12 July, Sunday
“I have feet and a belly button. And when I scratch my head, there is sand under my fingers. But I think the sand made my hair a little less greasy, so that’s good. I think I showered Monday. Wait no. Huh, that’s not right. Let me consult my book. Hmm.. like two days ago? On Friday. Yeah.”
Let´s just start this post off by saying that Vin Diesel is amazing. AMAZING. Like, seriously, God used up most of the hardcore in the world when making him. Let’s all thank Lauren for pointing out this oh-so-obvious fact. Now, she will proceed to write this blog. Enjoy!
This morning we had breakfast while sitting around in this park by our rented room. Brooke practiced reading in Spanish, and Adam practiced correcting her. Lauren practiced sitting in the rented room watching Vin Diesel do his thang (in la película Triple X). Then Brooke and Adam returned and were all like ¨Hey let´s go to Huacachina! Sand boarding! Adventure! Excitement! Thrills! LOTS OF SAND!¨ ¨Okay¨, says Lauren, ¨I can finish watching this Vin Diesel movie más tarde.¨ But then Adam got sucked into the vortex that is watching Vin Diesel be awesome, so Brookie the Cookie went out to acquire more food, because that´s just what we do. Apparently the trash also got taken out at some point.
And apparently Brooke made friends as usual at all the tiendas and she learned that ´cado is short for ¨avocado¨. Or something like that.
So then we head out for Huacachina. Except, the trusty guides (Adam and Brooke) aren´t so trusty and we end up not in Huacachina but what we learn to be The Promised Land. La Tierra Prometida. We were clued in to the fact that we weren´t in the Oasis of Tourism and Gringos because the sandy sandy path that we took led us to a place lacking in tourism, and gringos, and essence of oasis. So we turn around and ride back through all the sand (but not before going down a slide at a playground we passed) and ask multiple times ¨¿Dónde está Huacachina?¨ Finally the trusty tour guides get their act together and we ride along some actual roads leading to an actual oasis. Complete with lagoon, white people aplenty, and giant dunes full of footprints up and sandboard marks down.
We ask around and find a sandboard that we plan on sharing between the three of us, 5 soles for 2 hours. The day before Brooke and Lauren spoke to Percy Gutierrez of Casa de la Salud and mentioned our sandboarding plans. He advised us that it was fun but that we´d probably be extremely tired and over it after about 3 rides downhill. We each ended up doing 4, 5, or 6 times maybe, so we held up a little better than predicted, but it was mad tiring. Lauren has never gone skiing or snowboarding, but now seriously entiende the concept of a snowlift. Walking up a hill is hard enough, but when the stuff you´re walking on is sand and makes you slide down just a little with each foot step, well, let´s just say that even the resident hombre Adam ¨Soy atlético¨ Talsma looked winded.
Anyway, it was a little scary the first time, but by the end we were all embracing our inner Señor Diesels and heading down with perhaps a little too much wax applied to the board. We even moved on from our kiddie hill to a steeper version sin huellas (footprints)…uncharted territory! And there were even some trips downhill that did not involve falling over and landing on one´s butt.
Before we knew it, it was very close to board-returning time, so we each had one last victorious trip down our mid-range hill (no time for Adam to test his burgeoning sandboarding skills on the monster hill) then trekked back in the growning darkness to return our board. There, Lauren and Brooke tested out their Spanish on the guys renting the equipment (mostly Lauren though, cuz Brooke ¨soy peruana¨ Jarrett is practically fluent by now), and then practiced their English on us. We learned that Huacachina is Quechua for ¨woman that cries¨ (or something like that), and they learned that escuchar means to listen.
So then we were ready to get back home and eat and do work and all that stuff, so we sped off down some hills in the dark, twisting and turning and dodging mototaxis left and right, But parents shouldn´t worry too much about this, because sometimes we like to exaggerate in order to make our lives sound more like a Vin Diesel movie. Adam headed home while the girls gathered food. ¨Get some bread¨ says Adam. So the chicas buy 2 hamburguesas, un menú, 1 té, 1 espinaca tortilla sandwich, and 2 soles worth of pan (bread). Upon arrival back at the room, they discover that Adam also got bread…1 sol worth of bread. So now our bellies are full and we are overflowing with bread. Los dos que trabajan are trabajando and la una que duerme is contemplating the difficult decision between sleeping and reading. It´s up to you to figure out who´s who.
