Not really an eventful week down here in South America, just the norm. Of course, since I’m gringo (that’s the term for white people down here) strange things occasionally happen.
For example, last P-Day we were walking to the Internet hub where we write emails to everyone when a woman in the street called us and asked us for help. She was obviously very drunk and asked us to help her get to her house. We’d kind of be jerks not to (Even if it’s her fault she can’t find it!) and so we started to walk with her to her house. She didn’t really remember where it was, just the way to get there, and it took a while because she walked, well, like a drunk lady and kept stopping every 20 feet or so to say something wierd like, “Ustedes no son de aquí” (“You’re not from around here) or, “¿Ustedes son testigos de Jehova? ¡Por esto no me gustan los testigos!” (“You’re Jehova’s Witnesses? Because of this I don’t like the Witnesses!”). Of course we explained a little bit about how we are from the U.S. and Chile (Elder Rodriguez is Chilean) and we’re missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, but she was so loopy she didn’t really process anything. We eventually stopped helping her when she started getting really irritated with us because we didn’t say, “hi” to some random woman in the street: “¡Deben saludar a los peruanos! ¡¿Ustedes son mejores que ellos?!” In the end she got so angry that she just wandered off, so I guess she made it to the house eventually…
As I mentioned last week (And several other times before…), there are a lot of drunk people around here. It’s gotten to the point that when we returned to our cuarto after lunch the other day we found a drunk guy passed out on the steps in front of the house below us (We live on the 2nd story) and we had to ask ourselves if he was there when we left in the morning! We kind of knew the guy (He’s Angel, the drunk brother of Kathy from last week’s email), and we didn’t really think we needed to do much for him, especially since he was already in front of his mom’s house and was REALLY drunk, so we figured it might just be safer to leave him how he was.
Tuesday I got interviewed because — You guessed it! — I’m gringo. We were talking to someone we ran into and all of a sudden a guy and a girl walk up to us and begin talking with us out of nowhere! They introduced themselves and then the guy told us he’d been looking for us ever since he recieved a phone call from a cousin/friend/someone that there was a gringo wandering around the 8th Zone in Collique (Obviously me!) with a slightly-less gringo (My companion). So they went looking until they found us (A task that’s not very difficult — You just have to look for the only person with blonde hair in all of Collique!).
Turns out this guy, Brian, was a student studying English, and his homework was to interview someone who spoke English, so he’d been asking people if they spoke English or knew someone who did, and then he found us! The interview was basically what you’d expect from someone in the U.S. who was in a Spanish class and had to interview someone who spoke Spanish: Really basic, easy questions about me and why I’m here and stuff (And since I’m here as a missionary, and they recorded the whole thing and are going to show it to the class, I might end up with a lot of missionary opportunities!). The last question was a little wierd because Brian asked me if I like the idea of Civil Union, but it was good. After the interview we talked and we’re planning to visit Brian this week to teach him!
Friday was difficult, only becasue it was SO COLD! We went back to the cuarto to put on our coats because we were FREEZING! And then, well, we’re guys and we look cool, so we took a picture.
But seriously, winter has definitely started! When we wake up it’s so cold that we get out of bed and run to put on a jacket and socks! Then sometimes we start fires (Partly because it’s so cold and partly because we’re guys and we like playing with fire!)
Hey, it doesn’t say we shouldn’t do stuff like that in the mission rules, and we never do anything dumb! (Well, that’s not true, but the part about the rules is!)
Not really much else to share here, so I guess I’ll let you all know what happens this week! Hopefully something interesting!
— Elder Schroeder
P.S. Here’s some other interesting photos I took recently. Enjoy!
The view from our cuarto one day:
How we do things in Peru:
And a picture of the smoking monkey Elder Rodriguez has:
