Trying New Things

We got to meet our new missionaries on Tuesday.  Elder Olhaiser, Elder Maldonado and Elder Rowley were transfered out and we welcomed Elder Larricilla (serving in Nasca from Mexico), Elder Lucero (serving in Vista Alegre and from Bolivia) and Elder Rosario(serving in Marcona and from Peru).  We'll get some pictures posted of them next month when we have an activity together.

Curt made a trip to Marcona without me this week.  While he was gone, I met up with the sister missionaries and went out with them for while, I bought myself an ice cream cone did a little window shopping and came home early. He got the adventure of going downtown and catching a van.  Sounds like you just buy a spot and when there are enough people to fill the van, they head out.  They don't run the air conditioning and if your seat isn't next to the window, no one else is likely to open it.  It took him about an hour and forty-five minutes to get there.  He was just in time to give a training meeting to some branch leaders and then he had his district pres. meeting. He had his laptop hooked up to a projector and was helping some branch leaders learn to navigate online when the power went out.  The lights finally came back on at the end of district pres. meeting. So, an hour and a half of the three hours he was at the Marcona building, there was no electricity! After the meetings, he had to hurry and get back to the van for a ride home before they shut down for the night. Gosh, he has all the fun!

 These are dehydrated potatoes.  They are called chunos.  They are harvested and then freeze dried out on the ground in the Andes.  From what I understand, they use chuno flour in deserts etc.   A random fact - there are somewhere between 3000-4000 types of potatoes here.  A random opinion - they like their potatoes!

This is Jenny and her mom Luci.  They fixed us the most delicious Peruana meal.  We had causa (mashed potatoes in a pretty mold with like a tuna salad inside), chicken and a noodle with a green sauce (almost like a pesto), the drink was a cold roasted barley-aide? I can't remember the name of the drink. For desert, we had a strawberry whipped gelatin made with an evaporated milk.  It was all very good and we went away very very full!  Jenny lived in the states for years and came home to help when her father passed away.  She is such a blessing to me!  She helps me learn customs and language and lets me talk english too!  They gave us some delicious lemons and mangos from their trees.  Her mother is a dear sweet ambitious lady.  She taught herself Quechuan as a teenager - not an easy language to learn from what I understand.  We learned the word misk'i from her which means yummy!  

Jenny has a lot of family history done and we are trying to help her get it all put online.  I've really struggled with where the accent goes on the word fallacio (which is a polite way of saying passed away).  When I help people with their family history, I am always trying to use this word to find out if the person is living or not and I butcher it every time.  She reminded me I could just use the word muerto for dead but it's a little less gentle.  Finally she said maybe I should just use estiro la pata which is more along the lines of our sayings like kicked the bucket.  I think I'll stick with trying to say fallacio correctly!

One of my dear sweet companion's adventures this week, started out with me sleeping in on Thursday morning.  We always get up early on Thursdays and get to the fair (fruit market) around 7. This week, I slept, Curt went to the gym and we didn't go to the fair until later that morning.  Guess what day he decides to buy fresh fish, onions, peppers and limes and make ceviche?  Yep, after that hunk of fish has been sitting out in the open, he's going to make ceviche out of it.  Of course, Curt can do anything he puts his mind too and it was probably just as tasty as the ceviche we buy in the restaurants in Lima.  He is so adventurous and he is making our mission so much fun.  I love getting to spend this time with him.  BTW - he didn't get sick but just in case - I ate pasta for lunch that day! 

What a cutie!  We've been able to have this little sweetie in our home for visits since she was a couple of weeks old.  She brings her parents every time and tonight she brought her grandma for us to meet.  Maybe you can guess by the picture below - sometimes I forget to listen when she's sitting across from me.  Curt isn't exactly immune to her charm and she really likes to watch him!

Just a little P.S. on today's blog:  Remember a couple of weeks ago, I was writing about being so happy we weren't needing our fan every night?  I don't know how to say it delicately but ... here it is.  One of our neighbors has a dog and another one has a terrible problem with phlegm!  At first we thought he was scrapping a chair across the floor!  These are both right outside our bedroom window. -  We have decided we love our fan!