11 July, Saturday
“But I had to finish my stash cuz…that’s what you do. But I´m gonna kill him.¨
Today, we are lazy. So lazy, we stay in bed and watch Angelina Jolie. If it seems as though we have been watching a lot of movies lately, you would be correct. For Miss Biscombe, in her glory, has bought a few soles worth of videos the other day, if you vaguely recall. Y ella le gustan. And so do we, when we get sidetracked into seeing adventure scenes that we only wish we were in. But the computer breaks down, so we decide to hit up the world that we call Work. Capital W.
After a bit, we decide to wander out into the world of the Outside. There, we encounter Internet. We try to order a hardcase for our harddrive, but it’s hardhard. So we call Alex Rosenberg, our pack mule who will be arriving in a few days from the United States to request even more electronic equipment to be brought across borders.
Then we cleaned our bikes and ignored the ice cream men who oh so tempted us as they rode up and down the streets.
Afterwards, we head out to attend a Casa de la Salud meeting in Guadalupe. The first of many to be held for the selected beneficiaries of brand new houses. We show up a bit late, but no one has started yet. The team is there and so are some of the beneficiaries, but not all. Which will prove to be an issue later. In addition, the “dirigente” of the zone (elected representative) is somewhat if not totally plastered. For a good reason though. Another traditional roof-placing-on-the-top-of-the-house has occurred in Guadalupe, and he toasted the family a few times too many. This provides many many moments of entertainment during the meeting.
The Casa de la Salud first elicits opinions for why people didn’t show up. Is it a bad day? Too early? Too late? Are we asking too much? Then they proceed to ask the beneficiaries what they would like to see in their town. Police station. Parks. Child care center. Bank. Market. Mirtha, who is leading the meeting, tells the community that they can’t just wait for someone to start constructing things for the town. They need to take action on their own. Start planting trees. Start organizing themselves. “Organization, yeah.” Chimes in the president who decides that he is entitled to shadow the conversation by repeating all that the NGO is saying.
They decide to end the meeting early for lack of participation. We go home with Percy, Marcos, Jose, and Mirtha. The girls must sit in the cab of the truck, and Adam has all the fun in the back, in plain air, enjoying the wind pulling through his black dyed tresses.
Upon debarking our fair vessel, we encounter a man selling tamales. He sells us his sweet tamales for two soles apiece. We put Lauren to bed, tucked in tight, and then take a walk to find some more food. We return to wake her from her peaceful slumber so that we can all watch the rest of the Angie movie while falling asleep.
“I have feet and a belly button. And when I scratch my head, there is sand under my fingers. But I think the sand made my hair a little less greasy, so that’s good. I think I showered Monday. Wait no. Huh, that’s not right. Let me consult my book. Hmm.. like two days ago? On Friday. Yeah.”
Let´s just start this post off by saying that Vin Diesel is amazing. AMAZING. Like, seriously, God used up most of the hardcore in the world when making him. Let’s all thank Lauren for pointing out this oh-so-obvious fact. Now, she will proceed to write this blog. Enjoy!
This morning we had breakfast while sitting around in this park by our rented room. Brooke practiced reading in Spanish, and Adam practiced correcting her. Lauren practiced sitting in the rented room watching Vin Diesel do his thang (in la película Triple X). Then Brooke and Adam returned and were all like ¨Hey let´s go to Huacachina! Sand boarding! Adventure! Excitement! Thrills! LOTS OF SAND!¨ ¨Okay¨, says Lauren, ¨I can finish watching this Vin Diesel movie más tarde.¨ But then Adam got sucked into the vortex that is watching Vin Diesel be awesome, so Brookie the Cookie went out to acquire more food, because that´s just what we do. Apparently the trash also got taken out at some point.
And apparently Brooke made friends as usual at all the tiendas and she learned that ´cado is short for ¨avocado¨. Or something like that.
So then we head out for Huacachina. Except, the trusty guides (Adam and Brooke) aren´t so trusty and we end up not in Huacachina but what we learn to be The Promised Land. La Tierra Prometida. We were clued in to the fact that we weren´t in the Oasis of Tourism and Gringos because the sandy sandy path that we took led us to a place lacking in tourism, and gringos, and essence of oasis. So we turn around and ride back through all the sand (but not before going down a slide at a playground we passed) and ask multiple times ¨¿Dónde está Huacachina?¨ Finally the trusty tour guides get their act together and we ride along some actual roads leading to an actual oasis. Complete with lagoon, white people aplenty, and giant dunes full of footprints up and sandboard marks down.
