In the United States, Canada and many other places in the world are found pine trees. On these luscious evergreen trees one can find little brown pricklies called pine cones, which are typically not edible unless you are a squirrel or chipmunk. However, here in Peru there is a lack of pine trees and therefore no pinecones. But the good news is that in this far away land, one can find abundant Aguaje. This odd fruit highly resembles a pinecone in its appearance - it has the same shape and color. This fruit is definitely not my favorite due to its lack in flavor. This fruit consists of a large seed with a little bit of flavorless yellow paste. Very odd. If Pluto were still a planet, I would say that this fruit was from Pluto.
This past Saturday night I experienced my first Peruvian Social. These Socials are very common down here in the Southern Hemisphere. These events usually last for about 3 hours and are full of laughs, fun, and exercise all centered around completely pointless games fueled by equally pointless music. If any of you have ever taken part in a South American social you will know what I am talking about, if you haven’t you just need to experience one. They are quite unique and can only best be described at crazy confusion and lots of running around in circles.
As September presses on my team and I are nearing the end of our campaign here at Km 8. To end with a big shebang, we are doing a two week long evangelistic series of nightly meetings. Each meeting is about 2 hours long and full of singing and talking about different bible topics. My main task is to keep the kids occupied during the adult meetings. We do fun songs, tell a Bible story, learn and memory verse and then let the kids color a picture relating to the Bible story. Each kid gets two crayons to color with and may exchange their crayons in the crayon bag for different colors. It is a fun task to color with about 50 kids who are all jabbering in Castellano, wanting this obscure color or that. I only know the basic - colors in Castellano- red, green, blue, black…and it is oh so confusing with 50 kids requesting weird little shades of light rays. Needless to say the meetings are going well. The funniest part about the meetings and any meeting or church service down here in Peru is that it is not unusual to sing the same song three or four times during one program. In one song service we might 9 songs, but only have 3 or 4 different songs. Yet everyone seems to love this odd repetition. It doesn’t seem to matter that we sing one song, then another, only to return to the first song again, and then maybe again. With doing these meeting nightly I have many songs stuck in my head and am constantly humming them.
Welp, thanks for tuning into the Mindy sometimes-weekly-news-flash. Things are busy here with teaching my classes in the homes and for the community, planning classes, cooking meals, cleaning, eating Papaya, doing a evangelistic series, drinking water to keep from melting in the heat, learning Castellano and much more. Life is great as a Peruvian!
You know you are Peruvian when…
Your skin is darker than that of those who live here.
You prefer to ride in the back of a truck because it has more air-conditioning (the wind).
You prefer to use a hole in the ground for a bathroom, rather than use a toilet.
Your sleeping schedule resembles that of the sun rising and setting.
You get sad if you do not eat lentils and rice every single day.
However, you know you are not Peruvian when you see a parade in town, but everyone (including the parade participants) is more focused on the group of white people (me and my friends) as that is walking down the sidewalk.