Another Day in Cusco: the secret repair shop and scary dogs edition

I'm starting to realize that crazy days here in Peru come fairly frequently.  At some point I'll get over it and stop blogging about it, but for now, I still find myself recounting with disbelief and lots of laughter the every day craziness of life in this country.

So this morning my mission was to get my cell phone fixed.  It's less than a year old, and the screen has been malfunctioning, so I looked up the website for the makers of my phone was pleased to find that they had a service location listed in Cusco!  The place was called "Grupo Deltron."  I jotted down the name and address, printed off my receipt from Amazon.com, fount my waranty card, and headed out the door with the phone.

I found a taxi pretty quickly and asked the driver about if he knew where this business was located.  He didn't.  So I described the location to him and off we went.  Usually in this sort of situation I'd be pulling up google maps on my phone to help me direct the taxista, but alas, the phone wasn't working.

I got out of the taxi in what I presumed to be the right area, and started walking.  It was very residential, so I was beginning to wonder whether I'd actually come to the right place.  I found the street listed on the address, but didn't see any signs or any building that even looked like a store front.  I asked a security guard standing in front of an apartment building if he knew where this place was, and he didn't.  I was about to give up and head home, when I noticed that a lot of the homes on this street were actually marked with numbers.  I examined the address I'd written down more closely, and was shortly thereafter able to locate a building with the exact address I was searching for.  It looked like an apartment building.  No sign.  Just a locked gate.  There wasn't even a doorbell to ring, like most apartment buildings have.

This is a picture of the building.  Does it look like a cellphone repair shop to you?  How in the world does a place like this stay in business.  Even the neighbors don't know it exists!

I stood there for a moment trying to decide what to do, when a lady walked up, and started banging on the gate to this building.  I asked her if she knew whether Grupo Deltron was located here.  She furrowed her brows, said, "Serivicio Tecnico?"

"Sí" I said, thinking that sounded like the right category of business.

She turned and continued banging on the gate until someone came and let us in.  He directed me to the 2nd floor, where low an behold, I found an actual sign which said "Grupo Deltron!"  I approached the desk marked "Servicio Tecnico" and waited to be helped.

The man who greeted me was very friendly and helpful.  After looking at my phone and looking up my warranty information he explained many things to me which I did not understand, and a few things that I did understand.  For one, my warranty was not international, so it would only help me in the US.  Secondly, he would be happy to fix it for me, except they didn't have the parts necessary for this model of phone.  The crazy part is, that shortly after entering this shop, my phone started functioning relatively normally.  I headed home, wondering at the sense of humor which orchestrated this whole experience for me, when something else happened.

I was walking down the sidewalk to go catch a taxi home, when I heard a bunch of barking behind me and then felt a jaw close around my calf.  I turned to see two dogs that both looked pretty upset with me for some reason.  I instinctively jerked away, looked to see that my leg was fine, and tried to remember what I was supposed to do in this sort of situation.

"Do I run or walk away?"

"I'm not supposed to look them in the eyes, that would be taken as a challenge."

I stated walking briskly as the dogs continued to bark and started coming at me again.  I suddenly remembered what my language teachers in Arequipa had taught me regarding aggressive dogs.  I quickly knelt down and pretended to pick up a stone from the ground and raised it quickly as though to throw it at them.  It worked!  They quickly backed away from me.  I continued my quick walk away from them, but after a few seconds they came at me again, still angry.  I started looking around to see who might be nearby if I needed help.  The security guard down the street had to see what was going on.  He didn't seem to be interested in lending a hand, though.  I tried the pretend rock trick again.  Fortunately these dogs weren't too bright, because it worked a second time.

At this point I started hearing barking from in front of me, and I saw a large dog approaching me from up ahead.  Great, I thought, they've got me cornered.  I shortly realized, however, that this dog was not barking at me.  He proceeded to go around me toward the other two dogs.  It was helping me!  Yay for my knight in furry armor!  I hastened quickly down the street toward a taxi, and jumped in.

Just another day in Cusco.

A Long but Productive Day

Today was quite a day.  I think it represents well some of the more futile aspects of life here in Peru:

1.  Finn woke up in the still-dark hours of the morning asking for water.  We all get a lot thirstier living in Cusco.  I think it's a combination of the dryness and the altitude (more breaths taken results in more moisture leaving our bodies through evaporation or something like that).  I went to get him some water from the water filter that is attached to our faucet, only to discover that the water had been turned off again.  Fortunately we had a bottle of water in the fridge.

2.  Later in the morning, when we all got up for real, we had a fairly normal breakfast routine, and then Derek went to work on setting up our internet router in a more centralized location of the apartment.  He spent a couple hours with the drill, various chords and extension chords, and a step ladder, only to admit defeat and come to terms with the wasted morning.  We're thankful that part of the house has good wifi.

3.  We soon got a call from our landlord informing us that the electricity had been cut to the building, so the elevator was not working, but that hopefully it would be working soon.  (This is a big hopefully since we live on the 5th floor).  She also informed us that some men were coming up to work on the washer machine problem and ceiling light problem we had told her about the day before.  These were the first two problems we'd had to inform her of since moving in a week ago.  We were especially hopeful that the washer machine would get working again quickly!  We'd spent several hours trying to fix it ourselves the day before to no avail.

