Guess what?!
Comments(1)Me: What’s up chuck?
Boy: No! I’m Sammy!
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Boy: Mama! Guess what?
Me: What?
Boy: Guess what!
Me: What?
and repeat, repeat, repeat!
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Sam likes to count. He counts to 10 in Spanish and English although he usually just likes to stop at 8. heh.
Good laugh
I loved this: http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/
In other news, tomorrow, the guys go back to work. They haven’t been able to do that since early last week. There has been a strike of local union workers at the jobsite. It started a week ago Friday when Stu called me from work to say that they all had been moved into the jobsite camp (where the guys on single assignment stay) for safety reasons due to union unrest. They ended up coming home just after lunch. Saturday through Monday were quiet due to a Peruvian national holiday, so they went back and forth from work with no problem.
They anticiptated more unrest on Tuesday and would not allow the guys to go to work. After that, there was change. The locals had blocked the entrance to the site, and then set up camp.
Stu was luck enough to be trapped home, some of the poor guys were trapped in the jobsite!
It was a long week, haha. Actually, Stu couldn’t relax too much because he was constantly waiting to be called into work, so it wasn’t holiday-like entirely. This was the first time that he has been able to experience what the wives go through day after day here in the camp. Usually, when he is home it is only on the weekends, so it never gets boring and monotonous for him. He saw first hand this week how creative you have to be not to lose your mind here, haha.
Sam loved it! He played every day with Daddy, and I’m wondering how he is going to react tomorrow when Daddy is gone.
It is late. My guys are in bed. I’m watching the movie Kramer vs. Kramer, which I’ve never seen before. Not a good late night, all by yourself movie.
Our kitchen
Once you enter inside, you see that the bottom floor of the house contains the main living room (which belongs to Sam and his toys), the kitchen, and a small bathroom.
This is how our kitchen looked when we first moved in. Shortly after, Stuart went on a business trip for 2 weeks and I attacked the kitchen with some paint. 
It turned yellow! We also had a huge 8 seater table removed from the living room (that took up half the room) and two of the bar chairs. 
My little model is showing off the room, as well as starting to beg for a snack. He loves cereal bars but for some unknown reason has named them “bookies”.
In this photo, you can see our dandy new oven. I like it, but right now the oven is cooking at almost 70 degrees Celcius lower than it should. We bought an oven thermometer in London to keep an eye on it.
The kitchen sink. This is where I spent a great amount of my time. As you may be able to tell, we do not have a dishwasher. Well, actually that is not true - I am the dishwasher. The problem is that our water is not safe to drink because it comes from the river, and it has a higher bacteria count that our bodies cannot handle. So, when I wash the dishes, I then have to boil water in the kettle, fill a plastic tub in the stink (no stopper) and dip all of the dishes into the boiling water (using gloves, of course).
You can vaguely see our boiler on the wall outside the window. It provides continuous hot water on demand, which is great. But, it doesn’t always fire properly and if you aren’t paying close attention (or are sleepy, as in my case) and turn off the water and start again because it isn’t hot - the boiler will ignite all the loose gas with a boom and shake the windows. 
My new fridgie!! We had one before that was a bit larger, but it was damaged in an earthquake (before we arrived) and the main door wouldn’t close all the way - so I had bugs and warm milk. If you look closely, you can see the backdoor has a lock on it about adult eye level - that is to try and prevent a certain escape artist from sneaking out! 
Looking from the kitchen back into the living room (and front doors). I was in the middle of doing mass laundry after a trip, which is why there are 2 laundry hampers there. Also, to the right of the hampers you can see where I hang my fly swatter - the most important item in the room!
A little drive
Let’s take a little drive, shall we?
Head out of Lima going south on the good ole’ Panamerican Highway.
Watch out for road repairs due to prior earthquake damage (specifically the big 8.0 last year):
After an hour and some, when you see the V cut in the mountain ahead, you know you’re almost to our house! (I believe the oops truck is carrying bananas):
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Closer now. You can see “Asia” written on the mountain to the right:
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Round the curve:
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Aha! Here is our neighborhood! Slow down to take a turn in to the right:
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Entrance gates (which were subsequently painted lime green in the summer):
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Drive down the main road in our subdivision (hehe). The little hut looking things are actually placeholders for the land until the area is built up (or so I’m told, but I don’t see that happening any time soon). In the distance straight ahead, is the Pacific Ocean:
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The road comes to a T. Prepare to turn left. I have to admit - the first time I made this trip, when we were moving here, I started to wonder where the houses were going to fit since it seemed we were running out of land:
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After the turn, a short travel down a portion of the old Panamerican highway:
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Turn again - our driveway! You can finally see where we live. Notice all the grass and trees, and neighbors! (hah)
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Into our complex:
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Park the car at our backdoor. This is our building and our windows are the brown one (Sam’s room) and the one above:
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Walk around the building to the front and see our house! It needs some paint touching up.
