Becoming Peruvian

            We’ve been in Peru for a long time now—(well actually three weeks or something, but it feels like a long time).  The initial culture shock and jet lag have worn off and we’re beginning to feel like life here is more or less “normal.”  We’re used to our kitchen being outdoors, we’re used to wearing our shoes inside, we’re used to dogs roaming the streets, we’re used to lunch at 1:30 and dinner at 7:30, we’re used to 2+ hour church services, we’re used to catching and riding Peruvian buses, and we’re used to sleeping under a mosquito net.  Our room/apartment-ish thing here now feels like home—our furniture is where we want it, we have tons of pictures on the walls, and I can now successfully navigate it in the dark middle of the night without running in to things. 

            However, plenty of things here are still able to surprise, annoy, and/or rankle us (Courtney hates that word, so now you know it’s David writing this ;-).  Things generally not working are one big source of annoyance—the water is off here about 4 times a day while our water tank is being refilled, which gets really inconvenient when you need to do laundry or wash dishes.  Lots of lights don’t work and most of the plastic chairs here are broken in some way.  More acutely troubling to us lately has been the fact that our hot water heater for our shower has been useless for about half a week now.  The Peruvian conception of time still takes getting used to—a meeting set for 9 simply won’t start til 9:30—and getting someone to stick to a schedule or to behave in a task-oriented way is like pulling teeth.  Frustrating to me especially is that people very much like to discuss every possible way of doing something, but almost always just stick with the way it’s always been done.  The fact that a different way might be more efficient or save time and energy doesn’t carry nearly as much weight around here as in America. 

            Oh, and because I forgot to mention it earlier, we’re (and especially I’m) used to being dirty.  The coal storage facility next door coats the orphanage like it’s a chimney from a century ago.  The leaves are black, the floors are black, the kids our black, and the insides of our lungs are probably black too.  Besides the coal, it turns out that playing with, holding, and being around kids who roll around in the coal-covered dirt makes you even more dirty.  You just can’t say no to that cute little dirt-covered kid who wants to be held, but they definitely leave their mark on you (and Courtney is a pun scrooge, so now you for sure know it’s me). 

            Finally, we eat like Peruvians.  Rice, rice, rice, pasta, and about half a gram of meat a day is their standard fare.  Courtney and I supplement it with other food, like peanut butter, but the other day we realized how much we’d already changed: We made a trip out to Pizza Hut, and were only able to eat a tad over half a large pizza between us.  Now, this may sound just fine to those of you not recently graduated from college and/or not any longer a guy who pretends like his metabolism hasn’t slowed down yet, but to me half a pizza still sounds like a midnight snack for one, not a meal for two.  However, sometimes we still manage to eat like Americans.  This evening is a prime example: We cooked a pack of bacon, made five grilled cheeses in the bacon grease, and then ate it all.  That pile of grease has a warm place in my heart. -D