This Morning

My day started at 6:55, when I rolled out of bed to have our devotional and prayer time at 7:00 with the other volunteers.  (and now you know who the I is, as Courtney prefers being slightly better kempt for said prayer time).  At 7:30, Bryson and I went to bring four the kids to school.  The van wouldn’t start, so we had to push it into place next to the bus so we could jump in from the bus.  This week, every day except Thursday, the vehicles wouldn’t start.  Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, neither one would start so we had to push them to get them started (they’re both manuals).  Turns out, a 40ish passenger bus is a difficult thing to push fast enough to get it started.  

Anyway, Bryson navigated the crazy Peruvian traffic—what with unmarked intersections, indeterminate numbers of lanes on each road, and pedestrians who apparently want to die—and got the kids safely to school.  Given that we had an annoying start with a vehicle that wouldn’t start, we decided to treat ourselves to a Peruvian wonder that Bryson recently introduced me to: Nectar de Cana, aka Sugar cane juice.  There is a stand on the side of the road—on the way back to the orphanage where they serve it, along with various other fresh pressed drinks including various cacti.  It’s pretty cool to watch.  You walk up, say you want some nectar de cana, and the girl takes three chunks of sugarcane, cuts them down the middle, and then cranks them through a hand press, where the juices run down into a cup.  It’s essentially frothy liquid sugar, and is very, very tasty.  It turns a bad morning into a good morning.  We got some roasted peanuts from an old lady sitting near there, I bought some flowers for Courtney, and we headed back the albergue to start our day.

At a little after 9:00 I started working again on fixing a laptop that had a keyboard and touchpad that wouldn’t work.  After reading through a bunch techi blogs and some Q&A sites, I did a hard reset on it and now it works wonderfully (huzzah).  Then, I went to spray insecticide on the trees in our orchard.  However, the giant metal sprayer-backpack thing had a couple leaks that I needed to fix first, which I found it soon after I pumped it up—first, it sprayed out the back because the hose wasn’t sealed correctly, and once I fixed that, the sprayer shot off the other end of the hose because it was connected well either.  Sigh.  Oh, and I tried to help hold the mop head holder that Bryson was trying to weld back together, but to little avail.  After spraying the trees, I went and watered the garden, which I had tilled and planted seeds in earlier this week.  Hopefully at some time in the future we’ll have beets, lettuce, and a couple beans or spices or something  (I just asked the cook what she wanted me to plant and she picked out from among our cans of seeds...I’m still not clear on what they are).  At some point in all this, I got to read a couple books to the four pre-school boys, which was awesome.  They really like Where the Wild Things Are, (in Spanish of course), and love making monster growling noises, as well as telling me which of the monsters are good monsters and which of them are bad monsters.  (The good monsters are the ones that are smiling, and the bad monsters are the ones that aren’t.  They pet the pictures of the good monsters and hit the pictures of the bad monsters).  I very much like kids, and that beat out the sugarcane juice for my highlight of the day.

Anyway, At 12:15, I walked over to the elementary school and picked up the little kids.  One of them was naughty and smacked another one in the face (quite viciously), and then he didn’t want to sit in his timeout, so I had to hold him in the timeout spot until he’d stay there himself.  15 minutes later, after 10 minutes of being straight jacketed, he finally was able to leave.  At 12:45 we left to pick of the kids at the school in down, with me driving.  It’s a stick, and the days in my life that I’ve driven stick wouldn’t make much more than a week, and it’s in Peruvian traffic, and I’m still figuring out the route, but I managed drive there and back well enough.  Oh, and I think we had to jump it again.  And pour water in the radiator, because it’s leaking badly.

And that was my morning. (and yes, my morning didn’t end until 1:30, but that’s because they don’t eat lunch until 1:30 here.  Aka, morning goes until 1:30)  -D