La Finca en Paruro

by Christy
Last weekend we went to a small town called Paruro with a guide whose family still lives there, doing things much as they have "always been done."  The town is 2 hours by taxi outside of Cusco, at a lower elevation. We wanted a chance to learn a little bit more about true Peruvian culture because we are a bit distant from that living in our apartment.

One of the first things we noticed is that time is different there.  We had a lot of down time to relax. This was fabulous, in my opinion, because it was WARM and sunny there so sitting around doing nothing but feeling grateful to be warm was perfect.  I also liked watching our kids adjust to not having constant entertainment.  There was a "3 or 4 year old" boy there (not sure if they really don't know) who loved the toys we brought to share.  There was electricity for a couple of hours at night but not the rest of the time.  So the kids had to think of things to do that did not include electronic devices. This is not all that unusual for our family except that it usually doesn't happen for hours on end.  I loved watching the inventive games they came up with.

The thing that most stood out to us was how much WORK everything was.  And how much preparation everything takes.  We helped make chicha, the corn based alcoholic drink common in these parts.  They take the kernels off the corn and place them under a tarp for 15 days, watering it each day.  Once it starts to grow roots, it is ready to dry for a few days.  Once it is dry, they take it to the house in town where there is an electric grinder.  They grind it.  Then, an enormous pot of water is brought to a boil over an open fire (all of our meals were made over an open fire except our cuy which was brought to one of the 3 houses in town with a public oven.)  The corn is added, stirred, then strained through straw into another pot.  This process occurs twice.  Some of the last batch of chicha is added and it is allowed to ferment overnight.  This is just one example of the planning.  We also helped grind wheat which was used in our soup the first night, and used a mortar and pestle (a huge rock, though, not what I imagined a mortar and pestle to look like) to grind quinoa which was used in a different soup.  We also peeled potatoes which require sitting out overnight to freeze, then soaking in water to thaw before finally hand peeling them.  Aaron and I realized we get frustrated when we forget to thaw out dinner.  Imagine if you forget to dry the corn 15 days in advance!

We walked to the land they own and saw the guinea pig farm.  Anna fed the pigs and we brought back 4 of them for our feast.  Anna made sure to dance and jump around for them so they would "enjoy their last day of life."  The next day, we learned how they are prepared.  Totally crazy!!!  first, we watched him humanely kill them (quick neck snap).  Then they say a blessing over them and sprinkle them with chicha as an offering. You dip them in boiling water and then take off all of the fur.  The next step was amazing to me- you SHAVE the skin to make them completely naked.  Then the expected removal of the intestines occurs, they are stuffed with delicious herbs smashed together on the giant mortar and pestel and they are allowed to sit in the sun for an hour or so.  This family cooks everything over an open fire so they have to pay to use an oven.  It is a giant clay oven.  We left the pigs and a ton of potatoes there to be cooked and returned in an hour.  This process was also fascinating.  The owner of the oven was very busy putting bread inside.  I learned that this isn't his bread.  People come to his house, pay to grind large bags of wheat, then use his kitchen to make bread.  He bakes the bread and they pay him for his preparation space and his oven.  Then the next day, they sell the bread at market and come back to do it all over again.  It was really enlightening to me to be in a community where everybody shares things.  How nice it would be if there was a lawn mower on our street and when we need it we just pay $3 to use it and then return it.  It really doesn't make sense for every single house on our street to own a lawn mower.

Now we are back to Cusco.  Back to the cold.  Ready to feel warm again soon.

Anna grinding wheat:

 This is the kitchen.  There is an aluminum cover to it but otherwise it is outside.  It is all open fire.

 Anna at the guinea pig farm.  She loved feeding them.

The chicha (boiling water with corn) was poured into this basket with straw.  The chicha is collected below and fermented overnight.

 Cole using the mortar and pestle to grind the quinoa.  We have since learned this is how the Mayans ground chocolate!

 Anna is shaking hands with the dead guinea pigs.

 The cuy and papas ready to go in the oven.

 The room where we ate didn't have light except at night.  In order to find the eyeballs, her favorite part, she had to sit in the open doorway.

Guinea Pig

By Anna:

Today, we ate guinea pig.  I had the brain and both eyeballs.   The eyeballs were delicious.  We went with our Spanish teachers.  On the way back, me, Cole and Jimmy, mom’s teacher, sat in the back and wrestled.  Jimmy kept tossing Cole on my lap then I tossed him back to his side.  Sometimes he was really heavy.  The back was comfy because there were blankets and our sweatshirts.  I loved, literally LOVED, the guinea pig.  You can’t eat it with a fork because there is not enough meat.  You need to eat it with your hands.  And I will warn you, your hands will get dirty.

(Below is a picture of Anna eating the brain. Nobody else was willing to try that part!)

By Aaron:

I had a big beer.  It helped the guinea pig go down.

By Cole:

I didn’t much care for guinea pig, but I liked the fried pork.  Wait, did she eat a guinea pig’s eyeball? Chow!

