Lima, Peru
Whilst we have been travelling I (Nat!) have felt particularly homesick when we have gone through the baggage collection and had no one to greet us. In fact so much so that ocassionally Jon has pretended to be meeting me by saying 'Hey, Nat! I haven't seen you for ages!' We flew to Peru, arriving at the airport to be picked up by our friend, Jono. This was a real treat!
We got into a taxi, and realised that if a Peruvian took a driving test in England their style of driving wouldn't pass the test! For the first few days my eyes were firmly closed for most of the journey, the swerving in and out and constant honking, and very near misses slightly unnerved me! I got the hang of it though and actually found it quite fun. Like we mentioned a few months back, when we were in Malaysia, some of the taxis wouldn't pass an M.O.T. (most actually!) It makes our car look in perfect condition!

We planned to stay with Jono but Jono's house was having some building work done, so we spent our first week staying with the lovely couple Kevin and Sarah. We felt so welcome in their lovely home and really enjoyed having a chance to relax. They have a gorgeous son of 5 months who was great fun to play with, we wished we could have taken him home with us!
We sampled some local chinise food which is very popular in Peru and unfortunately it upset my stomach, but this was something else I realised quickly about Peru, there is no embarasment heald about dodgy tums, details are discussed regularly! This health problem came in handy as it allowed me to have an excuse not to eat chicken foot soup. MMMmm scrummy!

I did however sample the local delicacy of frogspawn ...

Only joking! This is a fruit called grenadilla which was extreamly yummy and helped with my tummy. Not only did it look like frogspawn but had the consistancy of it too!

Settling into Jono's building site was fun. The builders did not seem to view priorities highly and were frequently redoing jobs. In the second bathroom the toilet had to be installed twice, along with redoing a batch of tiling when it was discoverd that a rag had been left down the soil pipe. Despite the garden being bare, the kitchen unfinished, the windows lacking blinds and few other rooms being complete, they decided to fill the pool! Thats prioritising for you! Oh and then they dug up the dusty garden covering the surface of the pool in a nice film of mud. You've got to be here to understand but you soon learn not to let it rile you. I heard someone frequently say ... "Its the Peruvian way".

Summer clubs, fixing Pc´s and Jonos personal secretary!
Our purpose in Lima was to provide some support for Jono in whatever way would help him.

We were involved at the Iglessia where there was an EBDV (Escuela Biblia De Vaccacion) running for the youngsters of the La Tablada shanty town community.
Each day there would be some fun and games, a Bible study with memory verses and some more fun and games. We were amazed at how well the children remembered the verses throughout the week, although we were told that the most common teaching style in Peru is rote learning.
It was much fun trying to converse with these kids. Some of the younger children were quite shy and giggly at first but after I had done some crazy facial expressions and silly noises they began to relax. By the end of the time with them they had picked up a few english words like "monkey" which they used with much ammusement to rib each other. They were all really friendly and were quite sad to see us leave at the end of our stay.
We were struck by how happy and care-free these children were. They appeared to have so little compared to a British kid but actually I think they have so much more.
Jono gave some great little talks and we were very impressed with his Spanish.



Getting up to La Tablada was a task in itself. The kombi buses (or electricians vans) had less legroom than the length from your hips to your knees. So it meant sitting "side-saddle" or scrunching up. On one count there were 24 in our kombi which only had official seats for 13, including driver, although there is a rug for another 4 placed over the engine block behind the front seats.


We also helped with various PC problems. On one occasion a family came running asking for help with their monitor. I was expecting a major fault but found that somehow they had rotated the screen image by 90° and had to crane their necks round to view the image. Fortunately this was easy enough to remedy, unlike Jesus' PC which had no earth, and whilst trying to install a cd burner, gave me a belting electric shock and blew the motherboard! The electrics here are very dodgy!

To earn a little pocket money some of the youth have set up a jewellery making project where the items are sold through Latin Link contacts in the UK. The items are really pretty, just don´t buy one of the ones that Jon and Jono had a go at making ...