Thursday, June 15, 2006

Ah the Little Ones

My first encounter with little Peruvian children happened this morning. Upon returning to my adobe hut I did my best attempt at verbatim utterances. This is the story as the natives are now passing it around.

From Urubamba Emily went up the Sacred Valley. As she was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at her. "Go on up, you baldhead!" they said. "Go on up, you baldhead!" She turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths. As the children met their demise, Emily could be seen skipping off in the distance with pigtales, overalls and rhyming to herself: "Hello children. It was nice to meat you, now go away."

Apparently they had heard about my tennis camp days. Grr... that darn story is all over the internet.

I soon led a Bible study with the natives and my heathen coworkers. My story had some easy tie-ins to 2 Kings.

I'm not sure if they are familiar with the Veggie Tales, in which case the last quotation would have not have packed the punch of Jean Claude in Josh and the Big Wall! BTW, did anyone catch the pun?

more to come

Emily

Thursday, June 08, 2006

let me just tell you...

Day 1:
I was attacked by a dog! (The dogs own the town I am in-Urubamba, if one comes after you, you have to be strong and throw rocks at it) Emily-1 Dog-0

No need to worry, I had my ginormous Scotish dancing sword as backup if the rocks failed. Come on, try me, get in my grill...

At about mid-day, I was propositioned for intimate relations on my way home for lunch with my host family.

not what i meant by tapping Peru!

I LOVE PERU!

I have fallen in love with this place. It might be one of the most beautiful places I have ever been...not just the landscape...which is incredible, but the people are fantastic, and the way of life is so inviting. My host family is great, but there are a lot of them. I have no idea what all of there names are...is that bad? All the family members are at my house all the time...it´s great, I love it. My project while I am here is building ceramic stoves in the adobe huts of small communitites outside of Urubamba...again...awesome! Our project coordinator is a man by the name of Javier and he is a complete joy and is extremely intelligent and knows soooooo much about Peru´s history and the Incas and probably anything else you might want to know. Ahhh...there is so much to tell you all! Nonetheless, I am learning spanish much faster than expected...I can have conversations with people and it has been less than a week. I am also learning Quechua, which is the native language of the Incan people. I love that too! Seriously, what is not to love about Peru?

I think that God has to be delighted with me to allow me to have this experiences...there is no other explanation. I love you all dearly, and I can´t wait to come home and tell you all about this place, and at the same time, I already know that leaving will be quite difficult. I really feel that many of these people are my family!!

Blessings to you all!

Emily


Friday, June 02, 2006

I´m alive!!

So here I am in Cusco, Peru. There were a few interesting moments on the way, such as, they make sure you know that there are no remote control toys alowed on the airplane to Peru, and a moment where I may have been converted to Buddhism momentarily. Anyway, the people with the program are great and the Peruvian people are so beautiful and kind. I will be here in Cusco until Sunday night and then it is off to Urubamba to build/install clean burning stoves in homes in rural communities. So far everything looks like it has fallen into place perfectly and I look forward to being able to share more stories with all of you. I hope all of you are well!

Emily