By Christy:

I thought the flavor of the guinea pig was amazing.  I might have preferred it with chicken.

Why this is Harder than I Expected

by Christy:

I knew this was going to be an adventure when I bought the plane tickets.  By definition, adventures aren't always fun and games.  So in that sense, I guess I am getting about what I expected in terms of stress level.  But the REASONS things are difficult are different than what I was prepared for.  The cold, for instance.  I do believe that if thousands of people can live in Cusco without heat every day of their lives, we can do it for a month.  But man, it is rough.  Today, I spent an hour walking up and down a street where there is supposed to be a street vendor who sells the "old fashioned" rubber water bottle bags you can put in bed to make it a bit warmer.  I couldn't find her so eventually I went to the pharmacy and bought them there.  (I prefer to buy from locals.)  At about $1.75 each, it might be the best souvenir I've ever purchased in my life.

I've started boiling water on the stove before I try to take a shower because I never know how the shower will be.  I've had two nice showers in our apartment.  I've had two where the water just stops coming out and one where the water came out as an ice cold drizzle.  I hate the shower here because even when it is nice inside, the tile floors are still so cold that my feet don't warm up.  And the heater we have, run by propane, doesn't actually warm anything up- if I can get it to turn on and stay on.  The cold is really, really hard.

The kitchen is tiny.  There is no dishwasher and no space to put clean dishes once they are dry.  We have started trying to do dishes just once or twice a day because we felt like we were spending all of our life doing dishes.  It wouldn't be so bad if the towels were absorbant.  But we've bought two different types of dish towels and neither of them actually absorbs water.

We brought toys for the kids.  And we have bought a soccer ball for them to use in the street.  But it is hard to play when it is so cold.  And they are used to other stimulation- going to the yard, using the basketball hoop, excursions to the park or library.  It's hard finding things for them to do.

Finally, I really wanted to learn Spanish.  I've done language school before but always stayed with a family.  My brain switched over to Spanish.  Not necessarily good Spanish, but Spanish none the less.  My brain can't switch here because I am always having to talk to the kids in English.  And I can't go to Peruvian restaurants and try crazy Peruvian food while I study for a few hours because this would not be very exciting for the kids.  I should have anticipated this but didn't.  It's hard.

But tomorrow we are going on a school field trip as a family, if Cole is up for it (he spent the wee hours of the morning throwing up.)  We will go with our teachers to the town close to here most famous for cuy- roasted guinea pig.  We have yet to try this delicacy but we are very excited to get to go with our teachers and to taste it at the best place.  Then this weekend we are going to go to a rural farm.  We will drink tea from the garden, learn how to cook traditional foods, sleep under smelly llama blankets, gaze at the S. hemisphere stars without light pollution, and then check out a guinea pig farm- again getting to eat the little creatures.  It should be an authentic, crazy experience!

Life in Peru

Aaron:

  We have been settled into life in Peru for a few days now and we're trying to get a routine down (at least for the weekdays when we have school).  During the week, we get up around 7.  This is difficult because you can see your breath in the morning since there is no heat at night and it is 35 degrees at night (that means it is 35 degrees inside by the morning since the only insulation is thin window and some curtains).  We have a small propane heater that we run for a few minutes each morning and night but the heat quickly escapes.

   In the morning Christy makes banana pancakes or banana French toast while the kids try to stay warm (of course I am drinking coffee and enjoying the beautiful view of Cusco and the Sacred Valley).  After breakfast I boil some water on the stove and do the dishes and then we get ready to go to school.  This includes reminding the kids daily not to use water from the tap to brush teeth with.  We've been buying huge bottles of water and lugging them uphill to our apartment.

   Once we're outside it is much warmer in the sun.  It is a pleasant ten minute walk to school.  We originally had classes daily from 9 to 11 in the morning and then from 3 to 5 in the afternoon but we've switched to four hours straight (9 to 1 pm).  Cole and Anna are in one class while Christy and I each have individual classes.  Here is the entrance to our school:

 On the way to our school we pass six hundred year old stones that the Inca used to build temples.  One of the stones has 12 sides and a tour guide told us that "The stone is more famous than Michael Jackson."

   After class we head to the bakery for some wonderful French bread to have for lunch and dinner.  Anna has a mini croissant and Cole has a small chocolate croissant and then we head to the San Marcos market where we buy tomatoes and avocados for lunch.  We usually also buy bananas and mystery fruit to have later.

  It is a five minute walk uphill to our apartment (including over 70 stairs).  For lunch we have open-faced tomato and avocado sandwiches, mandarins, and bananas.  After lunch we bribe the kids by paying them to watch TV (!!!) while Christy and I study some Spanish for our afternoon lessons. Of course before I do that I have to boil water to do the dishes since there is no hot water from the tap.

   Here is a photo of the street in front of our house.

  This is what our front door looks like.  There is always a security guard on the street during the day (sometimes he plays soccer with Cole).

