So I just thought I'd write a little bit about our Cuzco (Cusco in Spanish) experience. On Thursday night, Heather and I caught an overnight bus down to Lima. It was about an 8 hour bus-ride. Before we left Utah, we had an orientation meeting where they talked to us about taking local buses, how more Americans get killed in bus accidents abroad than any other way when they're traveling, and about being super careful. We decided with our girlfriends from Africa that buses were the international symbol of death...but when it came down to it, $15 for a bus ride was much better than $100 for a plane ticket. So we took a bus to Lima. We arrived in Lima around 7:15 or 7:30 and had to head immediately to the airport to catch a flight to Cuzco (we couldn't afford to fly both legs, but we got HUGE discounts on the Lima-Cuzco leg).
Once we got off the plane in Cuzco, I immediately felt happy just breathing the air. Cuzco is in the mountains and the air feels like the air in Utah or Germany. Cuzco reminded me a lot of both places with mountains, crisp air, etc. Trujillo and Lima are both on the coast, so the air is heavier because of the humidity.
Cuzco was absolutely beautiful. From the plane we could see all these green mountains and when we landed, it was much more picturesque than either Lima or Trujillo. As we drove through the town from the airport to our hotel, we could tell we were in a third world country, but at the same time I kept thinking, "This is not Peru." The standard of living is so much higher because of tourism.
Heather and I got to our hotel courtesy of Cesar Rodriguez. He is the owner of a travel agency, Lamanita Travel. Our friend Alberto hooked us up with him and Cesar got us such amazing deals on our flights, hotel, visit to Machu Picchu, etc. He was soooo helpful. We were at our hotel for about an hour or so when we decided to go to the Plaza de Armas to look around and then head over to the Eagle Condor office to meet up with Dan and Clint (the other BYU students in our pictures with us).
We got to the Plaza de Armas and Heather wasn't feeling well. By this time we'd probably been in Cuzco about two hours. She wanted something to eat immediately, but when we tried to pick a place, she was just tired and couldn't think of where she wanted to eat. Meanwhile all these Cusqueños kept trying to tell us to eat at their restaurants. Heather just wanted to throw up, so we walked around trying to find a public bathroom. We walked about two blocks in the direction of a bathroom, but Heather couldn't go any further, so she laid on a bench while I ran around trying to find drugs, buying some sprite, stuff like that.
When I got back, we gathered up our stuff and went to the Eagle Condor office there in Cuzco. After talking for a long time with the guys about what we were going to do for the day, we finally decided to take Heather back to the hotel. We went back to the hotel and called a local doctor who is a bishop and who had seen Clint a few days early for something completely different. He came to the hotel and diagnosed Heather with altitude sickness. He gave her some oxygen and prescribed her some pills. She immediately felt better breathing the oxygen. He left and Clint and I ran to get the pills.
When we got back, she was doing really poorly again. We gave her the pills and she thought she would be okay within the half hour. The three of us had found a "guide" (really just someone's nephew who is from Cuzco), so we went out to look around and get some food. When we got back a few hours later, the doctor was back and Heather was again breathing oxygen. It was sad. She'd been so bad while we were gone, that she had called the doctor. The boys gave her a blessing and then went home. The doctor gave Heather more oxygen, another pill, he waited for a while and then gave her more oxygen. Then he left. This was around 10:30.
Heather was still horrible, so we changed rooms to a room where she could take a hot bath (our other room just had a shower), we called Heather's best friend Mallorie (our U.S. doctor since Mallorie is in med school), and the hotel brought us their oxygen tank. Mallorie gave us a little advice on oxygen, Heather took a little more and finally around 12:30 at night, she fell asleep. It was a horrible day and night for Heather, but in the morning, she was finally feeling a little better. Well enough to go to Machu Picchu. We were really grateful both that she was better and that we could all make the trip.
The altitude of Cuzco is about double that of Provo and roughly the same as the top of Mt. Timpanogos. Heather had hiked Timp this past year and had experienced similar altitude problems at the top, so basically we've decided that Heather doesn't do very well around 11,000 feet. After this experience, the case that we studied this year about Mt. Everest and all the problems the hikers had makes even more sense.
We'll try to share more about our experiences a little later. Right now we're trying to get ready to give a presentation tonight, so we have a ton to do!
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Monday, May 14, 2007
Return to Trujillo
Heather and I just got back from a weekend in Cusco. So much happened, but we didn't have frequent access to the internet so we didn't post. We'll have to get everyone caught up and post some pictures. It was really a busy weekend from overnight bus rides, Heather getting really sick, two house calls from a doctor, Machu Picchu, bartering for jewelry, taxistas trying to rip us off, scary parts of town...so more postings to come. :)
Thursday, May 10, 2007
El dia de vacaciones
Today was sort of like a vacation day for us. It wasn't supposed to be. It started off as a normal day. We went and visited the church's offices where they have the Employment Office and the Mission Home. After that Jenry went back to our office and Heather and I continued with Miguel to do visits...but we had to go to the supermarket first to get some water (it's on the 1st floor and the church offices are on the 2nd floor of the same building)...while we were there we thought it'd be nice to buy a little treat for Flor since we were going to be doing visits in Miguel and Flor's neighborhood and Miguel needed to stop to get his cell phone...we decided to get an ice cream treat (like the Viennetta ice cream rolls or whatever they are), take it to the house (which is close to 20 minutes away) eat it first and then go do visits. While we were at Miguel's finishing our ice cream, Jenry called and said we needed to come back earlier than usual for lunch, so we ended up doing one visit in the morning before having to head back to our neighborhood.
In the afternoon, we were going to return to Miguel's neighborhood, but our friend Alberto had called us earlier really concerned that we were in third world Trujillo suffering great depravation. So he hooked us up with a girl from Trujillo whose father is the manager of an important bank and he wanted us to spend the afternoon with her seeing a different side of Trujillo. At the end of the afternoon, we returned home to have dinner with our family who wanted to take us out, so...not a super productive day, but after dinner, we did come back to the office and have been working for about three hours.
A few things:
We are huge fans of Miguel and Flor. We love them. They are the couple that just got married last week and they are one of the purest, sweetest couples. Miguel has talked to us a couple of times about his feelings regarding the church, God's plan, his faith, what it's like being married to
Flor...he's amazing. He's so good and so kind and so full of faith. You don't find many people like him anywhere in the world, especially in the United States. Flor is the same way--so humble and so sweet. They are starting really with nothing. They laugh about it. Until last night they were eating on the floor of their kitchen because they didn't have a table, but Flor's mom just bought them one as a present. Their apartment is really small but there is a great spirit there and they are trying so hard to start their lives together right and do things the Lord's way. We love Miguel and Flor. I posted an extra picture of them here, especially for my little sister Darcie. Flor got this shirt from another Peruvian who served in her mission. He gave it to her because she loved playing soccer. Who knows where he got it from, but...it's a Timpview Soccer t-shirt!
After lunch we went and met Alberto's friend Cynthia and her sister Claudia. They are both in their 20's. They are Catholic, but they live next door to the mission president and their brother is at BYU. We also met their mother and together the five of us drove around Trujillo while they showed us a few other parts of the city. It was really fun for me to see a different side of Trujillo. There are parts of Trujillo that are actually really well taken care of and quite beautiful. For some reason it made me feel better to see that people can reach that economic level here. Most people that live in the nicer areas of the city work for banks, large companies like Nextel and Gloria (a big dairy company), or own their own larger, profitable businesses. It made me feel good to know that hard work here doesn't always get you a higher economic level of poverty. A small few are actually blessed with more.
At the same time, it was sad to see the contrast and it provoked a lot of thought...these girls have probably never experienced the poverty of their country firsthand, so I wonder how in touch they are with how hard life is for the rest of their fellow countrymen and women. I think this happens a lot to us in the United States. We of the middle class take our economic status for granted and part of us feels that if people wanted to have more, they could. I've thought a lot about a quote from Primo Levi's book Se questo e un uomo (Survival in Auschwitz) where a man named Kuhn is praying and thanking God that he has been saved by the random selection process where the S.S. guards in Auschwitz would send a few prisoners to be killed. Levi sees Kuhn praying and says, "Se io fossi Dio, sputterei a terra la preghiera di Kuhn," which is, "If I were God, I would spit Kuhn's prayer back to earth." I don't agree with Levi. I think we should ALWAYS be grateful and thankful to God for what WE have, but at the same time, I think it's a careful balance between gratitude to God balanced with humility that recognizes both our blessings (through no particular worthiness of our own) and the innocent suffering of others. Anyway, all this talking is about me and not about these girls. They were very sweet girls and very generous to us. And their home, home life, and situation all reminded me of something you would find in the U.S., so I don't fault them for having what we have. It's just such a stark contrast here in comparison to the U.S. where most of us are well-insulated from those who do suffer in poverty. I guess it was good for me to see the contrast as a reminder that there is suffering in my own country very close to home that I often ignore.
As for dinner with Jenry and company, it was delicious! Jenry treated us all to dinner at a great restaurant that serves chicken served three ways that are very typical in Peru: rotisserie, deep-fried, and on the grill. It was really great and so much fun to go out with everyone again. Luckily, this time no accidents were had by Angel David. At least not at dinner. Prior to dinner when Heather and I arrived at the house, Adrian was mad at Angel David and had shut him in the room without knowing that the door would lock. No one had a key. Angel David is too little to open the door from the inside, but the whole time he kept calling out that he had to go to the bathroom. Meanwhile, Jenry was trying to break into the room. When the door was finally opened, it was a little too late for Angel David and his pantalones. At least this time he didn't have to sit on a cold high chair afterward.
In the afternoon, we were going to return to Miguel's neighborhood, but our friend Alberto had called us earlier really concerned that we were in third world Trujillo suffering great depravation. So he hooked us up with a girl from Trujillo whose father is the manager of an important bank and he wanted us to spend the afternoon with her seeing a different side of Trujillo. At the end of the afternoon, we returned home to have dinner with our family who wanted to take us out, so...not a super productive day, but after dinner, we did come back to the office and have been working for about three hours.
A few things:
We are huge fans of Miguel and Flor. We love them. They are the couple that just got married last week and they are one of the purest, sweetest couples. Miguel has talked to us a couple of times about his feelings regarding the church, God's plan, his faith, what it's like being married to
Flor...he's amazing. He's so good and so kind and so full of faith. You don't find many people like him anywhere in the world, especially in the United States. Flor is the same way--so humble and so sweet. They are starting really with nothing. They laugh about it. Until last night they were eating on the floor of their kitchen because they didn't have a table, but Flor's mom just bought them one as a present. Their apartment is really small but there is a great spirit there and they are trying so hard to start their lives together right and do things the Lord's way. We love Miguel and Flor. I posted an extra picture of them here, especially for my little sister Darcie. Flor got this shirt from another Peruvian who served in her mission. He gave it to her because she loved playing soccer. Who knows where he got it from, but...it's a Timpview Soccer t-shirt!
After lunch we went and met Alberto's friend Cynthia and her sister Claudia. They are both in their 20's. They are Catholic, but they live next door to the mission president and their brother is at BYU. We also met their mother and together the five of us drove around Trujillo while they showed us a few other parts of the city. It was really fun for me to see a different side of Trujillo. There are parts of Trujillo that are actually really well taken care of and quite beautiful. For some reason it made me feel better to see that people can reach that economic level here. Most people that live in the nicer areas of the city work for banks, large companies like Nextel and Gloria (a big dairy company), or own their own larger, profitable businesses. It made me feel good to know that hard work here doesn't always get you a higher economic level of poverty. A small few are actually blessed with more.
