A Peruvian Welcome

We've been in Peru for five days now, and I decided I should start posting some pictures, so I don't have to filter through all of them at once.

Brian and I flew out of Kansas City on the 2nd, but our plane couldn't land in Houston because they were having major thunderstorms and had to temporarily close the airport. Our pilot announced that we were 25th in line to land and didn't have enough fuel to just circle in the air until then, so we went to College Station to refuel, flew back to Houston, circled for a while, and finally landed. Needless to say, we missed our connecting flight to Lima. Continental was really apologetic about the whole thing and gave us vouchers for a hotel and meals (there wasn't another flight until the following day). The hotel was nice, and it was actually a fun little mini vacation...except for the fact that we had to wait a whole extra day to see Emily!

Once we arrived in Lima late the following night (a little after midnight), we had to track down our baggage. Continental had shipped it over, but for some reason it wasn't with the rest of the baggage from our plane; a nice man called down to the storage place and told us that they had the bags for Brian and Linda Joong-mahn—we were thrilled.

We had several hours to kill before our 4:45 Arequipa flight, so we found a little bakery to have breakfast. They had pastries that looked good, so we thought we'd have one of those and then some juice. It turned out to be more of a sit-down place, though, and the whole menu was in Spanish (of which neither of us knows much at all). I looked up the word for apple and figured out the word for juice from the menu; however, when I confidently asked for apple juice, the waiter (who didn't speak much English either), said they didn't have it. He suggested orange juice, so I said, “Si.” Things got really interesting when I tried to order the pastry. The word I found in the dictionary ended up meaning dough (as Em explained later), and that clearly confused him. He offered, “Dessert?” I replied, “Muffin?” He thought for a minute and suggested, “Orange cake?” I wasn't sure what to do at that point, so I shrugged and nodded. Brian said, “I'll have the same.” Thus, we ended up with a breakfast of orange juice and what was essentially orange-flavored bundt cake in the middle of the night. (Here's Brian enjoying his.)

Emily and her host-father, Max, picked us up from the Arequipa airport at 6:30 Friday morning. When Max saw us walk towards them in shorts and sandals he asked Emily if we knew it was winter down there—it was freezing! We had actually known, but we didn't realize just how cold it got; Brian already thought I overpacked, but now my skirts and shorts seemed even more ridiculous. Luckily, we brought some jeans, which I can tell we'll be wearing basically every day.

Max took us to buy some special bread that's been made in Arequipa for hundreds of years. We went back to Emily's host-family's apartment and had a lovely breakfast of the bread with salami and cheese, fresh papaya juice, and hot tea. Then we went to the hotel and crashed for several hours—much needed after the long night in the airport.

That afternoon, we went up to Alto Cayma for the first time to meet the ladies Emily works with and to see their workshop. It was wonderful to finally meet them, and they greeted us with kisses on the cheek. They had prepared dances to welcome us to Peru, and it was quite a show! The first dance was the Marinera from northern Peru, performed by Gloria.

(We have a brief video of it that we'll post soon, but we can't figure out how to do it yet.) Gloria is the mother of Juan de Dios (below with Brian and me), my parents' adopted godson. He's eight and completely adorable. He kept asking Emily questions during the dances, and at one point asked her to tell him the history of the United States. She said it would take longer than a few minutes, and he said, “Well, can't you just summarize it?” :)

Next, several of the ladies did a traditional dance from the Puno area. (There's a video of this that I'll post later, too.) A few of them were really into it, but a couple seemed pretty nervous, so before long they made us join in—something which would make anyone feel more comfortable about their dancing! We did our best, and they were really sweet about helping us. The best part was watching them try to twirl Brian, who is at least a good foot taller.

Finally, some of the other ladies did the Wititi (pronounced why-TEE-tee) dance, in beautifully hand-embroidered skirts, vests, and hats.

Again, they insisted we join in, which we did, although this one was much more difficult and involved a lot of spinning in unison with our arms behind each other's backs.

Given the altitude and our exhaustion, we were pretty much done in by the end of this one. We did a few more, though, and we were just overwhelmed by the ladies' kindness and warmth. Maria finally announced that we were too tired to dance anymore that day, so we took some group photos and wrapped up. (The hats we have on are the Cabana hats the women wore in the Wititi dance.)

It was an incredible welcome, and I can see how Emily has been drawn back down here year after year. Even after only a few days with the women, we feel a great affection for them.

We'll write more about the workshop in a future post, and we'll also put up photos from our tour of Colca Canyon soon. We leave for Cusco on Friday morning, but I'll try to add more info before we leave. So far it's been an amazing trip!