  Here are photos of our living room:

  And this is our kitchen:

  Cole thinks our bathroom isn't up to snuff.  Notice that there is only one tap for water (cold only). 

Finally here is the view for our picnic today:

Bye for now!

Old and New in Peru

by Anna:
Today, we went to a very fun park.  It had really cool slides and trampolines.  After that, we went to some very old Inca ruins.  It is called Tipon.  There are 5 fountains and houses for royal Incas.  I love Peru but I've had some bad parts.  One of my bad parts was when I broke down at Spanish school on the first day.  Now it feels better.

by Cole:
We went to the market yesterday and we went in and we saw three dead pigs that you could buy, some starfish you could eat, some frogs that you could eat, some fish, and a couple octopus legs.  We got some sugar cane.  It was delicious but I was full.  Then we drove back.  We went to the Inca museum. First we saw some Inca bowls and what Incas did like knitting.  We also went in a room where they showed lots of Inca sites that we could go to.  We have already been to one.  Then we went upstairs.  We saw some gigantic, really cool jugs.  Then we went into a room that I thought had some of the Inca emporoer, they had some Inca skeletons in there pretending to have a real life.  We went back down and back to our house.  August and I played soccer with some other kids.  We went out to dessert. August, Anna, Zadie and I all had a brownie with ice cream.  It was delish.  On the way back my stomach hurt because I ate so much.

Settling In

Slowly, very slowly, we are finding a place for ourselves here.  It's a subtle change.  On Tuesday, for instance, Aaron was the only person not to have a meltdown.  The last few days have been relatively happy.  Each day we say a "sweet" and a "sour" thing about the day.  Thursday, one of the kids had part of school as their sweet.  It's these little shifts in acceptance that are making things feel better.  It is still a bit overwhelming.  Yesterday I went to the market after class (5:15pm) and was greeted with closed doors.  That meant no dinner until our neighbors rescued us by inviting us to join them for dinner.  We paid way too much for laundry because we turned over the clothes before hearing the price.  These kinds of things are setbacks.  But we are moving two steps foreward, one step backward, and that is about all we can hope for right now.

Today was a day off from school so we spent the morning going to the biggest market in Cusco.  The kids tried sugar cane and we bought plenty of food so if the smaller market is closed next time, we won't rely on our neighbors to feed us.  We also saw starfish for sale, some sort of dead animal, live frogs which they will prepare for your lunch, and octopus.  The kids were surprised at how pale the dead pig looked and I was, as always, amazed at how many fresh fruits and vegetables I can buy for a relatively small sum.  We ate our usual lunch- bread from the fancy bakery with delicious avacado and tomato on top.  The side was a new kind of mango we've never seen before and pineapple.  Yes, I'd say we are settling in nicely.

Tomorrow we are going with our friends to a fancy playground, complete with all of the things a pediatrician traveling to a developing country wants her children playing on: trampolines, merry-go-rounds, and tall slides.  If we survive that, we are going to go to some pretty amazing ruins to have a picnic and play some soccer or frisbee.  Hopefully we will have another pretty great day.

Cole asked that I post a picture

of his homework.  They went on a field trip to the zoo and had to draw pictures of animals they saw and label them.

Anna has decided she quite likes sugar cane.  Over her shoulder is the alpaca sweater we bought to help keep her warm at night.  We all now own alpaca sweaters and hats.  The kids sleep with their gloves on as well.  It's cold here.  Really, really cold.  And it is colder in our apartment than outside.

Cole playing socer in the street with some of the local kids.  He now has a ball as well so can initiate play.  Today I saw him out there with August, our neighbor, kicking the ball around with the policeman who was patrolling the street.

Anna and Zadie are playing with animals near the soccer field.  We feel so blessed to have our neighbors be the people whose blog we have been following for the past few months.  They have made the transition so much easier for our kids.

Strange Fruit.

Aaron:

  Today we had our second day of language classes.  This consisted of waking up at 7 o'clock to a 35 degree apartment.  Christy made banana pancakes, I had coffee, and Cole tried to stay warm in front of our tiny portable propane heater.  There is no insulation in our concrete building but the landlord did put curtains up to keep the heat in.  Eventually we'll probably burn them for warmth.  After breakfast was ready we woke up Anna and enjoyed the beautiful view of Cusco and the Sacred Valley.

    After our morning session of classes (from 9 to 11) we stopped by the bakery to get some French bread for later and croissants for the kids.  Then we went to the local market and bought some new fruit to have for a fruit salad for dinner.  This is what is looked like whole:

And here is a photo of it peeled:

The dark green fruits were very good and soft with large black seeds (Christy compared the taste to cotton candy).  The orange-looking fruit is very light and you eat the seeds (Cole said it looks like monkey brains).  We also had pineapple, mango, pomegranate, grapes, and mandarins in the salad.


  It was also a big day for Cole since he got his own soccer ball:

  Tomorrow we have field trips for school: Christy and Aaron and going to a local market and the kids are going to the zoo.  As always, we're considering purchasing more sweaters and hats to keep warm.