Bathroom Quadrafecta

Making the decision to head back to Peru was one of the most difficult
decisions on the trip. We absolutely loved Chile, but knew that Peru
was where we were supposed to be.

The city of Arequipa, Peru turned out to be one of the nicest places
we've been on the entire city. Nicknamed "The White City," Arequipa
was built almost entirely of white volcanic rock from an eruption 1500
years ago. It's Peru's second largest city and it's a gem.

We headed to a Nazarene church on Sunday morning and met with some
great missionaries for lunch afterwards. We were really hoping to
build another house or an addition or something, but no doors seemed
to open up.

After lunch we met back up with the pastor of the Nazarene church and
talked to them about their needs. They were in the middle of a pretty
big building project, but they had stalled at getting their electrical
work done. For 13 months the bulk of the church has been without
electricity because they didn't have anyone who was able to do the
work. We decided to tackle the job not knowing what we were in for.

We bought a few more electrical tools and showed up on Monday to work.
For those of you who don't do wiring, there are empty pipes put in the
walls and floors for pulling the wires through. Within 5 minutes of
showing up at the church, I tried to do a few test runs of putting
wires in the pipes and the first 5 pipes were all blocked. I almost
just packed up our stuff and left.

Wires don't make tight turns very well. Instead of sharp 90 degree
turns, you're supposed to make big sweeping bends so the wires can
just glide through the pipes. Because they made all sharp turns, we
basically had to rip up their concrete floors with hammers and
chisels.

Not very fun, but I work with some of the best guys in the world who
didn't know enough about electricity to know how miserable that job
could be, so we pressed on and got it done in 3 long days. We pulled
thousands of feet of wire, hooked up ceiling lights, wall sconces, put
in emergency lighting, and installed dozens of outlets. When all was
said and done, it turned out to be a cool good deed.

Now we've started our journey back to Lima. We decided to splurge a
little and see what a real first class bus is like. Oh. My. Goodness.
First of all, instead of sitting in the terminal with the other
people, we had a special lounge. This lounge had the first quadrafecta
public bathroom of the ENTIRE trip. "What is a quadrafecta bathroom?"
you ask. It had a toilet seat, toilet paper, soap, and paper towels.
Uh-mazing.

We get on the bus and we're treated to legit blankets and pillows and
free headphones. Why headphones? They don't play the movies and music
on the bus speakers. I shed a little tear. Plus, we have wifi!!!

Speaking of movies, we have gone through a little ritual a lot lately.
Whenever we turn on the tv and see something we really like, it is
always at a part with no talking for like 5 minutes. We sit there and
watch it only to hear them begin to speak Spanish. That's usually
followed by Jordan, Cory, and I shouting some term of displeasure. At
least this bus has movies with English subtitles. Even when you
understand it, it's no fun watching tv in Spanish. One other funny
thing is that I had shrunk down some tv shows to watch on the
blackberry. Elias and I were watching, but the audio had gotten out of
sync with the mouths and that was driving me crazy. It didn't bother
Elias and then I figured out why. Most of the tv he watches is
English dubbed in Spanish so the mouths never line up. Haha.

I'm getting pretty retrospective as the trip comes to an end, so I
decided to make some lists about the trip. So here they are in no
particular order.

Things I wouldn't change:
- The guys on this trip. Sure, there are a few additional people I
wish could have come, but I wouldn't trade these guys for anyone or
anything. They have been so easy to travel with and so great at
keeping on mission. They're amazing guys--but you already knew that.

- The trip itself. So many people told me to just pick one country or
one missions organization and explore that. If we had limited
ourselves to just people an organizations that we could have
researched from the US, we would have missed out on 90% of the great
experiences and ministry opportunities we had on this trip.