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Sam checking out his kit (and my gnome):
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Open the glass doors and come inside!
Home tour manana! Ciao! (they say that here instead of adios)
Outside?
We have broadband now! Whee! It’s not wireless, so I’m anchored, but it’s much more dependable than that pesky old dial-up. This means I can start doing more photos! Aren’t you excited?
Me: “Sam, do you want to go play outside now?”
Sam: “Yes, but first I need my jacket. It is cold outside!”
I am constantly amazed at how well his language skills are for a 2.5 year old. The other day he wanted me to follow him, so he said, “Mama! Come!” but I wasn’t fast enough. So he repeated himself and said it to me in SPANISH: “Mama vien! vien!”
Knocked.me.over.
“Momma? You comin’?”
The other morning I woke up about 8 am and was listening to Sam (on the baby monitor) play happily in his room when an earthquake struck. Since I panicked over the last one we had, and I was pretty tired, I decided to wait it out and see what happened before I jumped up. It was all over in the amount of time it took me to think that through anyway. heh.
Just a rumble, rumble, rumble, SHAKE, rumble, rumble.
Sam was quiet for a minute and then spoke up in an alarmed voice:
“Momma? You comin’?”
“Momma? Sammy’s room is broken!”
Heh. He couldn’t think of any better way to describe it, and it just made me laugh!
The following comes from a great website that I follow (as well as everyone else out here). It is amazing to see how many earthquakes happen worldwide on a daily basis.
Check it out: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/ (click on the maps for details)
Earthquake Details
| Magnitude | 5.2 |
|---|---|
| Date-Time |
|
| Location | 12.412°S, 77.687°W |
| Depth | 35 km (21.7 miles) set by location program |
| Region | NEAR THE COAST OF CENTRAL PERU |
| Distances | 75 km (50 miles) WSW of LIMA, Peru 145 km (90 miles) S of Huacho, Peru 205 km (125 miles) NW of Chincha Alta, Peru 270 km (170 miles) NW of Ica, Peru |
As a point of reference, we live 107 km S of Lima, so we weren’t too far from the epicenter.
Ick!
Dear Sam,
Please, please, please do NOT lick the fly swatter!
Love,
Momma
Hello Daddy!
Stuart usually goes to work in my dreams, around 5:45 in the morning. Most days I wake briefly when he leaves, and remember it all in a blur. This morning was no different until the phone rang at 6:45 am.
“Hi, its me. I’m by the back door…can you let me in?”
(We have no key to our back door, for some reason, and he has to leave me the key for the front)
As winter closes in, the weather is becoming more humid and wet, and there is an incredible amount of fog. Apparently there was a huge accident on the Pan American highway early this morning, and the road was blocked in both directions. Stuart and the other men in our housing camp ride a private bus into work every day ( it is a 45 minute journey) and they made it less than half way before the driver was called and told to turn back due to the accident and resulting 15 kilometer traffic jam. The highway where the accident occured is high in the mountains where the fog is a problem even in the summer, and it is only one lane in each direction.
Here is the road as it looks in summer with minimal fog (and dry!):
Another bus of Stu’s coworkers was caught up in the traffic jam, and the men actually had to get out of their bus and walk back to another bus that could transport them back to our camp.
At 10:30 am, the call came that the road was clear and guys could board the buses and get back to work. Turns out it was a false alarm because Stu came home 10 minutes later. Yes, the road was clear to allow some traffic to flow…err…while they got a crane in place to help clear up the mess, at which time the road was closed back down.
They never did make it to work today.
We’re home
We’ve made it home to Peru in one piece, after a very long journey. It went pretty well though, and Sam tolerated the long flights like a champ, considering.
I only had to catch vomit in my hands once.
We also got our luggage back. It eventually made it to Johannesburg just in time for the return trip, and the possibility of losing it again. We have since discovered that some items were kindly removed from the bags, which is highly annoying. Most notably, they took my Levis, my tennis shoes, a bit of my makeup, some of Sam’s winter clothing and his tennis shoes, as well as some gifts we were taking for the girls.
Bye bye shoes!
The weather in Peru has changed since we’ve been gone. It has gotten cooler overall, but the days are nice and warm (as opposed to searingly hot).
I really like it, and don’t want it to keep cooling down.
Checking in
We are currently in South Africa, sans luggage, visiting the girls.
Many photos coming.
