Random Catching Up

Well, Charlie and I are just finishing our little three week stint of each teaching an English class at the mission's language institute. Our classes were an hour and a half long, five days a week with just a handful of students each. Still, we were surprised at how much time and energy it took to teach, prep, and grade. Charlie still has to write, give, and grade his final, but I gave my final today and will grade it over the weekend. Our classes have been in the afternoon when the kids are home from school and at two separate times, which was not ideal but we had not thought things through very well when we signed up. Consequently, it's been a little crazy the past few weeks.

We've both really enjoyed actually teaching though. I really don't have a problem standing up and telling people what to do! My problem has been swallowing my last bite of lunch and then grabbing my stuff and jumping into a taxi. (Actually, Charlie has been walking me out to the corner, calling my cab, and giving the driver directions. Then, he hands me in, shuts the door, and we wave good-bye. Dare I say romantic? It has been a new favorite time of the day!) It seems like a lot of these taxis don't have any shocks left and there's about a dozen speed bumps on the way out of our neighborhood. Plus, drivers here will do things like get in the left lane to make a right turn or brake for a speed bump after the front tires have gone over it. So, I've been eating a little less lunch every day, but that doesn't keep the food coma from hitting right in the middle of class. It's a little embarrassing to be falling asleep when you're teaching... Honestly, I don't think any of my students will miss me at all, though lots of them really build rapport with the American teachers. Charlie's students will probably remember him though--he's been a little more creative. And while he got his students into a discussion of the origin of the Eastern Orthodox Church, I ended up trying to explain the character "Puss-in-boots" from Shrek 2 to my class and being asked, "What's pussy?" That's what I get for sticking to the curriculum.

One of my other new favorite times of the day has been 5:00 when I run the kids out to the park for an hour or so. Peru Mission currently has four long-term families here in Trujillo. You can meet them all through their blogs at the mission's website. They all have at least a couple of kids, and there are almost always a gaggle of them ready to play late in the afternoon. The moms sit together, watching the littlest ones and catching up on the day. I am really enjoying getting to know these folks--they have a warm and real bond with each other that is Christ-centered, encouraging, and inviting. We have also had game night, women's Bible study, movie night ("Diary of a Mad Black Woman"), Easter Egg Hunt, birthday parties, and eating out together. Honestly, writing about the mission team here is hard for me being mindful of my audience. If you're reading in Peru, I'm writing about you, who I hope will be my friends--a little awkward. If you're reading in the States, I can't even write about the concept of community and friendship without thinking of all I've left behind.

Hmm. Let's end on not such a melancholy note. The last of the four watches that we brought from the States ran out of batteries last week. That made for three watches with dead batteries and one with a shifted face (hard to tell which numbers the hands were pointing to). Pretty ironic, especially since the last watch didn't just stop. No, it just slowly lost time over the weekend until we were unknowingly twenty minutes behind on Monday morning and they locked the doors to Madeleine's school when she was just half a block away. Charlie was seriously irritated, because the school was being especially hard-nosed. Madeleine only cared because she was missing math, which she can actually follow, but she got to go back to the apartment and then to the mercado with Lucia. This made them both happy. Later we found out that Madeleine ate food from a street vendor that morning. This is a highly discouraged practice for gringoes and on top of it the food offered to her was leche de tigre, a pickled fish. Anyway, we finally made it to the watch repair shop and now have all four functioning, plus the fifth that I bought when my watch first went down.

Speaking of four, Charlie and I have watched four randomly selected movies together since we arrived (not counting "Over the Hedge," "Cars," and "Fly Away Home"). None of them was set in the U.S. and they all included scenes of main characters stressed out in foreign surroundings. In the order that we viewed them: "Fearless" (probably better if you don't watch the black market version with laughable English subtitles), "Apocalypto" (this really made our South American experience seem like piece of cake), "One Night With the King" (the Esther movie), and "King Kong" (just outright painful in many ways). I think "Cars" and "Over the Hedge" won first and second place and I'm not sure anything came in third.

Update on the kids next. Hey Charlie, where is the next batch of photos?