Sweaty Suck and Stretchers...

Sunday we went to Curahuasi with President and Sister Harbertson. We had a great trip and enjoyed visiting and getting better acquainted with them. The members were thrilled to have us there and we had good meetings and a great Sunday. Julie was sitting calmly, visiting with Sister Harbertson and waiting for Relief Society to start when she was asked to give the lesson. Fortunately, she had her I Pad with her with the church lesson manuals in Spanish so she hopped up and taught a 40 minute lesson in Spanish without preparation!  The gift of tongues is real!

Monday, Julie started her week long Spanish Class with a school that teaches German to Peruvians and Spanish and Quechua to Germans.  It went from 9am-1pm daily. It was an interesting experience as the German women spoke some English but most of the conversation had to be in Spanish. Trying to decipher Spanish with a German accent was difficult at times.

Rich worked extra-long hours since Julie was in class every morning. Things were moving along great all week until Thursday; Rich was 900 pages into a 1000 page book when the computer program went all “Obama Administration” on him! It refused to work, take any more pictures and even our supervisor couldn’t help! Rich contacted the IT engineers in Salt Lake City and spent all day Friday with them. They had never encountered our problem and were working hard to try and fix it. Apparently, at the same time, someone in Papua New Guinea encountered the same issue, so it wasn’t something we did to break it! Or at least we broke it with the same creativity as the folks in P.N.G... We left the computer on all night Friday night so Salt Lake City could get in it and look around and find the problem, which they did! Technology is amazing! When it’s working!

Despite our problems we managed 5440 images this week! We were happy about that. We received our first audits back on our images and the work we did in the first 3 weeks was flawless! However, the week that our supervisor was here, 2 of the 13 books we did that week had an error a piece. We’re not blaming him….but he did take a lot of pictures un- chaperoned!  Just sayin…

While Rich was suffering with the computer on Thursday, Julie went gallivanting with her Spanish class companions. They went to some beautiful Inca ruins about 45 minutes out of Cusco.  The place is called Tipon and is a beautiful example of Inca terraces and watering systems. At one time a study was done of these terraces and the scientists were able to identify about 50 different micro climates in this area. The Inca were specialists at farming and climate manipulation.

The Inca overlords divvied out plots to people and experimented with crops at differing elevations, developing new strains and the whole gamut. They were very autocratic, demanded results and got them. The famous Inca law stated: “El ama sua, ama llulla, el ama quella,” (Don’t rob, don’t lie and don’t be lazy).  If the workers on the farm plots didn’t work, they killed them… When you go to Machu Picchu, they show you the “prison”. If they killed you for lying being lazy or simply robbing, just why do you suppose they put you in prison?

Saturday we were supposed to go back to Curahuasi for some more leadership training but our driver was stuck coming from Quillabamba. We have had rain here too and a big landslide blocked the road. So we attended Stake Conference Meetings here in Cusco Saturday afternoon and evening.

At that conference we made the acquaintance of the Inti Raymi Stake president. He is a young doctor named Carrasco. It turns out that he spent time with his family in Sicuani towards the end of our time in Espinar where we had served for many years. He remembered us from that time and went on and on about our impact in Espinar, thanking us and so on. It made us feel pretty good that he recognized all that we did there, back then. The conference was great and part of a Peru wide broadcast conference the next day.

We had a couple of visits from old friends this week and are including photos of them with us. Then, on Saturday, we went out for Cebiche. We thought the previous fails were funny but this one beat them all. For some reason they thought we should have the English menu. We knew the menu from previous visits and you will see from the Babylon translation used to develop the English menu, that prior knowledge would be essential in ordering…We photographed the English menu for your perusal. Please don’t ask us what any of this means, we don’t actually know, we have a few guesses.

Restaurant Fail, More than a dozen reasons for NOT using Babylon-type Translators...

Lina Abrill and her mother Justa Taipe

Tipon Bakery - Julie's boondoggle

Tipon Bakery

Tipon Ruins

Julie at Tipon

 Random School Dance Celebration

Random School Dance Celebration 2

Marti Contreras and Julie