At the same time, it was sad to see the contrast and it provoked a lot of thought...these girls have probably never experienced the poverty of their country firsthand, so I wonder how in touch they are with how hard life is for the rest of their fellow countrymen and women. I think this happens a lot to us in the United States. We of the middle class take our economic status for granted and part of us feels that if people wanted to have more, they could. I've thought a lot about a quote from Primo Levi's book Se questo e un uomo (Survival in Auschwitz) where a man named Kuhn is praying and thanking God that he has been saved by the random selection process where the S.S. guards in Auschwitz would send a few prisoners to be killed. Levi sees Kuhn praying and says, "Se io fossi Dio, sputterei a terra la preghiera di Kuhn," which is, "If I were God, I would spit Kuhn's prayer back to earth." I don't agree with Levi. I think we should ALWAYS be grateful and thankful to God for what WE have, but at the same time, I think it's a careful balance between gratitude to God balanced with humility that recognizes both our blessings (through no particular worthiness of our own) and the innocent suffering of others. Anyway, all this talking is about me and not about these girls. They were very sweet girls and very generous to us. And their home, home life, and situation all reminded me of something you would find in the U.S., so I don't fault them for having what we have. It's just such a stark contrast here in comparison to the U.S. where most of us are well-insulated from those who do suffer in poverty. I guess it was good for me to see the contrast as a reminder that there is suffering in my own country very close to home that I often ignore.
As for dinner with Jenry and company, it was delicious! Jenry treated us all to dinner at a great restaurant that serves chicken served three ways that are very typical in Peru: rotisserie, deep-fried, and on the grill. It was really great and so much fun to go out with everyone again. Luckily, this time no accidents were had by Angel David. At least not at dinner. Prior to dinner when Heather and I arrived at the house, Adrian was mad at Angel David and had shut him in the room without knowing that the door would lock. No one had a key. Angel David is too little to open the door from the inside, but the whole time he kept calling out that he had to go to the bathroom. Meanwhile, Jenry was trying to break into the room. When the door was finally opened, it was a little too late for Angel David and his pantalones. At least this time he didn't have to sit on a cold high chair afterward.
Giants
I don't know if you've noticed yet from the pictures, but Heather and I are kind of giants here in Peru. I'm 5'3 1/2 and Heather is 5'5. The first day we got here, we went to church and I was wearing heels at least and it was incredible. Everyone was tiny. That was a first for me. So...in many of the pictures, we sort of dwarf the people we're with. Some people aren't super short, but they're usually considered tall here.
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
Monday, May 7, 2007
You know you're in Peru when...
Heather and I have a whole list of things that are signs that we're in Peru. This picture of us outside of the Pizzeria San Remo is a perfect example. I saw this picture and I just thought, "Sheesh, you know you're in Peru when you wear your velour pants outside of the house and try to pretend that it's normal." I would never do that in the U.S. unless I was wearing them to go work out or something.
Another time I commented to Heather that I thought a guy was good-looking and she just gave me a look and said, "You know you're in Peru..."
Lasting memories from the pizzeria
Tonight Heather and I took Jenry, Margarita, and Adrian out to eat at a pizzeria here. Jenry's sister and her family came for a visit from Lima, so we decided to take everyone out. Jenry's sister's name is Silvia, her husband is Angel Santos, their son is Angel David, and their brand new baby is Silvana. So all of us, 6 adults and 3 kids, crammed into a taxi that was sort of like a small Subaru Outback. The two men were nice and climbed into the back, each of them with their sons, and the rest of us women situated ourselves in the seats. We drove like that to the other side of town and it cost us 4 soles, which is about $1.30.
When we arrived at the restaurant, everyone was excited. It was obviously a really nice pizzeria. Our friend Alberto Puertas has recommended a few places for us to go to and the funny thing about it is they're all at the level of what you would find in the United States, which is REALLY rare around here. Jenry saw Alberto's list and he commented that all the places were really expensive, but it's kind of nice to occasionally go to places that are really nice and feel comfortable and familiar.
So after we arrived at the restaurant, we ordered three pizzas and sodas for everyone. Heather and I invited everyone and so we were paying. I started to feel a little nervous because the prices were definitely much, much, much higher than what you normally find in Peru. But in the end, it was totally fine.
Everyone had a good time and Adrian and Angel David reminded me of what it's like to eat with my nieces and nephews. They never want to sit still and eat. They want to get up and walk around and so one parent--usually the mother--is constantly following them so they stay entertained. Poor Margarita didn't get much time to eat. In Angel David's case it was Angel Santos who had to do the following so that Silvia could hold the baby.
Angel David likes to do everything that Adrian does, so when Adrian said he had to go to the bathroom, Angel David said he did too. Adrian and Margarita returned from the bathroom but no sign of the two Angeles. Adrian wanted to go to the bathroom again. Still no sign of the two Angeles. Finally Margarita let Adrian go to the bathroom by himself and he returned running saying, "Aunt Silvia! Aunt Silvia!" (in Spanish of course) "More toilet paper!" We all started giggling, so Margarita went with him to the bathroom. They returned but still no sign of the Angeles.
We all just continued eating and talking. We had a really great time laughing and just enjoying ourselves. When all of us were pretty much finished eating, Angel Santos finally emerged from the bathroom carrying his son (who is only 2 years old) who was completely naked from the waist down. We were all in shock and started laughing. Angel Santos was carrying his pants rolled up tight. Angel David had had a little problem, but Silvia and Angel Santos had never had to deal with this before so they hadn't brought a change of clothes. Angel Santos plopped his son down in the high chair totally naked and let him continue eating. He hadn't finished eating himself, so Silvia looked at him and said, "Eat fast!" We were all laughing and just a little embarrassed at the same time.
Every now and then Angel Santos would look at his son and say, "Where are your pants?" And he would point in the direction of the bathroom. Angel David is such a cute kid. He was kind of embarrassed by all the laughing and attention and he knew he wasn't wearing his pants, so he kept giving everyone this shy look. We're going to post a picture here. Angel Santos, on the other hand...we were trying to be supportive and say, "Oh, that's so awful, what a bad experience," and he said, "No! It's funny. I started laughing." Only a dad would look at it that way.
Morning Visits
Today we visited three small companies.
Leche Aasada (cooked milk): This lady is 71 years old. She wakes up every morning in time to buy milk at the market. Apparently if you don't wake up and go first thing in the morning, you miss your chance to buy milk. She prepares her dessert to sell on the streets during the morning hours, goes to a bakery where she pays for use of their oven, and then walks the street selling her goods. She sells it nice and hot, right out of the oven. We met her father, who is still alive at a whoppin' 104 years of age.
Laundromat: Most of the laundromats we're used to in the states are full of coin-operated washer and dryers. Here, it's different. You drop your clothes off, and they will wash, dry, and fold them for you. Most laundromats here only have one washer and many of them will simply hang-dry your clothes. With the loan the owner bought three new machines to increase his capacity. He was super happy with a great smile.
Phone/internet: A lady in the ward who taught my sunday school class on sunday is about to open a place where people can come and use her phones for international or long-distance calls. She has rented a little place along a busy street and has little cubbies for the people to go into, but is waiting on the telephone company to put her line in before she starts. She thinks she will be successful because there aren't any other "locutorios" nearby.
We came home and wrote up suggestions for all of the individual companies we have visited so far. We will give these suggestions to Eagle Condor and they will work with the companies after we leave. Most of the individual suggestions relate to marketing and service. Although the truth is we have found that they don't keep track of their costs, and this is a real problem. They have no idea what the costs of the materials are, their profit margin of different items, etc. With the money they earn from selling their goods or services they pay all of their bills (both personal and business), feed themselves, and then buy more inventory/supplies. One suggestion we're going to make is that Eagle Condor does a training to teach them how to pay themselves a salary, and separate their personal money from their business income.
Tonight we're taking our little family out to pizza :) Yum.
Leche Aasada (cooked milk): This lady is 71 years old. She wakes up every morning in time to buy milk at the market. Apparently if you don't wake up and go first thing in the morning, you miss your chance to buy milk. She prepares her dessert to sell on the streets during the morning hours, goes to a bakery where she pays for use of their oven, and then walks the street selling her goods. She sells it nice and hot, right out of the oven. We met her father, who is still alive at a whoppin' 104 years of age.
Laundromat: Most of the laundromats we're used to in the states are full of coin-operated washer and dryers. Here, it's different. You drop your clothes off, and they will wash, dry, and fold them for you. Most laundromats here only have one washer and many of them will simply hang-dry your clothes. With the loan the owner bought three new machines to increase his capacity. He was super happy with a great smile.
Phone/internet: A lady in the ward who taught my sunday school class on sunday is about to open a place where people can come and use her phones for international or long-distance calls. She has rented a little place along a busy street and has little cubbies for the people to go into, but is waiting on the telephone company to put her line in before she starts. She thinks she will be successful because there aren't any other "locutorios" nearby.
We came home and wrote up suggestions for all of the individual companies we have visited so far. We will give these suggestions to Eagle Condor and they will work with the companies after we leave. Most of the individual suggestions relate to marketing and service. Although the truth is we have found that they don't keep track of their costs, and this is a real problem. They have no idea what the costs of the materials are, their profit margin of different items, etc. With the money they earn from selling their goods or services they pay all of their bills (both personal and business), feed themselves, and then buy more inventory/supplies. One suggestion we're going to make is that Eagle Condor does a training to teach them how to pay themselves a salary, and separate their personal money from their business income.
Tonight we're taking our little family out to pizza :) Yum.
Saturday, May 5, 2007
My turn to write
It's Saturday evening. Danielle wasn't feeling well today so she went to bed really early and has been asleep now for about 4 hours. I went to the store with Margarita and Adrian to buy some gatarade and soda crackers for Ms. Danielle. Hopefully she'll be feeling better tomorrow.
In the meantime, I've been kickin' it solo in our little place for the past little while. I decided I should take advantage of this time and write a little about our experiences down here. This morning we decided we would spend the day as tourists. We visited Chan Chan which is a historical site with ancient ruins. We toured a palace that was built 800 A.D. It was pretty cool. Our tour guide was an archeologist and knew what he was talking about. I could tell he was used to speaking very simple spanish to all of the north americans that visit. I wasn't complaining, I was actually able to understand most of what he was saying. I'll post some pictures. After Chan Chan we went to a restaurant that a friend in the U.S. recommended to us, "The Chelsea." It was a nice restaurant, a nice place to relax and have a good lunch. I ordered salmon. Bad choice. It came out in thin slices of what looked like raw salmon. I automatically said to Danielle, 'I am NOT eating this.' Not that I'm a super picky eater, but let's be honest, I have my limits. I ordered another dish, and it was just great.
I won't go into detail about the inner-workings of my heart though this experience, but I'll just tell you that I am so happy I am able to be here. I think it is inevitable that when one leaves their comfort zone to "change the world" the truth is that the world changes them--an inevitable law. I hope that Danielle and I can share a little of our expertise with the people here; however, I am confident I will leave more affected by them than they could ever be affected by me.
Friday, May 4, 2007
Thursday, May 3, 2007
It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt...
...or until people get really, really tired and on the verge of cranky. The fun and games are definitely over. And the problem with the project that Heather and I are doing is that we live across the street (and a tiny little park) from Jenry, so he is at the office from the time he has breakfast till he goes to bed or goes home to spend time with Margarita and Adrian...which is good and bad. We are with him all the time, so it's like we are working all the time. We're constantly working on our projects unless we are running errands or having breakfast, lunch, or dinner with him and his family. It has left us feeling pretty tired. In fact, it is after 11 here and I think Heather is doing the go-to-bed routine. We still have tons to do and Jenry is in his office blasting Latin rock and working on his end of the month financial statements. We have a big meeting tomorrow with all our microempresarios and so there's a lot to do. Plus, since Heather and I are only here for three weeks total (and two weeks from tomorrow!!!!), there is so much to do all the time.
Yesterday we went and did visits in the morning. We went to visit three families and their small businesses. It was kind of like being on a mission except Heather and I were wearing jeans. We were just dropping by the businesses to see how things were going and to say hello. You cannot believe the poverty. We went to a place called Salaverry. It's an important port for exports in Peru, but even with that, it's basically completely rundown. It seems sort of like a shanty town. The buildings seem sort of thrown together with whatever materials they have--cement, wood, tin, plastic. It's amazing.
