hauscaran from above.
the above is my hood. it looks a little rough around the edges. i blame it on the cloudy day and on the unfinished houses. all the houses here are unfinished on the outside, but mine is quite nice on the inside. it came complete with tiled floors, a toilet and a shower…which only has one temperature…cold.
i went to my ward for the first time on saturday, and made a new friend, jonathan. he helped translate sunday school for me and offered a ride home. he had never been to hauscaran, but upon entering my barrio exclaimed, “THEY LET GRINGOS LIVE HERE?!?!” i laughed, because really my barrio is quite quaint and friendly, and have met some great people that i can really only understand about 15% of what they are saying, but they are patient with me.
on the hillside we have a great view of the cemetary, which i hope to explore sometime soon. i hope to sometime soon give you a tour of my house/room.
on a completely separate note, i experienced my first earthquake yesterday. it was fairly mild, but i only divulge the first detail to better explain the second half of this story. last night, after i had just hung up the phone from talking with mike, my mom raced into the room saying a lot words extremely fast but motioned me quickly out of the house. i began to worry that perhaps there was a second earthquake i didn’t know about and was wondering why she let me talk so long if i was in such imminent danger. as we ran down the hill on our street, she was banging on doors as we ran down the street and calling other women out, which made me wonder even more. finally we reached the bottom of the hill at the park, and the entire community was there, all surrounding a vehicle that apparently had it’s breaks go out on our steep hill, and lost control of the car. the car then broke through the metal gate on our street, and tried to take the turn which then caused it to roll a few times down a 5′-6′ drop into the park, where it landed on the driver’s side of the vehicle.
don’t worry the driver had zero injuries, which still has left me perplexed. once i realized this, i laughed to myself as i was standing in the cold with the rest of the neighborhood looking at the accident. the police took about 20 minutes to arrive and the ambulance about 40 minutes. after everything was cleared that the driver was not drunk nor injured, the community was left with figuring out what to do with the car. i was quite impressed with their thoughtfulness and creativity in the removal of the car. the men began to carefully remove some of the outer parts of the car to prevent scratching more the exterior, and then the men grabbed two pipes and levied the car back on to it’s four wheels. then they slowly pushed it down the hill and back up again. really. the story left me laughing uncontrollably and impressed with their resourcefulness and creativity.
perusing peru... 