4.  While Derek stayed home with Finn and the handyman our landlord had sent, I walked out to the main road (only a 5 minute walk from our apartment) and hailed a taxi to go to the open market.  This was about a 10 minute drive and it cost 4 soles - just over a dollar.  At the market I wandered through a maze of stalls searching for various items we needed for our house--all the while staying alert to the people in close proximity to me, and holding my purse (cross-shouldered of course) close to my side.  I bartered with several people over prices in Spanish and purchased several things.  Among other things, I needed a large pot that we could use to fill with water and disinfectant drops to make our fruits and vegetables safe for eating.  After finding about 50% of the items I had gone in search of, I gave up and found a taxi to take me back home.

5.  Upon returning home to our neighborhood, I rang the bell for our apartment at the gate, only to realize that the power was still out, and therefore the bell did not ring.  I called Derek on my cellphone and when he pushed the button to unlock the front gate, it didn't work either.  Neither did the garage door opener.  Electricity again.  Should have known.  So I was locked out of the building until Derek could find one of our building neighbors to let me in.  Our landlord hadn't provided us with an actual key to the gate yet, and we had just been entering and exiting with the garage door opener and the button from our apartment which unlocked the front gate.  Fortunately, Derek found a kind empleada on another level who lent him her key to let me in.  We hauled my purchases up 5 flights of stairs to our apartment, where the handymen were still at work.  They'd been able to fix the washer machine (yay!) but soon admitted defeat on the ceiling light issue.  1 for 2 isn't bad.  When they were ready to leave, we once again had to find a neighbor to lend us a gate key to let them out of the building.

6.  We ate sandwiches for lunch, put Finn down for a nap, and then began work on our next project for the day - assembling the piece of shelving furniture we had purchased the day before.  This actually went pretty well considering we were trying to follow instructions written in Spanish.  We were very thankful for the pictures.  It did take Finn's entire nap to figure it out, though.

7.  Later that afternoon, I walked down the road to meet a fellow missionary friend for coffee and then do some grocery shopping.  While I was out, Derek received a call from someone at the immigration office here in Cusco, and after a conversation that was rather difficult to understand (language barrier) he figured out that they needed him to come to their office because of some problem with Finn's documentation in his application for a visa.  Fun!  We'll tackle that tomorrow.

8. After a lovely coffee get-together with a new friend, and finding the majority of the groceries I needed (I never really find everything I need), I took a taxi home.  Now, there's all kinds of road work being done in our neighborhood, and different roads are closed each day, so the return home in the taxi involved discussing with him (in Spanish) which route would be the safest bet.  We found our way eventually, however, and fortunately I found that someone had left the gate to the building open this time.  Derek and I hauled all of the groceries up 5 flights of stairs again, spent several minutes recovering and catching our breath at the top, and then began to cook dinner.

9. I had decided to make one of our favorites, an enchilada lasagna dish.  This recipe is usually quite simple in the states, but not so in Peru.  Among other things, the recipe called for:

• a can of beans - I had to soak dried beans and cooked them in a pressure cooker, a new skill I've learned since moving here.
• a can of diced tomatoes - couldn't find this here, so I found a recipe to make my own.
• a can of cream of chicken soup and a can of cream of celery soup - also don't exist here.  I found recipes to make my own.
• A can of enchilada sauce - once again, had to find a recipe to make my own.
• Cheddar cheese - had to opt for Colby, since there wasn't any cheddar at the store. 

All in all, dinner took quite a while to assemble.  Every time I needed to pull up a new recipe online I had to run down the hall closer to the router before it would pull up.  And I SO miss the canned goods isle at Publix in the States!  I think in the future I'll try to prepare my "canned ingredients" ahead of time so that I'm not standing over the stove for hours at a time.  We ended up bathing and putting Finn to bed while the lasagna baked (at 176 degrees Celsius, I might add... our oven even reminds us that we're not in the US anymore).  Dinner did turn out pretty good, though the beans were a bit hard.  I'll have to work on my pressure cooker skills.

So that was our day!  Thankfully the post-dinner evening has been relaxing and tranquil.  It really was a very productive day, and we are thankful for what we were able to accomplish.  We sure are worn out, though!

- Laura

 P.S. at 9:30, the fire crackers just started going off outside.  No, it's not a holiday.  This is normal.

We've Arrived in Cusco!

We're here!  We are so excited to finally be in Cusco.

A week from Sunday we had a sweet send off from the church in Arequipa.

Last Tuesday was our final day of class, and then on Wednesday we flew to Lima.  We spent a day there picking up our visas and then taking a bit of a vacation.  We enjoyed staying in a lovely hotel room for the night, visiting a natural history museum, and also going to a cool fountain park in the evening.  We really enjoyed our time in Lima.

At the natural history museum

Finn's favorite part of the museum was the coy pond out back.

Finn and Derek walking through a fountain tunnel at the fountain park in Lima.

Riding a choo choo train around the fountain park.

Running from fountain to fountain.

Finn liked the big bed at our hotel.

The next day, Thursday, we flew to Cusco where we were greeted by our teammates, Scott and Meghan Dillon and their three children.  Since then we have enjoyed staying with them in their home.  We spent the weekend resting and adjusting to the altitude.  I attended a ladies Bible Study at church with Meghan, Derek played a soccer game, and then on Sunday we attended La Fuente De Gracia for the first time.  It was so neat to worship with the congregation we will be working with for the next couple of years.  Everyone was so friendly and happy that we have finally arrived.

Finn is enjoying lots of fun play time with the Dillon children.

This week we will be working on applying for Finn's visa and house hunting, and Derek will be meeting with some members of the team here to learn more about how he can begin serving.

We covet your prayers in all of these things!  So far we are very thankful for how smoothly all of the transition has gone and for the kindness of our team members here in helping us with transition.

- Laura