We stopped first at the home of an acuña maker. Acuñas are little rectangles that are really similar to peanut brittle. We went to visit the home of the man who makes them. He makes them in a room in his house designated for that purpose, but the whole house is so tiny that it seems sort of strange that it's even a home. It was basically a long dark hallway with a little bit of space off to the side here and there. He was very humble and had served as a bishop. His family was very kind and generous. They gave us each three acuñas to take with us, which was close to all the inventory they had at the time. When we tried to pay them, they wouldn't let us.
After that visit, we stopped by the stand of another business owner. The stand is one of many in a small marketplace. Everyone sells essentially the same thing from stand to stand. Heather and I are supposed to come up with suggestions for each business. We're sort of at a loss with this business, because what we want to tell them is, "Your business sucks and you need to revamp the whole thing because you can't expect to make a profit selling the exact same thing for the exact same price as the ten other stands next to you. You have no competitive advantage." It didn't help either that when we got there, their stand was closed and we had to call them on the cell phone to come open it. Um...sort of hard to make money when you don't open for business. This one is going to be a little difficult to work with.
Our third visit was to the home of a fisherman. He was out fishing. Always a good sign. We decided to walk down to the shore to see if we could find him. He wasn't there, because he was out on the ocean. We couldn't even see him or his boat from the shore. There was a man there offering to give all three of us a ride in his rowboat for five soles, so we went. It was fun to go around the bay and see the other boats up close, to be on the water, to watch Jenry get totally splashed by a wave...but mostly I was struck by how hard this man and so many others work. 5 soles is only about $1.60. You can buy shampoo for 9 soles, so...that's really nothing. It probably took him about 20-30 minutes to row us around. Being Peruvian, he was already dark, but the sun had bronzed him even more, he was thin with taut, defined muscles, and very kind.
After our little excursion to Salaverry, we returned to the main part of Trujillo to have lunch at the Silvas. After lunch, we worked on writing up reports on our morning visits, talked to Jenry about ideas for Eagle Condor, worked on presentation stuff. Heather worked really hard for hours on a presentation with a slideshow of a bunch of the microempresarios. It took forever and we still have more work to do on it.
We also went to the grocery store yesterday and bought a bunch of groceries for dinner so that Margarita could have a break. We made Chinese Chicken Salad and rice crispy treats. The Kellogg's rice crispies here are either chocolate or strawberry or you can used other puffed rice cereal that is vanilla flavored. That's what we went for...not the same. They don't have mandarin oranges here or water chestnuts so we had to leave those out of the salad (they do have ramen noodles if you can believe it). And they have great marshmallows and butter, but the rice crispies...interesting. All in all, it was still a great meal...if we do say so ourselves.
Well, Heather took a bunch of pictures from our visits and excursions yesterday, so I'll let her post those when she gets a chance. She already posted a picture of a little boy from Salaverry. He was so adorable. I gave him a cracker and he just stood there staring at it and us. He finally started eating it. The children here are so cute. I just wish I could stay and play with all of them and love all of them. They have hard lives ahead of them.
Heather and I have talked a lot about how the lives here are all the people know. They don't know any different, but at the same time...it's not an easy life. There's a lot of stress for people to just get by. At our first visit, this man who was once a bishop talked about how he would make 100 or so acuñas a week and then each day he would go into the main part of Trujillo and walk the streets as a street vendor calling out for people to buy his wares. He wouldn't return home until he had earned enough money to buy food for the evening. I don't care if that's all you've ever known. That ain't easy. If Peru has shown us anything, it's that we are ridiculously wealthy...and also that not all puffed rice is created equal.
Yesterday we went and did visits in the morning. We went to visit three families and their small businesses. It was kind of like being on a mission except Heather and I were wearing jeans. We were just dropping by the businesses to see how things were going and to say hello. You cannot believe the poverty. We went to a place called Salaverry. It's an important port for exports in Peru, but even with that, it's basically completely rundown. It seems sort of like a shanty town. The buildings seem sort of thrown together with whatever materials they have--cement, wood, tin, plastic. It's amazing.
We stopped first at the home of an acuña maker. Acuñas are little rectangles that are really similar to peanut brittle. We went to visit the home of the man who makes them. He makes them in a room in his house designated for that purpose, but the whole house is so tiny that it seems sort of strange that it's even a home. It was basically a long dark hallway with a little bit of space off to the side here and there. He was very humble and had served as a bishop. His family was very kind and generous. They gave us each three acuñas to take with us, which was close to all the inventory they had at the time. When we tried to pay them, they wouldn't let us.
After that visit, we stopped by the stand of another business owner. The stand is one of many in a small marketplace. Everyone sells essentially the same thing from stand to stand. Heather and I are supposed to come up with suggestions for each business. We're sort of at a loss with this business, because what we want to tell them is, "Your business sucks and you need to revamp the whole thing because you can't expect to make a profit selling the exact same thing for the exact same price as the ten other stands next to you. You have no competitive advantage." It didn't help either that when we got there, their stand was closed and we had to call them on the cell phone to come open it. Um...sort of hard to make money when you don't open for business. This one is going to be a little difficult to work with.
Our third visit was to the home of a fisherman. He was out fishing. Always a good sign. We decided to walk down to the shore to see if we could find him. He wasn't there, because he was out on the ocean. We couldn't even see him or his boat from the shore. There was a man there offering to give all three of us a ride in his rowboat for five soles, so we went. It was fun to go around the bay and see the other boats up close, to be on the water, to watch Jenry get totally splashed by a wave...but mostly I was struck by how hard this man and so many others work. 5 soles is only about $1.60. You can buy shampoo for 9 soles, so...that's really nothing. It probably took him about 20-30 minutes to row us around. Being Peruvian, he was already dark, but the sun had bronzed him even more, he was thin with taut, defined muscles, and very kind.
After our little excursion to Salaverry, we returned to the main part of Trujillo to have lunch at the Silvas. After lunch, we worked on writing up reports on our morning visits, talked to Jenry about ideas for Eagle Condor, worked on presentation stuff. Heather worked really hard for hours on a presentation with a slideshow of a bunch of the microempresarios. It took forever and we still have more work to do on it.
We also went to the grocery store yesterday and bought a bunch of groceries for dinner so that Margarita could have a break. We made Chinese Chicken Salad and rice crispy treats. The Kellogg's rice crispies here are either chocolate or strawberry or you can used other puffed rice cereal that is vanilla flavored. That's what we went for...not the same. They don't have mandarin oranges here or water chestnuts so we had to leave those out of the salad (they do have ramen noodles if you can believe it). And they have great marshmallows and butter, but the rice crispies...interesting. All in all, it was still a great meal...if we do say so ourselves.
Well, Heather took a bunch of pictures from our visits and excursions yesterday, so I'll let her post those when she gets a chance. She already posted a picture of a little boy from Salaverry. He was so adorable. I gave him a cracker and he just stood there staring at it and us. He finally started eating it. The children here are so cute. I just wish I could stay and play with all of them and love all of them. They have hard lives ahead of them.
Heather and I have talked a lot about how the lives here are all the people know. They don't know any different, but at the same time...it's not an easy life. There's a lot of stress for people to just get by. At our first visit, this man who was once a bishop talked about how he would make 100 or so acuñas a week and then each day he would go into the main part of Trujillo and walk the streets as a street vendor calling out for people to buy his wares. He wouldn't return home until he had earned enough money to buy food for the evening. I don't care if that's all you've ever known. That ain't easy. If Peru has shown us anything, it's that we are ridiculously wealthy...and also that not all puffed rice is created equal.
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
Welcome to Peru...
The land of the bad hair day. The funny thing about it is the Peruvians have it down. I never look at them and think, "What's up with that hair?" (Except for maybe Jenry because he needs a haircut. Margarita says he looks like Mufasa from the Lion King.) And actually, I think Heather's hair is pretty cute too, but mine...horroroso. I finally had a little time this morning to blowdry my hair. I was really excited to maybe look like a normal person for a day. I turned on Heather's hair blowdryer, which works for 110V and 240V...it worked for a few seconds and broke. So looks like Heather wins the prize! A new hair blowdryer for Texas! And I win my own prize--ridiculous looking hair for the next 2 1/2 weeks.
Heather just posted some pictures of us with the Familia Silva. They're so great. We really love them. The pictures are of us at the beach of Huanchaco yesterday and then at Miguel and Flor Avila's wedding. I love that I wear the same shirt to the beach and then later to a wedding. We're just trying to conserve outfits.
In one of the pictures you can see Adrian on my shoulders. That kid is a character! Margarita was telling us last night that when he was 2 1/2, they would ask him to say a blessing on the food and he would say the prayer for the sacrament replacing the words for the sacrament with whatever food they were eating that night. He wanted every prayer to be the sacrament prayer. He cried when Jenry and Margarita told him he couldn't use that prayer to bless the food.
The other night when we were eating dinner, he kept saying he was a condor and flapping his wings. Then he was an owl and an eagle. We're having to learn the names of animals to keep up with him. He knows all the animals and talks a ton. He reminds me of my nephew Leif in that way.
Heather and I had a good time today visiting the microempresarios with Jenry. We're going to go shopping in a little while to buy groceries to make dinner for the Silvas so that Margarita can take a break. I'll write more later about what we actually ended up doing today and Heather can post more pictures that we took.
Heather just posted some pictures of us with the Familia Silva. They're so great. We really love them. The pictures are of us at the beach of Huanchaco yesterday and then at Miguel and Flor Avila's wedding. I love that I wear the same shirt to the beach and then later to a wedding. We're just trying to conserve outfits.
In one of the pictures you can see Adrian on my shoulders. That kid is a character! Margarita was telling us last night that when he was 2 1/2, they would ask him to say a blessing on the food and he would say the prayer for the sacrament replacing the words for the sacrament with whatever food they were eating that night. He wanted every prayer to be the sacrament prayer. He cried when Jenry and Margarita told him he couldn't use that prayer to bless the food.
The other night when we were eating dinner, he kept saying he was a condor and flapping his wings. Then he was an owl and an eagle. We're having to learn the names of animals to keep up with him. He knows all the animals and talks a ton. He reminds me of my nephew Leif in that way.
Heather and I had a good time today visiting the microempresarios with Jenry. We're going to go shopping in a little while to buy groceries to make dinner for the Silvas so that Margarita can take a break. I'll write more later about what we actually ended up doing today and Heather can post more pictures that we took.
We really do work.
Heather has headed to bed and I'm going in a few minutes, but I wanted to assure everyone that we do work. Tomorrow morning we're going to get up at 6:30 (translation: 7:15) so that we can be ready for a long day of grueling labor. In the morning we're going to go visit three of our microempresas, do a quick analysis of where they are as far as finances, operations, marketing, and personnel, and then we are going to ask enough questions to be able to write a history about them. The histories will be useful in order to have as a record but also for Eagle Condor to find others who are willing to donate to funding more microcredit projects.
In the afternoon tomorrow, we're going to do write-ups, pick out quick suggestions of things they can do to improve, make a list of possible long-term suggestions to be addressed next summer (painting walls, installing tile, etc.), then we'll report back to the companies. In the interim, we're going to be working on this presentation we're doing next Friday, which is basically a motivational speech for the companies. I'm thinking of something along the lines of Matt Foley...actually, we want to give them an idea of where they've been, how far they've come, where they're going, and where they can continue to go with hard work and focus. Go team! We're also working on creating a training on marketing basics, differentiating themselves in the market, creating products that customers actually want and value, maximizing on the capture of products through diverse product lines, etc., and lastly, we'll be working on creating job descriptions for the local Eagle Condor offices so that all the Peruvian offices will be operating the same. Jenry is the manager of the Trujillo office, but there are offices in Chiclayo, Cuzco, and I think other places that are escaping me at the moment. The managers of the offices all work as each other's checks and balances, auditing each other, checking each other's customers, so it would be great for everything to be done in the same way across the board. We have our work cut out for us but it's exciting.
I'm supposed to be awake in 6 1/2 hours and I still have scriptures to read and prepping for tomorrow to do, so...I better get to it!
