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...