Chicken
or Chicken?
A new volunteer arrived who was a vegetarian. The first evening, prior to
dinner our volunteer talked to Marie about her diatary restrictions. Marie
was very gracious and polite about the whole thing, considering the idea of
only eating vegetables and no meat is strange to the people here, and replied
saying “okay then we will have chicken.” We laughed about this
for a week.
To the
swings young man:
Everyday we go to the orphanage, Terry has a favorite little boy, with a mental
disability, named Alex. Within minutes of our arrival, Terry finds Alex and
takes him to the tire swing where Alex gets to swing for a half and hour,
saying “Wheeee” every time he swings up. One Monday, Terry picked
him up and he pointed to the swings and said “A la calumpio Joven!”
translating to “Take me to the swings young man!”
Let me
out!:
We had three volunteers from California, one guy and two girls, who were traveling
together through South America. When they stayed with us in Huancayo, the
two girls shared a room and the guy had a single to himself. Of the three,
the guy was the morning person and so he was in charge waking up the girls
in the morning. One night, one of the girls went to his room to confirm the
time they would get up the following morning, she then shut his door with
the key still in the outside lock. Peruvian door hardware is such, that this
locked him into his room! The next morning, we awoke to the sound knocking
from the inside of his room and him graciously asking “Can someone let
me out?” Ironically this happened a second time this same day, but this
time a visitor was locked into the bathroom—what are the chances?
Gringo
Dancing:
One Friday night, we all took a break from the regular house meals and routine
and went out for pizza, pisco sours, and music. We were having a great time
eating familiar food, drinking, and listening to the traditional Peruvian
music. The dance floor was unusually empty, so feeling the urge, we all decided
to hit the floor. As a group, we put on our best display of North American
dancing skills, the song ended, we sat down, and the next thing we knew, the
band had packed up and left—and it was only 10:30 on a Friday night!
We figured our dancing had been too bad for them to continue, because a typical
Friday nights means music until at least 2am