In the afternoon tomorrow, we're going to do write-ups, pick out quick suggestions of things they can do to improve, make a list of possible long-term suggestions to be addressed next summer (painting walls, installing tile, etc.), then we'll report back to the companies. In the interim, we're going to be working on this presentation we're doing next Friday, which is basically a motivational speech for the companies. I'm thinking of something along the lines of Matt Foley...actually, we want to give them an idea of where they've been, how far they've come, where they're going, and where they can continue to go with hard work and focus. Go team! We're also working on creating a training on marketing basics, differentiating themselves in the market, creating products that customers actually want and value, maximizing on the capture of products through diverse product lines, etc., and lastly, we'll be working on creating job descriptions for the local Eagle Condor offices so that all the Peruvian offices will be operating the same. Jenry is the manager of the Trujillo office, but there are offices in Chiclayo, Cuzco, and I think other places that are escaping me at the moment. The managers of the offices all work as each other's checks and balances, auditing each other, checking each other's customers, so it would be great for everything to be done in the same way across the board. We have our work cut out for us but it's exciting.
I'm supposed to be awake in 6 1/2 hours and I still have scriptures to read and prepping for tomorrow to do, so...I better get to it!
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
A Day at the Playa
Heather and I really have not talked enough about the family that we've been hanging out with. Jenry Silva is our boss here in Trujillo. He's pretty young--he turns 30 this summer--and his wife Margarita just turned 28 this past weekend. They have a 3-year old Adrian that is quite a character and who keeps all of us busy/running around like crazy people chasing him. His sister Edith lives with them. She is 21 and is going to one of the universities here in Trujillo. Jenry worked in a bank for 5 or 6 years before joining Eagle Condor less than a year ago. He was often working from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. at night, which was hard on him, his family, and his calling. He came to Eagle Condor for a better work/life balance and because he believes strongly in what Eagle Condor is doing. Jenry and his family are so awesome. Heather and I were talking tonight about how hard it's going to be to leave them. We've only spent two days with them and we already love them. I can't imagine what it will be like in three weeks.
Our first day here, we spent a lot of time with Jenry going over things, but we ate lunch with his family. We went out for Chinese food, which here is called "Chifa." None of them know where the name Chifa comes from but the Chinese restaurants all say Chifa on them. Chinese food is pretty popular here and it's really good too. My dad served his mission in Peru and one of the things he told me before I left was to go with the locals to eat good Chinese food. The food really was great. It didn't have the heavy feeling that Chinese food sometimes has in the United States. It reminded me more of the Chinese food that you find in Hawaii.
Lunch was especially great because Jenry's family is so charming. Margarita and Edith are both really nice and Margarita has a gift for story telling. She kept telling story after story and she had us dying of laughter. A lot of the stories were about crazy things Adrian has done or funny things he says. She talked about her family, about early days with Jenry. Pretty much we immediately felt like we were old friends.
We had FHE with the Silvas last night, which Heather wrote about, and then we hung out with them again today. We went to the beach at Huanchaco. Heather took a bunch of pictures, so I'll let her post those when she gets to that. She's actually working on our presentation that we have to give to our small businesses on Friday. I'm working on prepping for the reports we're going to have to write, which since I'm actually blogging right now just means I'll be up for another hour after this.
The beach of Huanchaco is normally really packed, but since it's fall here, it wasn't too bad. There were definitely quite a few people there, but no one was swimming or surfing. At least not while we were there. We did see a bunch of people in surf gear. Most of the people we had seen in Lima surfing at the beach looked like native Peruvians. Here at this beach, there were a couple of gringos. I never realized how different Americans look and how differently we carry ourselves. I also was struck with the creativity of Peruvians. They will do anything to make money, as in their very inventive at creating businesses. They will sell all sorts of goods and anywhere--people were walking the boardwalks selling homemade treats or offering to take our pictures for money. Later today back in Trujillo, we saw a kid do a bunch of backflips in the crosswalk at a red light and then go around to collect donations.
Huanchaco was a fun beach. They have lots of little market areas with artesan crafts. This guy was selling some of the purses that you see that are typical of Latin American countries...they were only like $5-$8 but I didn't get one. I probably should have...oh well.
After the beach, we went and had lunch at a small restaurant that was opened by a member with money he received from an Eagle Condor microcredit loan. It was cool to see his business in action. He has been home from his mission for probably only two years and he has been married for about one. He had his employees in the kitchen helping cook and he was walking around greeting people, busing tables, serving. Peruvians are hard workers.
Our next destination of the day was the wedding of Jenry's assistant Miguel. Of course we only knew the Silva family, but we got to meet some of the other people who own some of the businesses we serve. We also got to eat tamales, cabrito (young goat), and yucca. As I was eating my tamal, Margarita told me there was a premio (prize) inside. Jenry called it a sorpresa (surprise). I guess they don't realize we have tamales in the U.S., but the funny thing is that my premio was a surprise. We all had chicken in the middle or our tamales, but my chicken was chicken with the bone still in it. So odd.
After we ate, everyone began dancing to the band who was singing salsa, merengue, and cumbia numbers. Heather and I don't know how to dance this way, so we just pretended. I guess we look REALLY different (Heather's eyes are green--what do I expect?), because everyone kept staring at us and smiling and kind of giggling. We weren't sure what we were doing wrong, but obviously something.
After the dancing, we left to go shopping for an alarm clock and to stock up on the necessities for our apartment: bread, diet Coke (me), juice (Heather), crackers, chocolate...and Raid. When we got back to the apartment, the whole Silva family came with us to make sure we could unlock the doors and it was a good thing, because we had another cucaracha fest. Without going into the gory, gory details, with the help of Jenry and Margarita, roughly a dozen cucarachas lost their lives in a severe battle. Heather and I then went through our backpacks and suitcases making sure no cucarachas had managed to enter our stuff. We're feeling a little better about the cucaracha situation. With the exception of the major battle where lives were lost and a smaller battle later when Heather felt a cucaracha climbing up our skirt, the place has been pretty quiet for the past few hours. I'm worried about turning off the lights, though, because that's when all the creatures come out...
Our first day here, we spent a lot of time with Jenry going over things, but we ate lunch with his family. We went out for Chinese food, which here is called "Chifa." None of them know where the name Chifa comes from but the Chinese restaurants all say Chifa on them. Chinese food is pretty popular here and it's really good too. My dad served his mission in Peru and one of the things he told me before I left was to go with the locals to eat good Chinese food. The food really was great. It didn't have the heavy feeling that Chinese food sometimes has in the United States. It reminded me more of the Chinese food that you find in Hawaii.
Lunch was especially great because Jenry's family is so charming. Margarita and Edith are both really nice and Margarita has a gift for story telling. She kept telling story after story and she had us dying of laughter. A lot of the stories were about crazy things Adrian has done or funny things he says. She talked about her family, about early days with Jenry. Pretty much we immediately felt like we were old friends.
We had FHE with the Silvas last night, which Heather wrote about, and then we hung out with them again today. We went to the beach at Huanchaco. Heather took a bunch of pictures, so I'll let her post those when she gets to that. She's actually working on our presentation that we have to give to our small businesses on Friday. I'm working on prepping for the reports we're going to have to write, which since I'm actually blogging right now just means I'll be up for another hour after this.
The beach of Huanchaco is normally really packed, but since it's fall here, it wasn't too bad. There were definitely quite a few people there, but no one was swimming or surfing. At least not while we were there. We did see a bunch of people in surf gear. Most of the people we had seen in Lima surfing at the beach looked like native Peruvians. Here at this beach, there were a couple of gringos. I never realized how different Americans look and how differently we carry ourselves. I also was struck with the creativity of Peruvians. They will do anything to make money, as in their very inventive at creating businesses. They will sell all sorts of goods and anywhere--people were walking the boardwalks selling homemade treats or offering to take our pictures for money. Later today back in Trujillo, we saw a kid do a bunch of backflips in the crosswalk at a red light and then go around to collect donations.
Huanchaco was a fun beach. They have lots of little market areas with artesan crafts. This guy was selling some of the purses that you see that are typical of Latin American countries...they were only like $5-$8 but I didn't get one. I probably should have...oh well.
After the beach, we went and had lunch at a small restaurant that was opened by a member with money he received from an Eagle Condor microcredit loan. It was cool to see his business in action. He has been home from his mission for probably only two years and he has been married for about one. He had his employees in the kitchen helping cook and he was walking around greeting people, busing tables, serving. Peruvians are hard workers.
Our next destination of the day was the wedding of Jenry's assistant Miguel. Of course we only knew the Silva family, but we got to meet some of the other people who own some of the businesses we serve. We also got to eat tamales, cabrito (young goat), and yucca. As I was eating my tamal, Margarita told me there was a premio (prize) inside. Jenry called it a sorpresa (surprise). I guess they don't realize we have tamales in the U.S., but the funny thing is that my premio was a surprise. We all had chicken in the middle or our tamales, but my chicken was chicken with the bone still in it. So odd.
After we ate, everyone began dancing to the band who was singing salsa, merengue, and cumbia numbers. Heather and I don't know how to dance this way, so we just pretended. I guess we look REALLY different (Heather's eyes are green--what do I expect?), because everyone kept staring at us and smiling and kind of giggling. We weren't sure what we were doing wrong, but obviously something.
After the dancing, we left to go shopping for an alarm clock and to stock up on the necessities for our apartment: bread, diet Coke (me), juice (Heather), crackers, chocolate...and Raid. When we got back to the apartment, the whole Silva family came with us to make sure we could unlock the doors and it was a good thing, because we had another cucaracha fest. Without going into the gory, gory details, with the help of Jenry and Margarita, roughly a dozen cucarachas lost their lives in a severe battle. Heather and I then went through our backpacks and suitcases making sure no cucarachas had managed to enter our stuff. We're feeling a little better about the cucaracha situation. With the exception of the major battle where lives were lost and a smaller battle later when Heather felt a cucaracha climbing up our skirt, the place has been pretty quiet for the past few hours. I'm worried about turning off the lights, though, because that's when all the creatures come out...
The Maximum Security Apartment
Today is a holiday in Peru, the "Dia del Trabajador" or the "Day of the Worker." So the worker takes the day off and celebrates. We figured we wouldn't be able to go visit any of our small business owners today, so we took the day off too. Peru has been full of tiny little surprises for us.
One of the first ones yesterday was realizing that the tank of our toilet doesn't fill up with water. In order to flush, we have to fill a bucket up with water, fill the tank up, and then flush. Some of the other surprises have been tons of cockroaches in our apartment, a shower that only has cold water, and locks that just don't function like American locks.
Today after Heather and I took our cold showers, we were supposed to go over to Jenry and Margarita's house to meet them for breakfast and then go play for the day. When Heather and I went to leave, we couldn't unlock our front door. Our house has three doors--one to get inside the apartment building, one for the iron gate over our front door, and then the actual wooden front door. We were inside the apartment and couldn't get the wooden door open from the inside. We tried all our keys but the door wouldn't unlock. Jenry doesn't have a car, but this apartment has a garage, so we decided to go through the garage door and out of the apartment that way. We got into the garage and let the door from the apartment to the garage shut behind us. Bad idea. Garage doors in Peru aren't nice little doors like in America where you push a button and it rolls up. Garage doors are made up of a middle section which is actually a door that you walk through. You open this door and then move the side panels to the side in order to get your car through. It was work to get the garage door open, but we finally managed. For a moment we thought we were going to be locked in the garage.
Once we had escaped, Heather stayed in the garage to lock the door behind me, and I went back into the apartment from the outside to let her get out through the apartment front door. It took some work for me to get back into the apartment. The keys don't turn the same as in the United States and there's so many different latches...it takes forever. So I finally got back in and released Heather from her prison. Once we were back in the apartment, with the front door open, we locked the front door...but when we went to go out through the front door of the building...we couldn't get it open from the inside. So again, we were trapped.
I went back into the apartment feeling a little defeated...while Heather stood outside. Luckily, someone came along and opened the main door to the apartment building while Heather was still standing there, so we were free!!! When we finally made it over to Jenry and Margarita's apartment, they were relieved to finally see us. They had been wondering what could possibly be taking us half an hour to cross the small park between our houses. We walk slowly, okay?
