The Roads

Roads in Lima:
2 words= Ridiculous!! Traffic is crazy. Drivers are crazy. It's all stress and no fun!

Roads to Chavin:
We live about 9 1/2 hours North of Lima, the first few hours of the drive are so-so. You pass through Lima (thumbs down), through the desert (thumbs down), and eventually get to the Andes (thumbs up). The final 2 hours of our drive is a combinations of heaven and hell. The views are incredible/heavenly. We see snow capped mountains, mountain lakes, and the occassional llama. The road itself is a completely different story. I'm pretty sure the road to hell is a little less bumpy. After 2 hours of that mess, you need a good chiropractor. Unfortunately, there aren't any in the bustling metropolis of Chavin. I'm not complaining, I'm just not signing up for that drive very often.

Roads in/around Chavin:
We have paved roads in town. To get to the towns higher up we have to travel the dirt roads. They vary in width and roughness. Friday I travelled the first road that actually got my adrenaline pumping. I had to use the good ol' 4WD (4L to be exact). Praise the Lord no other cars needed to pass because that baby was only one lane wide with very few "wide" spots. In the rainy season that road will be impassible so I better plan ahead.

#2: Jordan and Trevor

Man, these 2 little guys are awesome!!! They are adjusting to the "Chavin life" very well. Since day one they have been making friends and spending a lot of time outside playing and riding their bikes in the park in front of our house.

Jordan- He has a natural gift with languages and can basically communicate anything he wants to in Spanish. He has really learned a lot since we've been in Peru. He spent this morning walking around with me and another gringo from TN inviting all the kids in Chavin to attend a sports camp. He did all of the talking and passed out all of the invitations. He lead our closing prayer in Spanish at our Bible Study this afternoon and afterwards, the 3 Peruvians began to brag on him to eachother. It was pretty cool!
He is excited about his upcoming tenth birthday, anxious about the start of homeschooling, and can't wait for his friends (the Bredbenners) to arrive from Costa Rica. They'll be here in mid August.

Trevor- Regarding Spanish, he is doing way better than I thought he would. In Costa Rica he was very shy about speaking Spanish and I thought it might be an issue here, but he has really opened up and makes an effort to talk to other kids. His personality has really been coming out since arriving in Peru. He cracks a lot of jokes and is becoming very quick witted (you have to be to survive in this family). We catch him dancing and shaking his booty quite often. He's been known to watch HS Musical with subtitles so he can sing along. He told me the other day that donkey poop was yellow on the inside. When I asked him how in the world he knew that he said, " Because I used a stick to break one open."
Duh...why didn't I think of that???
He loves to play Lego Star Wars on Wii, practice light sabers in the backyard with his brother, watch the same movie several days in a row so he can learn to quote the funny lines word for word, and play LEGOS with dad and brother.

I think they are adjusting just fine and we have a lot of fun in our home!!

Update 1 of Many

Confucius says, "The fool who doesn't update his blog for 2 whole months will have a lot of catching up to do!" Actually I can't prove whether he actually said that or not but the wisdom is still true. Since I am that fool, I decided to play catch up over the course of the next week or so. My plan is to write a short entry about different topics relating to our life in Peru. Hopefully that way I can inform you a little at a time without writing a super long entry that I myself probably won't even read.

I'm not sure in what order I'll address these topics but I'll cover the Quechua culture, daily life in Chavin, the people, difficulties/ struggles we've had, victories we've had, culture shock, ministry, Jordan and Trevor's adjustment, funny stuff, random stuff, diarrhea (oh...wait, thankfully we don't have much to say about that one yet), etc. Anyway, you get the idea. If I was type-A, I would give you a schedule of the order I would be blogging these topics. Actually, if I was type-A there wouldn't be a 2 month lapse in blogging thus requiring a catch-up calendar. But praise the Lord I'm not type-A because man that just doesn't sound nearly as fun!!!!