Saturday, July 26, 2014

Mundanity and the Campaign of Terror

Waiting Woman

Waiting Man

A painting of Camelids that Rich has started 

The Toilet Paper Dispenser (no plural)

The Soap Dispenser (no plural)

And the Christmas decorations are still up!

BohemianTourists ala Markus Brody...


The Bingo Game at  the Birthday Party

The Mom's  at  the Birthday Party

All of the kids  at  the Birthday Party


Blue

Read with careful phonetic pronunciation

We don't know, you tell us...

The Flip side called CNN liars, well Duh!

Cool Invasive Roots

We have no idea how we missed this little gem that reads "The Delicious Cholesterol" and they are  purveyors of pork, deep fried in its own fat and yes, it is that good!
Julie was sick on Sunday with a miserable cold so Rich met Dave and Cindy Rhoades (the new missionary couple here) and took them to visit the Izcuchaca group. The only bus available was a city transit bus “Especial” that stopped at every possible bus stop, corner or intersection all the way there. Because of that, Rich and crew arrived late to church at 10:15 for the meeting that was supposed to begin at 10:00am. Since the Stake President was visiting, the meeting didn’t start until 10:30am anyway, so all was well. We had a good chuckle about that.

Julie stayed in bed Monday too and had to cancel her English lesson with Orlando. She was finally back on her feet on Tuesday, and managed to work and teach Orlando in the afternoon. He is a cute thirteen year-old, only child, very polite, sweet and smart. Julie had a fun hour working with him and helping him with his pronunciation. It is definitely one of the hardest things for Spanish speakers to learn, especially the “th” and the impure “s” s followed by a consonant. Orlando and Julie had some good laughs during their lesson.

When we got back from Lima and went into work we discovered that we had no internet. This causes us some problems, though no insurmountable, but difficulties nevertheless. Rich began to investigate the problem and went to the maintenance guy in the building. About an hour passed when a knock came at our door. In came a young fellow from the internet provider and asked where the problem was. When Rich told him that we had a line from three stories above, he told Rich that he had to know where that was to solve the problem… We don’t have a clue where we are hooked in.
We went upstairs to the Technical Secretary’s office and asked what the problem was. She said that they have not had internet or telephones in the building since Friday…Have you called anyone to find out what is the problem??? Well, that would be a good idea.
 
She called the main office…We thought this was the main office… they told her that there were problems and that all of the offices of the whole Department of Cusco were without communication because the bill had not been paid since 2012!!!
 
As the week has worn on, and no one seems to have resolved anything, we have heard that the debt is between s. /70,000 and s./300,000, upwards of $100,000US. Apparently, they are also in arears where the electricity and the water are concerned.
 
Before we went to Lima, Rich ordered a headboard for our bed. About time! He went in to buy one but the bright young woman said that they only sold complete beds but she could have one made for s. /220, about $60US. Rich put s. /100 down and left it for pick up on Monday. He did not make it there until Tuesday but when he got there, there was a different woman running the shop. He showed her his work order, she blanched and said of the woman who took the order, “She quit and never told anyone about the order.” The new shop operator now had no problem selling Rich a headboard that went to another bed but would fit ours…
 
One of the church’s issues in the South America North West Area, it turns out, is the formation of unofficial church units, especially family groups. While  in Lima we  met with a couple of the folks in the office building to find out the  status of  those we are visiting and what we can do to help make them regular units. We came home, armed with information and papers to get filled out. Two of the units, Pitumarca and Tarcuyoc are, indeed unofficial and so we planned to go to Sicuani to meet with the stake presidency there. However, when Tuesday arrived, Julie was still recovering but we wanted to strike while the iron was hot. Rich went alone.
 
Every time we have gone to Sicuani, we have frozen. Rich took hand warmers and a heavy coat for the trip. Can you believe it; they turned the heat on in the bus? You could not see out of the bus windows for the rivulets in the steam that coated the windows. By the time he reached town, he needed another shower from sweating in the sauna/Bus “Especial.”
 
He made it just in time for the stake presidency’s meeting and met with an old friend there who is one of the bishops now. The bishop had stepped out of his ward council meeting but went back in and told them that Rich was there. When their meeting ended, a pretty steady stream of people came by the office where they were working and peered around the corner, curious to see the bald gringo. One of the visitors was another old friend, Marco Peña’s wife; Rosalía came in and gave Rich a big hug. It was a great couple of hours.
 