One of the first ones yesterday was realizing that the tank of our toilet doesn't fill up with water. In order to flush, we have to fill a bucket up with water, fill the tank up, and then flush. Some of the other surprises have been tons of cockroaches in our apartment, a shower that only has cold water, and locks that just don't function like American locks.
Today after Heather and I took our cold showers, we were supposed to go over to Jenry and Margarita's house to meet them for breakfast and then go play for the day. When Heather and I went to leave, we couldn't unlock our front door. Our house has three doors--one to get inside the apartment building, one for the iron gate over our front door, and then the actual wooden front door. We were inside the apartment and couldn't get the wooden door open from the inside. We tried all our keys but the door wouldn't unlock. Jenry doesn't have a car, but this apartment has a garage, so we decided to go through the garage door and out of the apartment that way. We got into the garage and let the door from the apartment to the garage shut behind us. Bad idea. Garage doors in Peru aren't nice little doors like in America where you push a button and it rolls up. Garage doors are made up of a middle section which is actually a door that you walk through. You open this door and then move the side panels to the side in order to get your car through. It was work to get the garage door open, but we finally managed. For a moment we thought we were going to be locked in the garage.
Once we had escaped, Heather stayed in the garage to lock the door behind me, and I went back into the apartment from the outside to let her get out through the apartment front door. It took some work for me to get back into the apartment. The keys don't turn the same as in the United States and there's so many different latches...it takes forever. So I finally got back in and released Heather from her prison. Once we were back in the apartment, with the front door open, we locked the front door...but when we went to go out through the front door of the building...we couldn't get it open from the inside. So again, we were trapped.
I went back into the apartment feeling a little defeated...while Heather stood outside. Luckily, someone came along and opened the main door to the apartment building while Heather was still standing there, so we were free!!! When we finally made it over to Jenry and Margarita's apartment, they were relieved to finally see us. They had been wondering what could possibly be taking us half an hour to cross the small park between our houses. We walk slowly, okay?
Cucarachas!!!!!
I'm pretty much a night owl. I don't really like sleeping at night until really late. So last night I stayed up catching up on emails and writing about our experiences here in Peru. Heather had been in bed for probably an hour when I went to find something. I think I was going to read my scriptures and then write a little more after reading. I went to the bathroom, brushed my teeth, washed my face, did the normal getting ready for bed things.
When I came out of the bathroom, I saw a cockroach lying on its back. It was one of the disgusting inch-long creatures. There are few things that I hate more in this world than cockroaches, worms, and rodents (unless they're chinchillas--those I can handle). I stood there immobile for a second in total terror. I decided to just let him lay there knowing that I couldn't really deal with that sort of disgustingness.
I crept quietly into our room where our suitcases and backpacks lay unzipped on the ground. I started zipping up bags so that roaches wouldn't get inside. I managed to do both my suitcase and Heather's. I moved on to Heather's backpack and when I went to zip it up, three cockroaches ran out from behind her bag toward the bedroom door. Luckily, it was the opposite direction of me, but I let out a blood curdling scream and literally leapt onto the bottom bunk where Heather was sleeping and proceeded to continue screaming. I despise roaches.
Heather woke up, of course. She was totally freaked out that something crazy had happened. Something crazy had happened. Four roaches dared show themselves in my presence. She started laughing quietly to herself when she realized what the deal was and lay back down. Meanwhile, I continued sitting on her bed breathing deeply and trying to calm myself. I had wanted to read my scriptures, I had wanted to write something else on the blog, I had wanted to change my clothes and get into the top bunk...but I was too scared to do any of it. So I said to Heather, "I'm just going to sleep here." And I climbed under the blanket next to Heather in her double bed, covered my head, and lay there quietly till I fell asleep.
When I came out of the bathroom, I saw a cockroach lying on its back. It was one of the disgusting inch-long creatures. There are few things that I hate more in this world than cockroaches, worms, and rodents (unless they're chinchillas--those I can handle). I stood there immobile for a second in total terror. I decided to just let him lay there knowing that I couldn't really deal with that sort of disgustingness.
I crept quietly into our room where our suitcases and backpacks lay unzipped on the ground. I started zipping up bags so that roaches wouldn't get inside. I managed to do both my suitcase and Heather's. I moved on to Heather's backpack and when I went to zip it up, three cockroaches ran out from behind her bag toward the bedroom door. Luckily, it was the opposite direction of me, but I let out a blood curdling scream and literally leapt onto the bottom bunk where Heather was sleeping and proceeded to continue screaming. I despise roaches.
Heather woke up, of course. She was totally freaked out that something crazy had happened. Something crazy had happened. Four roaches dared show themselves in my presence. She started laughing quietly to herself when she realized what the deal was and lay back down. Meanwhile, I continued sitting on her bed breathing deeply and trying to calm myself. I had wanted to read my scriptures, I had wanted to write something else on the blog, I had wanted to change my clothes and get into the top bunk...but I was too scared to do any of it. So I said to Heather, "I'm just going to sleep here." And I climbed under the blanket next to Heather in her double bed, covered my head, and lay there quietly till I fell asleep.
Monday, Monday
Heather and I have both noticed that our English is getting kind of messy. So far things have been great with the Spanish and we've only had a few moments where we were totally lost. To be honest, I'm actually impressed with our sweet skills after so much time not speaking.
So...I don't know how much people want to hear about our experiences, but for our parents (at least they care), I'll include details. And as Heather and a million other people have said, "You're pretty verbose," so I'm trying to split the blog entries up so that you don't have to read one entry of ten pages covering one day.
So after Heather and I arrived at the office, Jenry had to finalize the loan of a family who is going to open a restaurant. We spent the time looking at trainings that Eagle Condor (the company that Jenry works for and that we're doing this little internship for) gives to their potential borrowers. Eagle Condor is HARDCORE. And they're awesome. They have this extensive process where they have potential borrowers apply and then they go through this selection process. One of the interesting facts about their process is that they try to decide on who to lend to based on some interesting criteria; such as, church leaders have priority. The reasoning behind this is that they want to help people who are in hard situations financially to improve their lives and have a chance to progress out of poverty. Their first priority is to help the leadership of the church be stable and then they look at the members. They will serve any member, but if the funds are limited, they will try to help leaders who meet the other criteria before they will lend to other members. Tiene sentido.
It is amazing to see what they do for people. Their loans are microcredit loans (small, small loans of $120 to about $2000) to help people either start businesses or grow their current business. For example, there is a man who makes this candy here that pretty much rocks. It's a typical treat in Peru. He could make about 100 to 200 a week and he would make them by hand and then go through the streets trying to sell them. With his loan, he was able to change the process so that he now makes up to 4000 a week and has a distribution process where he sells to resellers. It's totally amazing. They've helped other people open small shops, restaurants, bakeries. It's amazing the difference that this makes in people's lives. I'm totally sold. As we were watching a film today, I totally got emotional and had to keep myself from crying (because I'm emotionally inhibited, okay?). I wasn't sure if it was because I was touched by the work that they do and the lives that they change or because one of our fellow classmates who used to work with them, Russ Tanner, was on the video and it made Heather and me miss him even more! :)
Jenry spent the day talking to us about trainings that they do for the people. Every business owner goes through 6 training sessions of 2-3 hours each where they discuss the basics of business. I wish we could whittle our MBA program down to 18 hours. :) Actually, it's a ton of information, especially for people who may not have had their own business before. Once the people finish their training and receive their loan, Jenry or his assistant or another Eagle Condor representative visits the business every week or every two weeks for two years to give advice, see how things are doing, make sure things are on track. In Trujillo, things are awesome and 100% of their borrowers are making their loan payments. Incredible. It's really beautiful to see the simplicity of these people's lives and to see how much this help means to them. It's awesome.
Jenry also showed us pictures of most of the families and talked about their businesses and where they are right now. Heather and I are going to do visits, write up more detailed histories, look for ways that they can improve their businesses, create a marketing training, and...I don't know. Whatever else there is for us to do. We're really excited. I love this stuff. True, from our perspective it's a non-profit so there's no money for me to work in a business like this, but I would love to be able to make money with my degree and then turn around and find ways to invest in these people's lives. Being here has made me realize how much money I have, how much I can do, how frivilous I often am with my money...and yet to be honest, I know it'll be hard for me once I'm back in the United States to maintain this perspective and refrain from spending my money on luxuries (like eating out, going to movies, new shirts from Banana) when I should be putting it toward helping others.
So...I don't know how much people want to hear about our experiences, but for our parents (at least they care), I'll include details. And as Heather and a million other people have said, "You're pretty verbose," so I'm trying to split the blog entries up so that you don't have to read one entry of ten pages covering one day.
So after Heather and I arrived at the office, Jenry had to finalize the loan of a family who is going to open a restaurant. We spent the time looking at trainings that Eagle Condor (the company that Jenry works for and that we're doing this little internship for) gives to their potential borrowers. Eagle Condor is HARDCORE. And they're awesome. They have this extensive process where they have potential borrowers apply and then they go through this selection process. One of the interesting facts about their process is that they try to decide on who to lend to based on some interesting criteria; such as, church leaders have priority. The reasoning behind this is that they want to help people who are in hard situations financially to improve their lives and have a chance to progress out of poverty. Their first priority is to help the leadership of the church be stable and then they look at the members. They will serve any member, but if the funds are limited, they will try to help leaders who meet the other criteria before they will lend to other members. Tiene sentido.
It is amazing to see what they do for people. Their loans are microcredit loans (small, small loans of $120 to about $2000) to help people either start businesses or grow their current business. For example, there is a man who makes this candy here that pretty much rocks. It's a typical treat in Peru. He could make about 100 to 200 a week and he would make them by hand and then go through the streets trying to sell them. With his loan, he was able to change the process so that he now makes up to 4000 a week and has a distribution process where he sells to resellers. It's totally amazing. They've helped other people open small shops, restaurants, bakeries. It's amazing the difference that this makes in people's lives. I'm totally sold. As we were watching a film today, I totally got emotional and had to keep myself from crying (because I'm emotionally inhibited, okay?). I wasn't sure if it was because I was touched by the work that they do and the lives that they change or because one of our fellow classmates who used to work with them, Russ Tanner, was on the video and it made Heather and me miss him even more! :)
Jenry spent the day talking to us about trainings that they do for the people. Every business owner goes through 6 training sessions of 2-3 hours each where they discuss the basics of business. I wish we could whittle our MBA program down to 18 hours. :) Actually, it's a ton of information, especially for people who may not have had their own business before. Once the people finish their training and receive their loan, Jenry or his assistant or another Eagle Condor representative visits the business every week or every two weeks for two years to give advice, see how things are doing, make sure things are on track. In Trujillo, things are awesome and 100% of their borrowers are making their loan payments. Incredible. It's really beautiful to see the simplicity of these people's lives and to see how much this help means to them. It's awesome.
Jenry also showed us pictures of most of the families and talked about their businesses and where they are right now. Heather and I are going to do visits, write up more detailed histories, look for ways that they can improve their businesses, create a marketing training, and...I don't know. Whatever else there is for us to do. We're really excited. I love this stuff. True, from our perspective it's a non-profit so there's no money for me to work in a business like this, but I would love to be able to make money with my degree and then turn around and find ways to invest in these people's lives. Being here has made me realize how much money I have, how much I can do, how frivilous I often am with my money...and yet to be honest, I know it'll be hard for me once I'm back in the United States to maintain this perspective and refrain from spending my money on luxuries (like eating out, going to movies, new shirts from Banana) when I should be putting it toward helping others.
Monday, April 30, 2007
A story only a mother could hate
So I thought I'd write a little bit about our adventures on Sunday night even though Heather has posted what we did tonight (Monday). When Heather and I arrived in Trujillo, the airport is really tiny. It's one room with a little conveyor belt to pick up your luggage. We exited the room to a huge crowd, which included a little band, some people with posters, a bunch of taxistas, and a whole group of people who felt like they needed to direct us and tell us where to go as we looked around for our ride. Our flight was the last flight of the evening, so they were turning off the lights of the airport and the parking lot was emptying. We tried calling our contact back in Salt Lake, we tried calling our parents, to no avail. Our cell phones, which supposedly would work with high rates down here didn't work at all, so...we kind of just stood there and tried to decide what to do. As it was, our flight had arrived probably a half an hour late so there shouldn't have been a problem for our contact to be there.
