The city has been CRAZY this week. There's been a protest at the local college near where we are staying that had resulted in a lot of roads being closed. Apparently the president of the college is putting more money in his pocket than he's using to better the programs at the school. We heard the students will stay out protesting until something changes! When we drove by on Thursday the entire campus was a ghost town inside. Not sure if things will change but it's made for a lot of traffic on top of the festival of "Corpus Christi" (the corpse of Christ). It's a tradition of the Catholic Church in the city to parade around statues of the saints & lots of dancing competitions, food & things are going on. It is a zoo! Our school is right in the middle of it all so we've spent a lot of time sitting in traffic!
On Thursday our teacher took us in the morning to check out the festival. The traditional food consists of roasted guinnea pig (whole with teeth!), corn tortillas, & lots of beer! People will literally sit & drink all day long. They do a lot of shows & traditional Ketchua dancing. After we got back to school, we heard the band coming by with a statue- the biggest, heaviest & most dangerous to carry because of its weight. The street is very narrow & many cars park on the curb. As the statue was coming around the corner the people realized it couldn't get through. So... A group of guys literally picked up & moved some random persons car onto the sidewalk- it was totally crazy! The statue constantly swayed as if they were going to drop it & everyone carrying looked as if they were in so much pain. Apparently it's because of their deep faith that they volunteer to Carry around the statues. This festival goes on for several weeks & is very culturally important in Cusco. It's definitely been an experience for us!
On Friday night we took Willy & Kati out to dinner at an Italian restaurant. Willys mom lives in the apartment above us & she came to watch the kids- she's super sweet & had a Yorkie named "Speedy." We had a great time laughing & talking to them, sharing about our vision with street children in Peru. They have become great friends in just a week's time. Titus finally got Joaquin (their 8 year old son) to warm up to him with some Nerf wars 😊
We had a good week at school & have learned a lot. We really like our teachers. We decided to stay home this weekend instead of going to the Boys home Fri night through sun afternoon because we really need to review & solidify this mountain of information we've been given. We were going to go for the day on Saturday but the boys had some sports tournaments so we thought it would be better to go a different weekend when we could actually spend time with them.
We didn't really have plans for Saturday until Willy mentioned to us on Saturday morning that his cousin (Mario) had a Christian center where he fed & loved on kids each Saturday morning in the mountains. We decided to take the trip on a van that's about $1.50 per seat. Little did I know the ridiculous mountain roads we were about to encounter with a terrible driver & overcrowded ride. Can't believe I didn't throw up! Mountains in the US had nothing on this crazy ride! We took a moto taxi to the center & were greeted by 40 sets of dark eyes with dirty faces & torn clothing. They were eating lunch & singing songs of praise. They were all very young, mostly 5-7 years old. Our hearts absolutely melted & I was delighted to see little girls for once! We thought we were doing so good with our spanish but man, are kids much harder to understand than adults! We played with them for a while, colored pictures, & talked. Before they left, Mario's wife taught them to pray as they repeated a prayer of thanks to God. The Lord provided for my carsickness & Willy's cousin allowed us to ride back down the mountain with him- it made a world of a difference to be in a small car with a good driver!!
Last night we talked to the family about taking the kids to a movie. The parents ended up being late so the 8 year old son begged his parents to let us take him to the movie. I think it spoke a lot about them trusting us with their youngest! We took Joaquin to see Jurassic World & bought him a snack. I was worried he would be scared but his mon said he would be fine. Poor thing was terrified but didn't want to leave when we kept asking if it was too scary lol It was fun to take him but I just felt awful he was so scared! I remember always being scared of Jurassic Park when I was a kid (even a young teen!).
Last night I woke up with terrible stomach pains & felt super sick about 4am. Asked Titus to pray over me & took some meds- thankfully was able to go back to sleep. We were asked to go to church with Mario at the evangelical church in town but we already told Willy we would join their family on a hiking trip. I wasn't feeling super great still so I decided to stay back. Titus took his fishing gear & is hoping to catch something at the lake where they're hiking!
Oh & Titus has kept up his celeb doppelgänger in foreign countries... He's been called Leonardo DiCaprio several times, just like he was called in Jamaica several years ago ☺️
More later! ❤️kb
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