Following the meeting, Rich barely made it to the station to catch the last bus, back seat and now, the refrigeration was back on. He had to wear his overcoat, stocking cap and gloves all the way home. He walked back into our apartment at 11:45pm.
 
Friday night the Agüeros invited us downstairs to celebrate Marisol’s birthday. She is nine years old and we had fun reminiscing about her baptism last year. She had a lot of friends over along with their mothers and some fathers, so it was a noisy, chaotic, fun evening. Birthday parties here are very different from our typical child’s birthday party in the states. Instead of our 1-2 hour maximum, parties where the kids get dropped off and then picked up, here, the parents usually come too and the parties can go on for hours. We were told that Marisol’s party would begin at 6pm, so we showed up at 6:15 and all the kids were already there with their moms. Over the course of the evening we were served popcorn, chicha (the purple corn drink), chicken salad on rolls, “Colombian pot stickers” (fried wontons with a cheese filler) with guacamole, various candies and cupcakes. We finally left about 8:30 with the party still going strong.
 
Some weeks ago we posted that a yellow dog that had previously shown us not antipathy whatsoever, began to menace Julie. He and a not-so-little, black and tan cur would bark and snarl at her and the yellow dog wound up nipping her on the back of her leg. Now, we are dog-lovers as any who know us will attest, however, we will not be bullied by dogs.
 
So we began to practice our own version of psychological warfare with these dogs. At first Rich scolded and looked meaningfully at both dogs, but this did not solve it for Julie when she walked through. Though a little more respectful, they still barked and harassed. So, in vinegar, Rich soaked some habanero powder we brought with us to put into little squirt bottles that we carry on our walks through these guys area of operations, a little make-shift pepper spray.
 
They are not always out but patience paid off. In different moments we have nailed both dogs. Now, we can walk very near to them. Since we are the only Anglo people who walk in this path, they recognize us and we only have to pull a bottle of hand sanitizer out of our pockets and they whimper, whine, dart back and forth and then scramble for the hills. We could not inspire more fear if we were Beelzebub himself. We should probably not laugh at their discomposure but it is a little hard…



Sunday, July 20, 2014

Recreational Oral Surgery

Baby Burro

Checacupe Turkeys


Ceramic Seller in Checacupe

Elderly woman in Checacupe








Julie with the  Primary Leader  in Pitumarca




Pitumarca Priesthood Meeting


Pitumarca Priesthood Meeting

Pitumarca Priesthood Meeting

A lot of story in these hands

A lot of story in these hands 2

Older sisters in Pitumarca

Ah, what a sucker...

El Rio Ausangate, Pitumarca

Comunero transport in Pitumarca

the Lima, Contrast

the Lima, Contrast

El Chinito Sanguiches de Chicharon de  Chancho!

El Chinito Sanguicheria

A Lima Park

El Makoto, Sushi en Lima, notice the big smile?

Unusual popcorn promo in the movie theater in Lima

For  our grandchildren, they are coming!

The Chess Cat

Italian Delights 1

Italian Delights 2

Italian Delights 3
 
This Saturday, we walked out of our house to encounter, rush-hour traffic on our little street. Peru was not in the world cup, but soccer lives on… We live just below the Cusco stadium, a thing we have been aware of but not affected by until now.
Construction crews have been “working” on rebuilding it for some time, indeed, about three years. It has become a subject of pretty hot political debate since no one wants to play Cusco on their own ground because the only “local” functioning stadium is five hours away, in Espinar and for teams from Lima, Arequipa, Trujillo etc.; that means playing at 14,000 feet above sea level, a definite home team advantage. Anyway, the “progressing” stadium has all of the beauty and charm of a mutant-home in a Will Smith, post apocalypse movie. However, apparently, they got it far enough along on the inside to hold a game.
 
There is no real parking for the facility so, everyone has to walk a long way or stubbornly try to find a spot on the street… Our street… This made for a good 6 to 7 hours of pretty heavy traffic and a bunch of police activity.
 
Speaking of soccer/futbol, and while not big soccer fans, and even though Peru did not qualify, we have  been pretty well entertained by the emotion of the World Cup here in South America.
 