A lone taxista approached us and told us he could take us to a hotel where we could stay. Kind of suspect. But what are two gringas in a foreign country supposed to do? Probably stay put, but...we had no idea where the communication breakdown had occurred and we were basically going on two days of close to no sleep. At that moment, I remembered the words of a blessing my dad had given me before we left and I actually felt like we would be okay. So we decided on a hotel and went with the taxista. The hotel was a nice one located right off the Plaza de Armas of Trujillo. We had checked in and had tried to use the phone to call people (which we couldn't figure out how to use to make international calls) so then resorted to using the internet when we received a phone call from the front desk. Our contact here in Trujillo, Jenry (Henry), had located us at the hotel where we were through some great detective work. Actually, it's not too hard to imagine, but some of the taxistas here work for certain hotels to try to get people to stay with them, so when Jenry went to the airport, they described with whom we had gone and which hotel he worked for and it wasn't too hard to find us. There had been a simple miscommunication about what day we were coming in. Jenry happened to call our Salt Lake contact about the time we arrived and realized that he should have been at the airport right then so he ran out to find us. Of course Terry and Jaime and Jenry and everyone was worried about us, but Heather and I were just relaxing in a 4-star hotel, kicking back, watching programs about plastic surgery, and nibbling on chocolates. :) Okay, it wasn't quite like that. We had just gotten there, but since we had already checked in, it seemed simpler to stay.
It was fun to stay in the hotel. The funny thing is this hotel wasn't anything amazing, but you could tell it was a nice hotel for the area. It reminded me of when I went to Manhattan last November. The hotel where I stayed was a W, the room was tiny, it was in Midtown Manhattan surrounded by high rises and brick buildings, and it wasn't really what you would consider the best place, but knowing that I was in Midtown in a clean hotel room the size of a closet with Voss water bottles, fine mahogany furnishings, M&M's that cost $6, and people in the bar downstairs that were so full of their own beauty...I just knew I had reached the pinnacle of social perfection. Kidding. This hotel wasn't snobby, but it was the same in that it was pretty, in a nice location, and our first two water bottles were on the house, so...you know it's the big time.
We actually stayed up pretty late checking our email and eating the finest Peruvian cuisine that room service can offer. In the morning, we slept until about 9 a.m. and debated for 40 minutes if we should go down for breakfast. We were so tired we really just wanted to lounge for the next three weeks. But at 9:45 it suddenly hit that we were starving, so we tried to make ourselves look presentable...alls I gotta say is look at our pictures of us in Lima, imagine us that same way only after having slept for 8 hours so our hair is even messier, and then imagine us wearing black fleece jackets, me in my black velour pants that everyone I know hates and Heather in warmups. Everyone else in the dining room was dressed up because this isn't the Motel 8 with the free donuts for continental breakfast, but...we only had five minutes to get ready and ten minutes to eat. So we pretended that we thought we were normal and ate scrambled eggs, pancakes, chorizo sausage, bacon, fresh fruit, fresh juice, cheese, ham...we were hungry, okay?
After breakfast, we got to shower again. I don't know what it is about traveling but every time I get to shower, I feel like it's a decadent luxury. So hooray for showering! After we got ready, Jenry came to get us and bring us to the place where we will be staying for the rest of our time. We are actually sleeping at the office. We're pretty much workaholics so that's why they set it up that way. Either that or real estate is an even more precious commodity here. Jenry lives across from us and works at the office during the day. The office is made up of a big training room, a couple of offices for Jenry and his assistant Miguel, and then another empty room in the very back of the offices that is being used as a bedroom by us. There is a bathroom in the front of the office and then we have our own bathroom equipped with...that's right...a shower! So it's going to be nothing but decadent luxuries from here on out. The office also has a kitchen that they're going to set up for future interns, but they've only been in this location for a couple of days, so we'll probably spend most of our time eating with Jenry y familia.
Our room has a bunkbed and we have wireless internet. Pretty much we're set. The only thing that is really sad for us is the lack of a kitchen. For anyone who has spent time with Heather and me late in the evening, you know that time is measured only by man and not by the hunger of woman. Heather will often eat at 10 and call it her fourth meal and I'm pretty much down with choco-latay any time of day. We went to the supermercado tonight with Jenry and his family to get potable water for the place. Heather and I were both conservative and didn't buy anything there, but sure enough...at about 11, we were feeling sad about not having a secret stash of anything...except water. I think we learned our lesson, though, and we're going to stock this place with crackers and chocolates for tomorrow night.
A lone taxista approached us and told us he could take us to a hotel where we could stay. Kind of suspect. But what are two gringas in a foreign country supposed to do? Probably stay put, but...we had no idea where the communication breakdown had occurred and we were basically going on two days of close to no sleep. At that moment, I remembered the words of a blessing my dad had given me before we left and I actually felt like we would be okay. So we decided on a hotel and went with the taxista. The hotel was a nice one located right off the Plaza de Armas of Trujillo. We had checked in and had tried to use the phone to call people (which we couldn't figure out how to use to make international calls) so then resorted to using the internet when we received a phone call from the front desk. Our contact here in Trujillo, Jenry (Henry), had located us at the hotel where we were through some great detective work. Actually, it's not too hard to imagine, but some of the taxistas here work for certain hotels to try to get people to stay with them, so when Jenry went to the airport, they described with whom we had gone and which hotel he worked for and it wasn't too hard to find us. There had been a simple miscommunication about what day we were coming in. Jenry happened to call our Salt Lake contact about the time we arrived and realized that he should have been at the airport right then so he ran out to find us. Of course Terry and Jaime and Jenry and everyone was worried about us, but Heather and I were just relaxing in a 4-star hotel, kicking back, watching programs about plastic surgery, and nibbling on chocolates. :) Okay, it wasn't quite like that. We had just gotten there, but since we had already checked in, it seemed simpler to stay.
It was fun to stay in the hotel. The funny thing is this hotel wasn't anything amazing, but you could tell it was a nice hotel for the area. It reminded me of when I went to Manhattan last November. The hotel where I stayed was a W, the room was tiny, it was in Midtown Manhattan surrounded by high rises and brick buildings, and it wasn't really what you would consider the best place, but knowing that I was in Midtown in a clean hotel room the size of a closet with Voss water bottles, fine mahogany furnishings, M&M's that cost $6, and people in the bar downstairs that were so full of their own beauty...I just knew I had reached the pinnacle of social perfection. Kidding. This hotel wasn't snobby, but it was the same in that it was pretty, in a nice location, and our first two water bottles were on the house, so...you know it's the big time.
We actually stayed up pretty late checking our email and eating the finest Peruvian cuisine that room service can offer. In the morning, we slept until about 9 a.m. and debated for 40 minutes if we should go down for breakfast. We were so tired we really just wanted to lounge for the next three weeks. But at 9:45 it suddenly hit that we were starving, so we tried to make ourselves look presentable...alls I gotta say is look at our pictures of us in Lima, imagine us that same way only after having slept for 8 hours so our hair is even messier, and then imagine us wearing black fleece jackets, me in my black velour pants that everyone I know hates and Heather in warmups. Everyone else in the dining room was dressed up because this isn't the Motel 8 with the free donuts for continental breakfast, but...we only had five minutes to get ready and ten minutes to eat. So we pretended that we thought we were normal and ate scrambled eggs, pancakes, chorizo sausage, bacon, fresh fruit, fresh juice, cheese, ham...we were hungry, okay?
After breakfast, we got to shower again. I don't know what it is about traveling but every time I get to shower, I feel like it's a decadent luxury. So hooray for showering! After we got ready, Jenry came to get us and bring us to the place where we will be staying for the rest of our time. We are actually sleeping at the office. We're pretty much workaholics so that's why they set it up that way. Either that or real estate is an even more precious commodity here. Jenry lives across from us and works at the office during the day. The office is made up of a big training room, a couple of offices for Jenry and his assistant Miguel, and then another empty room in the very back of the offices that is being used as a bedroom by us. There is a bathroom in the front of the office and then we have our own bathroom equipped with...that's right...a shower! So it's going to be nothing but decadent luxuries from here on out. The office also has a kitchen that they're going to set up for future interns, but they've only been in this location for a couple of days, so we'll probably spend most of our time eating with Jenry y familia.
Our room has a bunkbed and we have wireless internet. Pretty much we're set. The only thing that is really sad for us is the lack of a kitchen. For anyone who has spent time with Heather and me late in the evening, you know that time is measured only by man and not by the hunger of woman. Heather will often eat at 10 and call it her fourth meal and I'm pretty much down with choco-latay any time of day. We went to the supermercado tonight with Jenry and his family to get potable water for the place. Heather and I were both conservative and didn't buy anything there, but sure enough...at about 11, we were feeling sad about not having a secret stash of anything...except water. I think we learned our lesson, though, and we're going to stock this place with crackers and chocolates for tomorrow night.
Family Home Evening
Tonight we were invited to FHE with Jenry's cute little family. Their little 3-year-old boy, Adrian, was incharge of conducting the meeting. He welcomed us to his home, he let us know who would be incharge of the opening prayer, the opening hymn, the lesson, and the closing prayer. He gave himself the assignment of giving the lesson. We sang a song neither Danielle or I had ever heard of before, listened to Adrian's cute little self-appointed lesson about Jesus, listened to a lesson given by Jenry about the importance of temples, and then closed with another song and a prayer.
Although in Spanish, and although in another country, I couldn't help but notice all of the similarities between this little family's attempt to have family home evening and that of my family when we were all super obnoxious, hyper-active kids. A dad trying to give the lesson over the sound of a screaming child, both parents trying to get everybody to sing while a child is mad because his hymn wasn't chosen, and a mom doing all that she can to get everybody through the evening with smiles on their faces.
Whether in a home with 5 rowdy kids in WA or an apartment with 1 rowdy kid in Peru, the gospel is taught to children by their parents in the home. And that is a beautiful thing.
Although in Spanish, and although in another country, I couldn't help but notice all of the similarities between this little family's attempt to have family home evening and that of my family when we were all super obnoxious, hyper-active kids. A dad trying to give the lesson over the sound of a screaming child, both parents trying to get everybody to sing while a child is mad because his hymn wasn't chosen, and a mom doing all that she can to get everybody through the evening with smiles on their faces.
Whether in a home with 5 rowdy kids in WA or an apartment with 1 rowdy kid in Peru, the gospel is taught to children by their parents in the home. And that is a beautiful thing.
Daniel and Javier in Lima
So Heather and I learned that our names aren't very Spanish. We already knew that. People can't seem to say Heather. If we spell it for them (Jeder), they usually do better. My name is a boy's name in Spanish (Daniel in Spanish is pronounced how Danielle is in English), so I've just been telling people that my name is Daniela.
We arrived yesterday morning (Sunday) at 5 a.m. and after passing through customs, we collected our luggage at the airport and were met by Eduardo Marquez. Eduardo is a member of the church here in Lima. He took us back to his house with his family where we were able to sleep two more hours. That was great, but even after sleeping, we were still exhausted. We got up, showered, and got dressed. His wife made us a great breakfast of tamales, onions, and herbal tea and then we went to church. After the three of us fell asleep during sacrament meeting, we decided to drive around the city a little bit.
We went to the Plaza de Armas de Lima where we sort of watched the changing of the guard at the White House (what they call their White House :). In that same plaza is the mayor's house, and a cathedral that they call La Catedral where Francisco Pizarro, one of the Spanish Conquistadors, is buried. There were tons of people in the Plaza and apparently a little miscommunication as to who had the right to be there, so there were police there kind of sectioning the areas off and doing a little bit of crowd control. There were a few Andean groups waiting to come into the Plaza and dance in their native costumes. We walked around for a bit and then took off in search of food.
