Everything an Adventure

After explaining to people that we've lived here for 3 months now, Katie and I are frequently asked, "Ya estas acostumbrada?" "Are you used to it here?" We usually answer, "un poco mas cada dia," a little more everyday. And we are getting more and more accustomed to life here, but even daily tasks are so much different than they are in the U.S.

Our landlord had to explain to me how to wash clothes and how to mop our floor. I didn't even realize we owned a mop. In the picture below, that piece of carpet-like fabric is the mop. You slide it over the broom to use it. The little tub is our washing machine.

I live in the desert, so it's really dusty here. To prevent so much dust from getting in the house, every morning the Peruvians throw buckets of water on the dirt outside so it doesn't blow in. Katie and I don't bother to do that. We just sweep when it starts to look like we could plant things on our floor. That happens about every 2-3 days. Maybe in time we'll adopt the water-throwing custom, but for now we'll just live with the dust.

We used to eat out all the time because it's cheap, and we honestly didn't know where to get all the ingredients we needed to cook. Plus we don't have an oven, so that limits the things we can make. However, we've started cooking more frequently since we are learning which stores carry what food. All the "grocery stores" here are really just people's houses where one room at the front is set up like a store. The owners go to Canete (the closest city) and stock up on things for their store once a week. Fresh produce is sometimes difficult to come by, and for a long time I didn't know where I could buy meat. I bought some chicken for the first time last Friday. It's not a matter of finding some packaged chicken breasts, though. When I asked if they had chicken, she went to the freezer and pulled out a full chicken (feet and everything--minus the head), took it into her house (the back of the store), and cut off the midsection for me. It made me wish I had paid better attention to how to butcher chickens back when I was six and living on the farm. Below you'll find a picture of the chicken I took home and me getting it ready for the stir fry.

Little by little I'm getting "acostumbrada" to life here, but I've still got a long way to go. Until then, everything is a bit of an adventure. And I'm ok with that.