Following the Genealogy fair the week before, we had a very hard time getting on the road to Pitumarca on Sunday. We dragged up and barely made it in time for the normal meeting schedule. We had a great meeting though. A couple of ancient campesino men attended, and one of them who was lacking an eye provided fascinating studies for  some  of Rich’s photography…
 
The Primary kids were great as usual and a couple of elderly women who suffered from various maladies asked Rich for a blessing. The cool thing was that he understood their explanations in Quecha though he could not give them the blessings in their language yet. Julie had brought a huge bag of suckers for the Primary kids but after the meeting, she started handing out the rest to the adults but there were so many of them that she ran out before Rich finished the blessings. The two older women were fairly put out that they did not get their suckers. We will have to take two bags next time…
 
After church, we went to Hermenegilda’s house and she gave us a bag of potatoes and some parching corn. She is a doll and her house gives humble a new meaning. We felt pretty blessed to receive these things from her.
 
On Monday we attended our missionary zone meeting. They are run by the young missionaries and we attend to be supportive more than anything. It is great to see their enthusiasm. Then, on Tuesday we traveled to Lima where Rich got his 3-D, very Stanley Kubrick, mouth x-ray and we went to see our old dentist, Wendy Johnson. She is a great dentist and a good friend.
 
On Wednesday we did a fair amount of running around and then went to see the oral surgeon. He told Rich what he thought he could do and then what he thought might be a problem. Rich has lost a lower left molar and, recently an upper right one. It all sounded quite fun…
 
On Thursday we attended the temple and then went to the offices of the church, near there.
 
While at the genealogy fair, we met and visited with one of the area authority seventy of Peru, Elder Alarcon. He expressed a general concern that these family groups we visit are likely, not authorized and told Rich that they could be quite easily. When Rich called Presidente Rios in Sicuani, he discovered that he knew full-well that Pitumarca and Tarcuyoc were not authorized and that he had even presented papers for Pitumarca to be formed into a branch, nearly a year ago and no news. He asked us to look into it for him.
 
Presidente Rios was the district president when we formed Espinar into a branch and we have a lot of time for him. He never does things by half and has always tried to go by the book. We promised to look into it. Once in Lima, we met again with Elder Alarcon and a fellow named Guido Cristobal and he told us that there was nothing in the records about any of these groups. Blow me down!
 
We got him to investigate and discovered that Izcuchaca is indeed a group but dependent upon the mission and not on a stake, the reason why he did not find it in the system. Then we looked at the situations of Pitumarca and Tarcuyoc and they just were nowhere to be found. Pres. Rios had told us that nothing had been submitted on Tarcuyoc, so we did not expect that one to have anything. However, the paperwork for branch formation, verges on American tax forms in complexity so we imagined that there might be some glitch afoot. In the end, either, the paperwork got lost or for some missing element, it got filed or round-filed. We won’t ever know but we came away with file folders with papers in them and we can help them fix it, we are sure of that.
 
We have mentioned the Peruvian chef Gaston Acurio whom we follow quite a bit. He has a TV show and programs are on YouTube and we had seen something about a sandwich shop in central Lima. It is a rundown section of Lima but we got José Luis, our driver to take us there. It is a small place that sells huge roasts of pork and turkey. You go in and order a pork sandwich, or turkey or beef. We got the fried pork and it comes on Italian ciabatta rolls with slices of fried sweet potato and pickled, sliced onion and hot peppers you add to your taste. We were pretty sure that we had never tasted anything so wonderful. We joked that it was Rich’s last supper.
 
That evening, Rich went back to Dr. Abugattas’ place where the good doctor pulled out the broken tooth and ratcheted in the implant on the other side. This was all kind of fascinating since he had to cut back tissue on both sides and then really did use a little tiny drill and ratchet to seat the implant into the jawbone on the bottom. It has not been near as painful as Rich thought it might.
 
We had been obliged to stay an extra day so that we could see what might need to be done should any of the surgery go South. It did not and we wandered around Lima on Friday. We ate Sushi and went to the Tratoria di Membrino for wonderful Italian food. We went back for another sandwich at El Chinito all before checking out and heading home.
 
Julie got a dose of a cough and is now home and bedridden with another cough. She is feeling pretty miserable and depressed at the moment. Still, overall, the trip was well worth it. Despite mouth  surgery, Rich is feeling pretty great!