look at us”

Every once in a while (ohh probably like 4 or 5 times a week) one of us will burst out laughing hysterically for no apparent reason. As soon as the laughing chica catches her breath she simply says, “Just look at us!"

Our eyes instantly drop to see our mismatched clothing that has been haphazardly thrown on in hopes to keep us warm  and then at each other’s dirt smeared, make-up free faces and oily, scraggly hair. We instantly join in with the hysterical laughter. We really need to learn to say “Look at us!” in Spanish, cause we use that often. We are QUITE the sight to see. 

But can I just say that it is so nice! Our electricity and power were off today, so even if we had a decent mirror, we wouldn’t have the light to see ourselves in it. We really do forget what we look like and forget to care. This is so awesome! It takes no time at all to throw on some clean..ish clothes in the morning and get right to work on the important things instead of having to waste time fussing with hair, make-up or ourselves in general.

Please Don't Judge us :)

On that note, we do still brush our teeth, don’t worry. But we do so with bottled water. Grandpa Skousen told us to never let the tap water pass our lips and we’ve been working really hard on following that with exactness. However, it’s just so natural to go in the bathroom and turn on the sink to brush your teeth. We’ve each had at least one mishap with that, but I’m sure we’ll be alright J

Home Sweet Home

Saturday January 14, 2012

Today was such good day!

By The Way, this is our humble home :)

We went and explored town a bit. There isn’t much in the actual town that we’re in, but there is a bigger town just a five minute drive from here. We decided to walk instead of drive. We were passed by at least a hundred (not exaggerating) taxis, combis and buses that tried to give us a ride. They couldn’t seem to understand why three rich Americans were walking to town. Especially when it started pouring rain on us. But we kept walking and eventually the sun came out and shone brightly on us. 

In town we looked everywhere for a bakery for fresh bread, but couldn’t find any! We did get more groceries and familiarized ourselves around town. We also saw the Sister Missionaries, but they weren’t really that excited to find out that we were Mormon and excited to come to church tomorrow. Oh well, the church is still true :)

We came back and tried organizing all the supplies we have for the kids. THERE ARE SO MANY! We also cooked a real dinner tonight of stirfry and quinoa and avocado. It was so good! While cooking, I explored the kitchen a bit and had a bit of a shock as I discovered that WE HAVE AN OVEN!

 

It was hiding under a cardboard box with junk on the top of the box. We had no idea and were SO estatic when we saw it. Ohhhh I’ve never been so excited to see an appliance in my life. Seriously… close to tears excited. 

After dinner we decided that since tomorrow is Sunday, we really ought to try and shower and wash our hair. I’m not going to tell you how long it’s been since we’d done that…. But assume the worse :) The weird thing is that we couldn’t really even smell each other or ourselves. So we were doing pretty good. 

One option for cleansing ourselves

Keep in mind that we have absolutely no hot water. Ice cold showers! So to help with this, we decided to get our blood pumping with some P90x. We set up a laptop in the kitchen and went to town on Kempo kickboxing. As we’d “Jab, jab, upper cut, across” we’d chant phrases like “Cuantos. Anos. Tienes!” and “Que. Te. Gusta. Hacer!” to help Brittany learn more phrases and words to use with the kids. I then started teaching Abigail and Brittany the pledge in Spanish as we kickboxed. I’m sure we looked ridiculous, but it did the trick!

We ended up washing our hair in the sink and then running really fast into the shower to shower off

Also, we saw our first mouse today. It scurried past the bathroom as we were getting ready for bed…. :( But over all, such a great day, we're beginning to feel more at home.