Steph in Peru: February 2012

Special News!

Two of my long-awaited prayers have been answered in the past 6 months... one being finding fulfilling work and the other someone special to spend my life with!

Walter and I have gotten to know eachother over the past year and a bit, when I met him here two November's ago on my first short-term mission trip to Cusco. He works in tourism, also has a heart for children, has many projects and visions for helping people in his community, and we share similar values and interests, and always have alot of fun together.

We started officially dating in October, and he asked me to marry him on February 2nd. The wedding is set for this June here in Peru! I am looking forward to exploring the wedding traditions of Peru, which already I am finding can be quite different, and in combining our cultural traditions!

Steph & Walter in Puno, Peru

Life in Cusco

Due to some changes in my room-mates plans, she has moved back to the States, and I am currently looking for an apartment. Thankfully I've had the opportunity to house-sit in the same community for the two weeks since moving out of the other place, and am able to stay here with a great family from the UK until I find something for myself. Looking for places is a very time consuming process. There are always new places for rent, and new ads come out in the Rueda de Negocios paper every Monday and Thursdsay. The ads aren't organized by location or any other sub-grouping, so it takes some time to scan through them all, and then, relying on public transport, to actually view places. Hopefully in the next days or weeks I'll find just the right place!

A good friend of mine from England arrived on the 12th, will be here for a month, and is helping out at the orphanage some days. It's great to have her here sharing in my adventures!

Unfortunately it's been raining every day and night since, without much respite. It makes for cold evenings and mornings in Cusco at around 5-10 degrees Celcius without in-house heating. I'm getting good use out of my alpaca wool toques, sweaters and scarves!
But, we enjoyed a much warmer weekend in the Quillabamba area visiting Walter's family, and enjoying the tropical-like climate despite lots of rain there as well.

With Katy in the Quillabamba area

Traditions

We have gotten to experience some of the traditions surrounding a yearly fiesta that is dedicated to "padrinos", called Dia de Compadres (The Day for godparents). It is very customary here to have godparents appointed for different life-stages. Godparents are selected for a child's baptism, a youth's graduation, a couple's marriage. These godparents are specially selected by the parents or couple as a representative of someone they look up to or respect in their walk of life; someone they can go to for advice, and also someone who looks out for them in different ways. They are also responsible for different gifts or monetary responsibilities regarding the occasion- such as shopping for and buying the graduate's dress, or purchasing the wedding couple's rings. This holiday involves the two weeks that surround Valentine's Day, with the first being dedicated to the godfathers, and the second the godmothers. Around town and in the markets are signs and manequins dedicated to specific godparents. Some places also still follow an old tradition that involves painting the face with a natural red powder followed by water play. How these are connected, I haven't yet figured out, but I think it's just another way of celebrating, as the Latin American culture is fond of doing!
There are also special plates served. Katy and I got to experience first-hand dishes served up, and lots of it!
The morning started with a chocolatada including boiled banana and ripe avocado followed by a second dish heaped with rice, boiled potato and sheep meat. Katy and I, both being vegetarian, were served fried cheese in place of the lamb. Later in the day we were served again huge plates filled with rice, garbanzo beans, boiled cabbage, potato, moray, yuca, camote, peach, banana, and choclo, with optional aji topping, and of course meat for the others. Our stomaches are certainly a bit stretched from all the eating!

Dia de Compadres

Traditional meal

At the Casa...

Although some days feel like we're just trying to 'stay afloat', especially with all the baby-care, I've tried to introduce regular craft-time and constructive activies with the kids, toddler age and older, since the beginning of the year. Since Christmas, they've been begging me to decorate sugar cookies (hmm, could it be the sugar!?), so we decorated heart-shaped sugar cookies for Fabi's 5th birthday which falls on Valentine's Day. We put together little colorful paper fishes from different heart shapes, and glued heart shapes with colored yarn onto various colors of construction paper for decoration.

Sugar-coated lips... & excited for the candy necklace sent from Canada

We've painted with tempora's (another big favorite), colored outside in the yard (until the sun started melting the wax crayons), made little crowns from foam craft material and flower bouquets out of pipe cleaners and toilet paper rolls. When I was in grade one, one of the first arts and crafts projects I remember doing was making toilet paper dolls. My saved toilet paper rolls from the past few months have been coming in handy! On Wednesdays, I work one-on-one with all of the preschool age kids for about 45 minutes each, doing pre-school learning, especially concentrating on math.