Ayacucho... for a few hours

We left Huancapi today at 2:20pm. We are now in Ayacucho the city (as well as province). We had a quite different experience in Huancapi than Huarochiri. The village team that we were supposed to be working with left the morning after we arrived (for no good reason). Also, we got there Fri, so we couldn't do our thing at schools because it was weekend. So, Sat and Sun we pretty much just hung out with a Peruvian family that runs the Evangelical church there. The father, Antonio, is a trout farmer. We went down to his work area, which is only a few feet from a small river, and cooked ourselves some fresh trout. And by fresh, I mean the fish were hardly even dead when we fried them in oil over a small fire. I'd never had trout before, and we didn't season it at all, but I think trout is my new favorite fish. We also had some freshly-dug small potatoes and Inca Kola. It was really good. That night (Sat), we led most of their church service. We did our adult songs and 'unspoken dramas'. (And Beka, it's not as bad as I thought it would be. Some of them are even narrated, which lessens the importance of expression:) They invited us for a trout lunch on Sunday as well, but this time they were gonna cook. With no Sun morning church, we played soccer with some guys from the town on Sun morn. I almost died from the lack of oxygen. It was really fun, though. We were able to meet some older guys that weren't involved in the church. I think I almost puked after the second game, and I never puke in sports. Right after soccer, we went back down to the river to eat with the Christian family. They took 2.5 hours to cook it all, but we weren't on any time schedule, so it was okay. We went down to the river for a while and cooled off from soccer. I had been saying I wanted to take a bath in the river(no showers in our hostel), so I took a dip in the 45-50 degree mountain-water river. It literally took my breath away, but after a few mins it was okay. Much fun. We ate the amazing food and headed back to the hostel. We attended their church service that night as well. After church, we walked outside of the town to look at the stars. I have never seen so many stars, even out in the middle of nowhere in Mississippi. We could see the Milky Way rediculously well. It was a bright streak across the sky. Totally amazing. This morning we just showed up at three different schools and asked if we could do puppets and songs. All three were like "Sure, what time?". So, we did puppets and songs at: a girls school at 10am, a kindergarten school at 11am, and a boys school at 12:45pm. Full day! We got fairly tired by the end of it all, but it was fun. We had time to stick around and play with the kindergardeners after the puppets and stuff, and that was fun. Little kids are hilarious because they don't really understand the language barrier. I was able to talk to them fairly well, though. Comprehension of the Peruvians' speech has been my biggest problem, and I'm getting much better at it. This post is getting really long. We came back to Ayacucho this afternoon to stay here for the night(take hot showers, eat good food). Tomorrow, we're heading to Cusicancha, which is still in the province of Ayacucho. We'll be there for a few days, as usual. Well, I'm off to the hostel to get clean and rested. Holla, dawgs.

Judges 5:6