We went to a part of Lima called Miraflores. It's a wealthier part of town. In truth, when we got off the plane, the part of Lima where the airport is situated is super poor. We passed miles of buildings that that early in the morning just appeared to be abandoned because of their state, but later in the day, there were tons of people bustling about. The streets were totally dusty; in fact, in that part of town, I don't think they were paved, so everything seemed covered in dust. Miraflores was definitely a contrast, but it really just seemed kind of like a normal place that you'd find in the USA. It didn't seem particularly wealthy. It did remind me a little of Santa Monica, California with narrower streets lined with tall buildings and cool boutiques just minutes from the shore.
We ate in a restaurant called La Bruja de Cachiche. It was typical Peruvian food, but it was definitely a nicer restaurant. It was frequented by the European-looking set that you find in places like Spain or Italy or...Napa Valley. The people who wear really expensive jeans with leather boots, button down shirts and sweaters wrapped around their shoulders. The food there was great. I know my family would be totally interested in food details, but I'll spare the rest of you.
After lunch, we drove a little along the coast, which is called La Costa Verde (the green coast) for all the green vegetation in the area. It really wasn't lush like Washington, but compared to the other coastal parts of Peru like the rest of Lima and Trujillo, I guess it's fairly lush. Driving along the coast actually reminded me again of Santa Monica and Malibu and driving up the Pacific Coast Highway. It had the same sort of feel. We stopped at a beach just to get out and look around and the waters were dotted with the same black dots that you see in Santa Cruz, that is, surfers. The coast of Peru is supposedly world famous as a great surfing spot.
We also drove up to the temple and the Peruvian MTC just to get a look at them. The church has pretty high security here. The walls are totally cement and you can't see through them near the entryway to the MTC, but the guard opened a metal door for us (at Eduardo's request) and let us glance in. We didn't even get to pass the threshhold. It seemed really beautiful there. As usual, the church takes really great care of their property.
Finally, we went to collect our things and headed to the airport for a dinner of crackers and chocolate that we picked up at our friendly neighborhood airport convenience store. And did you know that Peru has an airline tariff that you pay on top of your regular ticket price and fees? It cost us $6.05 to fly to Trujillo, but supposedly it'll cost us $30 to leave the country. The beauty of that is that we have a layover in Peru on our way out of the country before we even leave Lima, so we'll get to pay twice the taxes.
Lima was great. I really don't think we got to see very much of it, but our layover in Lima on our way back to the US is another 12 hours, so...we might check out a few more hotspots. :)
We arrived yesterday morning (Sunday) at 5 a.m. and after passing through customs, we collected our luggage at the airport and were met by Eduardo Marquez. Eduardo is a member of the church here in Lima. He took us back to his house with his family where we were able to sleep two more hours. That was great, but even after sleeping, we were still exhausted. We got up, showered, and got dressed. His wife made us a great breakfast of tamales, onions, and herbal tea and then we went to church. After the three of us fell asleep during sacrament meeting, we decided to drive around the city a little bit.
We went to the Plaza de Armas de Lima where we sort of watched the changing of the guard at the White House (what they call their White House :). In that same plaza is the mayor's house, and a cathedral that they call La Catedral where Francisco Pizarro, one of the Spanish Conquistadors, is buried. There were tons of people in the Plaza and apparently a little miscommunication as to who had the right to be there, so there were police there kind of sectioning the areas off and doing a little bit of crowd control. There were a few Andean groups waiting to come into the Plaza and dance in their native costumes. We walked around for a bit and then took off in search of food.
We went to a part of Lima called Miraflores. It's a wealthier part of town. In truth, when we got off the plane, the part of Lima where the airport is situated is super poor. We passed miles of buildings that that early in the morning just appeared to be abandoned because of their state, but later in the day, there were tons of people bustling about. The streets were totally dusty; in fact, in that part of town, I don't think they were paved, so everything seemed covered in dust. Miraflores was definitely a contrast, but it really just seemed kind of like a normal place that you'd find in the USA. It didn't seem particularly wealthy. It did remind me a little of Santa Monica, California with narrower streets lined with tall buildings and cool boutiques just minutes from the shore.
We ate in a restaurant called La Bruja de Cachiche. It was typical Peruvian food, but it was definitely a nicer restaurant. It was frequented by the European-looking set that you find in places like Spain or Italy or...Napa Valley. The people who wear really expensive jeans with leather boots, button down shirts and sweaters wrapped around their shoulders. The food there was great. I know my family would be totally interested in food details, but I'll spare the rest of you.
After lunch, we drove a little along the coast, which is called La Costa Verde (the green coast) for all the green vegetation in the area. It really wasn't lush like Washington, but compared to the other coastal parts of Peru like the rest of Lima and Trujillo, I guess it's fairly lush. Driving along the coast actually reminded me again of Santa Monica and Malibu and driving up the Pacific Coast Highway. It had the same sort of feel. We stopped at a beach just to get out and look around and the waters were dotted with the same black dots that you see in Santa Cruz, that is, surfers. The coast of Peru is supposedly world famous as a great surfing spot.
We also drove up to the temple and the Peruvian MTC just to get a look at them. The church has pretty high security here. The walls are totally cement and you can't see through them near the entryway to the MTC, but the guard opened a metal door for us (at Eduardo's request) and let us glance in. We didn't even get to pass the threshhold. It seemed really beautiful there. As usual, the church takes really great care of their property.
Finally, we went to collect our things and headed to the airport for a dinner of crackers and chocolate that we picked up at our friendly neighborhood airport convenience store. And did you know that Peru has an airline tariff that you pay on top of your regular ticket price and fees? It cost us $6.05 to fly to Trujillo, but supposedly it'll cost us $30 to leave the country. The beauty of that is that we have a layover in Peru on our way out of the country before we even leave Lima, so we'll get to pay twice the taxes.
Lima was great. I really don't think we got to see very much of it, but our layover in Lima on our way back to the US is another 12 hours, so...we might check out a few more hotspots. :)
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Time zones
By the way, I think all our posts so far are on Pacific Time because Heather's mom set the blog up for us and she's in Washington State. I think Peru is on Central time and currently we're on Eastern time. One of these days, we'll update our settings so that it shows our actual time. :) In Miami, it's almost midnight...
Bienvenidos a Miami!
Heather and I are sitting here in the Miami International Airport. Two words, Miami: moving walkways. Actually, in spite of my lack of sleep last night, I’m not that tired so the walking isn’t a problem, but I do think that international airports should have light rail to get around the airport quickly or at the very least moving walkways. It’s the principle of the thing, people.
It has been a long day already, but not a bad one by any means. My sweet dad dropped me off at the airport this morning, where Heather and I met up and proceeded to crack ourselves up telling ridiculous jokes, which is what happens when you’re both giddy from no sleep. It was a class act comedy hour. Everything one of us said provoked a laughing fit from the other person.
The day has been semi-uneventful. We ran into my brother Martin’s friend Lance in the airport in SLC. And then later on our flight to Dallas, another one of Martin’s friends, Andrew, was there with a whole crew of people going to Costa Rica. We all had trouble getting to our connecting flights when we got to Dallas. Our plane sat around in Salt Lake for close to an hour as they “[dealt] with a mechanical discrepancy with the plane.” The pilot was sure to let us know it wasn’t his fault. It was kind of random that he felt the need to say that. Heather and I had to sprint along with about 5 other people heading to Miami for a family reunion, but we made it.
So now we’re in Miami and in about 6 hours we’ll be in Lima hablando the espanol. It’s exciting. It’s this crazy mixture of feelings knowing we’re going out to this cool project, feeling a little bit nervous about having to switch into 100% Spanish after years of not speaking it regularly, being completely out of our comfort zones in a foreign country…but we’re both really excited and I’m so happy I have Heather with me. I already wrote this before, but Heather really is such a great friend and such an easy friend to be with. She just has this rad personality that meshes well with the likes of me, so that makes all of the other crazy transitions that much easier to deal with. We’ll probably board in a few minutes…I’m starting to feel tired emotionally and physically. I just hope we can get to a sacrament meeting tomorrow during our layover in Lima…
We miss everyone and have thought and talked about you guys all day. So much love to all our family and friends and congratulations to Casey for winning the Country Music Marathon in Nashville, Tennessee...or for at least finishing in great time! :)
It has been a long day already, but not a bad one by any means. My sweet dad dropped me off at the airport this morning, where Heather and I met up and proceeded to crack ourselves up telling ridiculous jokes, which is what happens when you’re both giddy from no sleep. It was a class act comedy hour. Everything one of us said provoked a laughing fit from the other person.
The day has been semi-uneventful. We ran into my brother Martin’s friend Lance in the airport in SLC. And then later on our flight to Dallas, another one of Martin’s friends, Andrew, was there with a whole crew of people going to Costa Rica. We all had trouble getting to our connecting flights when we got to Dallas. Our plane sat around in Salt Lake for close to an hour as they “[dealt] with a mechanical discrepancy with the plane.” The pilot was sure to let us know it wasn’t his fault. It was kind of random that he felt the need to say that. Heather and I had to sprint along with about 5 other people heading to Miami for a family reunion, but we made it.
So now we’re in Miami and in about 6 hours we’ll be in Lima hablando the espanol. It’s exciting. It’s this crazy mixture of feelings knowing we’re going out to this cool project, feeling a little bit nervous about having to switch into 100% Spanish after years of not speaking it regularly, being completely out of our comfort zones in a foreign country…but we’re both really excited and I’m so happy I have Heather with me. I already wrote this before, but Heather really is such a great friend and such an easy friend to be with. She just has this rad personality that meshes well with the likes of me, so that makes all of the other crazy transitions that much easier to deal with. We’ll probably board in a few minutes…I’m starting to feel tired emotionally and physically. I just hope we can get to a sacrament meeting tomorrow during our layover in Lima…
We miss everyone and have thought and talked about you guys all day. So much love to all our family and friends and congratulations to Casey for winning the Country Music Marathon in Nashville, Tennessee...or for at least finishing in great time! :)
Mas informacion al fin...
I've been packing for hours and I thought I'd take a blogging break. The thing about me is there are a lot of things that I'm pretty indifferent on, but the stuff that I have opinions on--watch out. Because I'm pretty precise and pretty methodical. I've been studying my bookshelves looking at all of my books trying to decide, "Will I need that in Trujillo? Will I need that in Morristown?" After that, I looked at the junk in my bathroom: "What perfume should go to Trujillo? What perfume should go to Morristown?" It's sort of ridiculous. And I think I'm taking way more kitchen stuff to my internship than most people. I'm taking a food processor, a blender, a vegetable spiralizer, water bottles and smoothie cups, at least ten cookbooks...and the funny thing is my place is furnished, but people please. Is their blender a Blendtec (www.willitblend.com) and is their food processor a KitchenAid?
Tonight Heather and I had the opportunity to meet Jaime and Terry Figueroa. To be honest...I don't know if they own Eagle Condor, are major donors for Eagle Condor, fly like eagles and condors...whoever they are, they're major players and have been key contacts through the process. Jaime just got home from Peru today and he and Terry stopped by Provo on their way to Manti. They explained the project to us more and showed us pictures.
Basically, the 20 families who have recently received microcredit loans just became 40. Jaime explained that they would like for us to go visit every family/business, make an assessment on their business and do a write-up with suggestions. Some of these suggestions, we can obviously share with the families, but Jaime and Terry stressed that these people are in the most extreme poverty just starting a business and that they really do need baby steps to progress. So we'll share a few things and then next summer, a large expedition will go down and help with major improvements, probably in the way of physical changes (tiling baking areas) and training. So we're going to write up forty reports and share them with Eagle Condor and with two other interns from Eagle Condor.
One of the interns, Dan Ash, Heather and I met earlier this week. He and his friend (Clint?) are going down there a couple of days after us and they'll be primarily in Cuzco. Hopefully, we'll meet up with them to go to Machu Picchu. Because that's what Peru is about. It's just a big vacation for the four of us. Just kidding. But Dan and Clint are going to be doing documentation regarding some of the families and their businesses in the Cuzco area and then after Heather and I leave Trujillo, they'll come through and do more documentation of progress--picture taking, more reporting--so it will be really useful for them to have our write-ups.