- My backpack - A surprise gift from Keri, my Kelty backpack has
performed flawlessly on this trip. It's been in some of the nastiest
bus luggage compartments known to man with nary a thread out of place.
It pained all of us when the all of the bus companies in Peru STAPLED
our luggage tags to the straps, but we survived. Actually, all of the
backpacks held up well from Cory's Northface to the $70 Coleman 65
liter bags Elias and Jordan got from Walmart. In fact, if you plan to
do some hiking and don't want to spend a lot, I'd suggest you go grab
a Walmart bag before they run out.

- Space Bags. The peanut butter in the Reese's cup that is my luggage.
I'm not talking about the ones you vacuum out, they are the ones that
you roll the air out. These bags have survived daily use on my 2 bike
trips and other various packing duties before this trip. They not only
save space, but keep nasty dirty clothes separate from the clean
stuff.

- Taking buses instead of driving. Driving probably would have been a
tiny bit cheaper and a ton more flexible and possibly more comfortable
for all but the driver, but buses were the way to go. We never got
lost, we were able to travel overnight, we never got hit up for a
single bribe, and to be honest, the roads down here are a nightmare.
We made the right decision.

- Skipping El Salvador and Northern Peru. Those were two places that
we definitely had no business being. Southern Peru is gorgeous and
much safer though.

Things I would do differently.
- I would have brought better clothes. The 3 pairs of Eddie Bauer
convertible shorts/pants were a lifesaver on this trip and at $25 were
probably the most expensive pants I've bought in 10 years, but I still
wish I would have gotten some higher end ones. I really didn't like
them as shorts and because they were on clearance, I had to go with
sizes that worked but weren't perfect. Considering that I wore these
about 75% of the trip, it would have been worth it to spend $75 on
pants I loved. I also would have brought a really nice sweatshirt.

- I would have spent more time in Guatemala. As the trip went on, we
learned how to find opportunities, but I wished that we would have
spent more time exploring opportunities there in the beginning. I
definitely want to go back. The same goes for Columbia. I know a lot
of people were worried about us being there, but Bogota actually felt
like one of the safest capital cities on the trip.

- I would ignore the missions advice I got at my expensive private
university. I was told over and over again that when you are a guest
of someone on the mission field and they put food before you, you
should eat it so you don't offend them. Screw that. That's just
stupid. There has to be some way to explain to people that I'm a sissy
American and my stomach can't handle your food. If I've traveled 8,000
miles and I've built you a house or done electrical work for you, I
think I've earned the right to not eat your food. If you're offended,
I'm sorry.

- I would bring an ebook reader (i.e. a Kindle). Good English reading
material is hard to find and I didn't think about bringing an e-reader
until last minute. By then, the 2 I wanted were out of stock. I wound
up buying 5 or 6 magazines from 2008-2009 for $1 each in Columbia.
That was nice, but the ebook reader would have been better.

- For a group of 4 people, it would have been well worth it to bribe
the bus driver $20 to keep the radio and tv off.

Other Random Thoughts
- I don't miss my material possessions. I woke up yesterday thinking
about this. Everything I've needed for the last 2 months has had to
fit in my backpack. I love my tv and my computer and these projects
would have been a ton easier if I had my tools, but these things
aren't the necessities that I once thought they were. I don't see
myself selling all of my stuff when I get back, but it's nice to know
I can live without it.

- Can you believe that I haven't driven a car or ridden a bike in 60 days?

Favorite Countries (I'm referring to the country itself, not
necessarily the people:
1. Ecuador
2. Colombia
3. Costa Rica
4. Arequipa, Peru
5. Chile
6. Guatemala
7. Panama
8. Honduras
9. Nicaragua
10. The rest of Peru
11. El Salvador.

Most beautiful sights.
1. The Sacred Valley in Peru
2. The mountains of Ecuador
3. The drive through Costa Rica
4. The drive leaving Guatemala
5. The McDonald's sign in Arica, Chile

I know the trip isn't over yet, but I wanted to take a moment to thank
all of you who have been following the blog and have been praying for
us and supporting this trip. It absolutely means the world to me.