We ask around and find a sandboard that we plan on sharing between the three of us, 5 soles for 2 hours. The day before Brooke and Lauren spoke to Percy Gutierrez of Casa de la Salud and mentioned our sandboarding plans. He advised us that it was fun but that we´d probably be extremely tired and over it after about 3 rides downhill. We each ended up doing 4, 5, or 6 times maybe, so we held up a little better than predicted, but it was mad tiring. Lauren has never gone skiing or snowboarding, but now seriously entiende the concept of a snowlift. Walking up a hill is hard enough, but when the stuff you´re walking on is sand and makes you slide down just a little with each foot step, well, let´s just say that even the resident hombre Adam ¨Soy atlético¨ Talsma looked winded.
Anyway, it was a little scary the first time, but by the end we were all embracing our inner Señor Diesels and heading down with perhaps a little too much wax applied to the board. We even moved on from our kiddie hill to a steeper version sin huellas (footprints)…uncharted territory! And there were even some trips downhill that did not involve falling over and landing on one´s butt.Before we knew it, it was very close to board-returning time, so we each had one last victorious trip down our mid-range hill (no time for Adam to test his burgeoning sandboarding skills on the monster hill) then trekked back in the growning darkness to return our board. There, Lauren and Brooke tested out their Spanish on the guys renting the equipment (mostly Lauren though, cuz Brooke ¨soy peruana¨ Jarrett is practically fluent by now), and then practiced their English on us. We learned that Huacachina is Quechua for ¨woman that cries¨ (or something like that), and they learned that escuchar means to listen.
So then we were ready to get back home and eat and do work and all that stuff, so we sped off down some hills in the dark, twisting and turning and dodging mototaxis left and right, But parents shouldn´t worry too much about this, because sometimes we like to exaggerate in order to make our lives sound more like a Vin Diesel movie. Adam headed home while the girls gathered food. ¨Get some bread¨ says Adam. So the chicas buy 2 hamburguesas, un menú, 1 té, 1 espinaca tortilla sandwich, and 2 soles worth of pan (bread). Upon arrival back at the room, they discover that Adam also got bread…1 sol worth of bread. So now our bellies are full and we are overflowing with bread. Los dos que trabajan are trabajando and la una que duerme is contemplating the difficult decision between sleeping and reading. It´s up to you to figure out who´s who.
11 July, Saturday
“But I had to finish my stash cuz…that’s what you do. But I´m gonna kill him.¨
Today, we are lazy. So lazy, we stay in bed and watch Angelina Jolie. If it seems as though we have been watching a lot of movies lately, you would be correct. For Miss Biscombe, in her glory, has bought a few soles worth of videos the other day, if you vaguely recall. Y ella le gustan. And so do we, when we get sidetracked into seeing adventure scenes that we only wish we were in. But the computer breaks down, so we decide to hit up the world that we call Work. Capital W.
After a bit, we decide to wander out into the world of the Outside. There, we encounter Internet. We try to order a hardcase for our harddrive, but it’s hardhard. So we call Alex Rosenberg, our pack mule who will be arriving in a few days from the United States to request even more electronic equipment to be brought across borders.
Then we cleaned our bikes and ignored the ice cream men who oh so tempted us as they rode up and down the streets.
Afterwards, we head out to attend a Casa de la Salud meeting in Guadalupe. The first of many to be held for the selected beneficiaries of brand new houses. We show up a bit late, but no one has started yet. The team is there and so are some of the beneficiaries, but not all. Which will prove to be an issue later. In addition, the “dirigente” of the zone (elected representative) is somewhat if not totally plastered. For a good reason though. Another traditional roof-placing-on-the-top-of-the-house has occurred in Guadalupe, and he toasted the family a few times too many. This provides many many moments of entertainment during the meeting.The Casa de la Salud first elicits opinions for why people didn’t show up. Is it a bad day? Too early? Too late? Are we asking too much? Then they proceed to ask the beneficiaries what they would like to see in their town. Police station. Parks. Child care center. Bank. Market. Mirtha, who is leading the meeting, tells the community that they can’t just wait for someone to start constructing things for the town. They need to take action on their own. Start planting trees. Start organizing themselves. “Organization, yeah.” Chimes in the president who decides that he is entitled to shadow the conversation by repeating all that the NGO is saying.
They decide to end the meeting early for lack of participation. We go home with Percy, Marcos, Jose, and Mirtha. The girls must sit in the cab of the truck, and Adam has all the fun in the back, in plain air, enjoying the wind pulling through his black dyed tresses.
Upon debarking our fair vessel, we encounter a man selling tamales. He sells us his sweet tamales for two soles apiece. We put Lauren to bed, tucked in tight, and then take a walk to find some more food. We return to wake her from her peaceful slumber so that we can all watch the rest of the Angie movie while falling asleep.
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