Jaime and Terry also asked us to really try to help the people learn marketing, so we're going to create a training to teach basic marketing principles. As all BYU MBA students know, learning marketing is like drinking from a firehose, but...better than drinking from the Peruvian tap, from what we hear.
Jaime and Terry shared with us pictures of some of the families we're going to meet. It's really exciting. I know Heather and I are that much more pumped to go. They also told us where we're going to stay (in the office). We'll have a kitchen but no fridge yet, so we're going to be eating almost every meal out or at someone's house and we're going to have bunkbed and we should have internet in the house. Those are the exciting details so far. And we hear that Jaime and Terry have an "adopted" son down there who is single. Unfortunately for me, he's only 28, so he's too young, but Heather's gonna jump all over that.
It was really great to meet Jaime and Terry. The only sad part is that by the time we were done talking and I made it up to Darcie's graduation celebration...it was over. I was pretty sad. I'm leaving for four months and it would have been nice to hang out with my family for a little bit. Afterwards I called Tali Nay and vented about how no one but other MBA students really understand how relentlessly stressful our lives are because no one thinks we're cool enough to make shows like Grey's Anatomy and ER about us. Hmm, Darcie graduated in film, so I might have her help me remedy that. But the thing is MBA students are so busy there probably isn't anything interesting for the layfolk to watch. At least medical residents have time to date.
So...I better get back to sorting my lotions and my shoes and my sweaters. Right now I have 8 pairs of shoes laid out for Trujillo. I know it's wrong, but it's just so hard to choose.
Tonight Heather and I had the opportunity to meet Jaime and Terry Figueroa. To be honest...I don't know if they own Eagle Condor, are major donors for Eagle Condor, fly like eagles and condors...whoever they are, they're major players and have been key contacts through the process. Jaime just got home from Peru today and he and Terry stopped by Provo on their way to Manti. They explained the project to us more and showed us pictures.
Basically, the 20 families who have recently received microcredit loans just became 40. Jaime explained that they would like for us to go visit every family/business, make an assessment on their business and do a write-up with suggestions. Some of these suggestions, we can obviously share with the families, but Jaime and Terry stressed that these people are in the most extreme poverty just starting a business and that they really do need baby steps to progress. So we'll share a few things and then next summer, a large expedition will go down and help with major improvements, probably in the way of physical changes (tiling baking areas) and training. So we're going to write up forty reports and share them with Eagle Condor and with two other interns from Eagle Condor.
One of the interns, Dan Ash, Heather and I met earlier this week. He and his friend (Clint?) are going down there a couple of days after us and they'll be primarily in Cuzco. Hopefully, we'll meet up with them to go to Machu Picchu. Because that's what Peru is about. It's just a big vacation for the four of us. Just kidding. But Dan and Clint are going to be doing documentation regarding some of the families and their businesses in the Cuzco area and then after Heather and I leave Trujillo, they'll come through and do more documentation of progress--picture taking, more reporting--so it will be really useful for them to have our write-ups.
Jaime and Terry also asked us to really try to help the people learn marketing, so we're going to create a training to teach basic marketing principles. As all BYU MBA students know, learning marketing is like drinking from a firehose, but...better than drinking from the Peruvian tap, from what we hear.
Jaime and Terry shared with us pictures of some of the families we're going to meet. It's really exciting. I know Heather and I are that much more pumped to go. They also told us where we're going to stay (in the office). We'll have a kitchen but no fridge yet, so we're going to be eating almost every meal out or at someone's house and we're going to have bunkbed and we should have internet in the house. Those are the exciting details so far. And we hear that Jaime and Terry have an "adopted" son down there who is single. Unfortunately for me, he's only 28, so he's too young, but Heather's gonna jump all over that.
It was really great to meet Jaime and Terry. The only sad part is that by the time we were done talking and I made it up to Darcie's graduation celebration...it was over. I was pretty sad. I'm leaving for four months and it would have been nice to hang out with my family for a little bit. Afterwards I called Tali Nay and vented about how no one but other MBA students really understand how relentlessly stressful our lives are because no one thinks we're cool enough to make shows like Grey's Anatomy and ER about us. Hmm, Darcie graduated in film, so I might have her help me remedy that. But the thing is MBA students are so busy there probably isn't anything interesting for the layfolk to watch. At least medical residents have time to date.
So...I better get back to sorting my lotions and my shoes and my sweaters. Right now I have 8 pairs of shoes laid out for Trujillo. I know it's wrong, but it's just so hard to choose.
Friday, April 27, 2007
This is it! We're going!
I'm going to have to pull an all-nighter tonight. My house is still pretty much in disarray. Heather said I can't sleep until we're on the plane from Miami to Peru because it'll be better for me to sleep at night and not during the day during our SLC-Dallas or Dallas-Miami flights. Nice try. After finals week and all this mayhem, I'm going to be sleeping once I get to my seat in Salt Lake. Wake me up in Trujillo.
Heather and I met with this really great man, Alberto Puertas, today. Alberto is from Trujillo, but he is now an administrator at BYU working in the Career & Counseling Center in the Wilkinson Center. He has been really helpful. We went together to a Peruvian restaurant, La Carreta, in Orem for lunch a few days ago with another student, Dan Ash, who will be in a different part of Peru. Today we just talked about places to see in Lima during our layover, places to visit in Trujillo, who to contact in Cuzco...he even is having one of his friends who drives a taxi meet us in Lima so we can have a more guided/safe visit of the city. He told us that he'd be a darker complected, Incan-looking guy. Sounds easy to pick out! Actually, Mom Tucker and Mom Palmer, don't worry too much. He'll have a sign reading, "Daniela" (since Heather isn't Hispanic enough), so we'll be sure to go with the right guy.
I'm starting to get SUPER excited. I can't believe this is finally happening! My dad served his mission in Peru, so I've heard a little bit about it over the years. It'll be great to go down there and experience it myself.
So...I'm really just trying to get this all together. It's pretty insane. And I'm missing my little sister's graduation today. :( And I haven't had time to eat anything since the smoothie I made six hours ago. But I don't really have time to find something healthy to eat. Heather was telling me that she's going to try to help me learn how the other half (the people who live calmer lives) live while we're in Peru. "First you make a to-do list, then you make a schedule..." Just kidding, but I really think it will benefit me to see what it's like to not constantly be running from one chaos to the next. Heather is really good at getting everything done and not at a frenetic pace, so it'll be great for me to witness that. :) I'm really excited to be going on this trip and to be going with Heather. We didn't plan to apply together--though we knew the other person was applying--but I'm so glad it has worked out this way. Heather is such an amazing person. She genuinely desires to be good, she works hard, she loves other people, and she's such a sweet friend. Especially with us spending our summers in New Jersey (me) and Texas (Heather), it'll be fun to start the first three weeks off together.
All right, onward and upward! Showering, packing, more meetings, graduation celebrations, all-nighters...
Heather and I met with this really great man, Alberto Puertas, today. Alberto is from Trujillo, but he is now an administrator at BYU working in the Career & Counseling Center in the Wilkinson Center. He has been really helpful. We went together to a Peruvian restaurant, La Carreta, in Orem for lunch a few days ago with another student, Dan Ash, who will be in a different part of Peru. Today we just talked about places to see in Lima during our layover, places to visit in Trujillo, who to contact in Cuzco...he even is having one of his friends who drives a taxi meet us in Lima so we can have a more guided/safe visit of the city. He told us that he'd be a darker complected, Incan-looking guy. Sounds easy to pick out! Actually, Mom Tucker and Mom Palmer, don't worry too much. He'll have a sign reading, "Daniela" (since Heather isn't Hispanic enough), so we'll be sure to go with the right guy.
I'm starting to get SUPER excited. I can't believe this is finally happening! My dad served his mission in Peru, so I've heard a little bit about it over the years. It'll be great to go down there and experience it myself.
So...I'm really just trying to get this all together. It's pretty insane. And I'm missing my little sister's graduation today. :( And I haven't had time to eat anything since the smoothie I made six hours ago. But I don't really have time to find something healthy to eat. Heather was telling me that she's going to try to help me learn how the other half (the people who live calmer lives) live while we're in Peru. "First you make a to-do list, then you make a schedule..." Just kidding, but I really think it will benefit me to see what it's like to not constantly be running from one chaos to the next. Heather is really good at getting everything done and not at a frenetic pace, so it'll be great for me to witness that. :) I'm really excited to be going on this trip and to be going with Heather. We didn't plan to apply together--though we knew the other person was applying--but I'm so glad it has worked out this way. Heather is such an amazing person. She genuinely desires to be good, she works hard, she loves other people, and she's such a sweet friend. Especially with us spending our summers in New Jersey (me) and Texas (Heather), it'll be fun to start the first three weeks off together.
All right, onward and upward! Showering, packing, more meetings, graduation celebrations, all-nighters...
Thursday, April 26, 2007
The Realization Hits!
It's several hours later and I'm back at my house with 15 boxes, a bunch of bubble wrap, and an incredible mess. I haven't folded clothes for days, a semester's worth of dry cleaning is still lying in its plastic bag across piles of unfolded clean clothes on the side of my queen-size bed that I don't sleep on. My desk is covered with stacks and stacks of papers, as are my dresser and any place on the floor where I don't need to walk. There is the stack of textbooks I meant to sell back to the Bookstore and cases I meant to read. Tons and tons of articles about framing arguments, hiring back old employees, understanding organizational culture, making creativity a routine, Groupthink, Mt. Everest tragedies...litter EVERYTHING. My parents' dining room table--which easily seats 8--is also completely covered with anything and everything: notes about personality tests, accounting gibberish (a lot of good it did me when it came time for the final), packets of information I have yet to read about preparing for Peru, my laptop, empty notebooks, a kleenex box, an exercise about calculating the cost of absenteeism, a book from a professor called Rearing Responsible Children (he's probably wishing he had given it to my parents 30 years ago), syllabi, a ream of printer paper...AAAAAAAH! This place is a mess and my poor, sweet mother hasn't said anything about it. I know this kind of stuff drives her crazy. I don't even know where to start to organize my things for four months away.
And to add to my misery, I looked in the mirror yesterday and realized I've put on quite a bit of weight during this stressful semester so I decided after my organizational theory final yesterday that enough was enough and I worked out for 2+ hours, which leaves me completely sore today and limping around this disaster area at a slow-as-a-snail pace feeling totally incompetent.
I'm so overwhelmed. As Heather, our friend Erin Whitelock, and I wandered around stores this evening at 6 p.m., it suddenly hit me--I HAVE THINGS TO DO! So now I am here at home...blogging. At least some things never change. :) I better get back to my sore hamstrings, sore triceps, sore glutes, and this ridiculous mess. It'll be a miracle if Heather and I make it on that plane on Saturday at 1, but we're gonna do it. We're gonna make this miracle happen somehow...Trujillo, the gringas are comin'.
And to add to my misery, I looked in the mirror yesterday and realized I've put on quite a bit of weight during this stressful semester so I decided after my organizational theory final yesterday that enough was enough and I worked out for 2+ hours, which leaves me completely sore today and limping around this disaster area at a slow-as-a-snail pace feeling totally incompetent.
I'm so overwhelmed. As Heather, our friend Erin Whitelock, and I wandered around stores this evening at 6 p.m., it suddenly hit me--I HAVE THINGS TO DO! So now I am here at home...blogging. At least some things never change. :) I better get back to my sore hamstrings, sore triceps, sore glutes, and this ridiculous mess. It'll be a miracle if Heather and I make it on that plane on Saturday at 1, but we're gonna do it. We're gonna make this miracle happen somehow...Trujillo, the gringas are comin'.
The final countdown...
Two days till Trujillo! We actually have three days till Trujillo, but we leave in two. We just got done with finals yesterday (Heather) and today (me), so we're just jumping from one stress to another. So you're probably wondering what we're doing now to be highly effective business students. The answer is we're sitting around talking and working on our blog for a trip that we haven't even started yet. We're not packed yet for our internships this summer nor are we packed for Peru. Let's be honest, a little bit of procrastination is taking place, but...we're going to call it "decompressing" from the semester. We're going to get busy any second now, but first we have to go out to lunch...
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
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