We are right at the end of what statistics say is one of the hardest months of cultural adjustment (month 4). "Culture shock" can take many forms: disorientation, confusion, fear, loneliness, compulsions, depression, frustration, irritation, even disgust for the new culture. Now doesn't that make you want to move abroad?!

I think Taza has been a good addition to our family in this season. Now that she's not having seizures (!), she fills our home (room) and hearts with so much joy. Another plus is that in a week we will have our South America Mission Peru conference. It's just outside Arequipa, but we will spend a week in some form of luxury and surrounded by people of our own culture more or less. The language issue is much less important than the fact that they understand our jokes, questions, habits, etc. And don't worry, the conference center said we could bring Taza along.

I think for us the biggest indications of culture shock this month have been frustration with the food, loneliness, irritation when things don't work the way we think they should, longing for comfortable living space and good lighting, being fed up with school/homework (Tim), and mini-depressions that seem to hit at least me a few nights a week. I'm grateful that every morning is a fresh new chance at joy.

This morning in church our pastor was talking about the priviledge we have through Jesus Christ, that in Him we have access to God Himself. I am reading through the book of Leviticus right now, and the sermon gives flavor to a sometimes boring book. It reminds me that all of the sacrifices and offerings and rules are over, that our one Great Priest has taken care of it all, and that because of Him, I have the opportunity to draw near to GOD. It reminds me, too, that I've been more concerned recently with catching up on my daily Leviticus readings than with finding myself in His Presence. What a tragedy. The Bible is something special, but it's not an end in and of itself.

It hit me this morning that God is probably more interested in glorifying Himself in me than through me, that it is absolutely essential that I am delighting myself in His Presence. This faith is not a pyramid scheme. I'm here because of something real and something I myself know and experience. At the same time, it is something to share. Maybe more like a family tree, that we've come to be part of God making new creatures out of the old mess, to be witnesses of new births and new lives. We are not here to sell nonsense, but we have come to pass on to those interested the great treasure that has changed our very lives.

I've been thinking a lot recently about the cultural differences that I'm getting used to. One of the most significant is food. "Getting used to" is relative, I guess, because I still wouldn't say I have much fondness for Peruvian cuisine. Let's start with what I like.

• Every kind of fresh fruit I can imagine (minus kiwi). We drink fresh juice every morning. I think this morning it was strawberry and something. There are fruits here that I had never seen or heard of.
• Everything is fresh daily. My favorite triangular wheat bread is delivered fresh to the door in the morning so I can eat it with butter and jam (or sometimes avocado and tomato). I can feel and see the difference in my body from eating less preservatives.
• Rocoto relleno. YUM. Look for the photo below. It's Arequipa's own.
• Arroz con leche and alfajores, two of my favorite deserts. Also pictured below.
• We eat our main meal at 2ish and maybe a snack for dinner. It's a great routine. Why didn't I think of that before? If you wait until dinner to really eat, you're hungry all day and end up eating a lot more than you need. Also you go to bed with a rumbly tummy.

One of my main down sides is the ingredients. Here are some I am more tolerating than enjoying.

• Hardboiled egg seems to be the national garnish. Yuck. Egg also seems to appear in most soups.
• Lots of chicken thighs (at least 2x per week on my plate). Chicken feet and heads are used for soups.
• The potato came from Peru, and the Andes mountain region alone boasts around 3000 varieties. I think I've tried at least half of them since I got here. I did like potatoes, but sometimes potato variety does not equal food variety, and I'm getting a little tired.
• A myriad cheesy spicy sauces that aren't quite up my alley.
• More grease than I'm used to.

Take a look at some of the typical Peruvian dishes with which we are becoming familiar.

Aji de gallina: shredded chicken in spiced milk sauce
Rocoto relleno: Spicy red pepper filled with ground beef and veggie mixture (double yum)

Anticuchos: cow hearts on skewers
Ceviche: raw cod "cooked" in lemon juice with onions and spices

Cuy: fried guinea pig, sometimes including jaws, teeth, a little hair
Papa a la huacaina: potatos in cheese sauce

Lomo saltado: meat and veggies mixed with french fries
Papa rellena: Mashed potatoes formed around ground beef and veggie mixture, then fried (usually yummy)

DRINKS:

Chicha morada: Made from purple corn, kind of tastes like koolaid

Inca cola: Fizzy yellow bubblegum-flavored soda (owned by Coke)

Juice: Of all kinds. Amazing.

Pisco sour: National alcoholic drink of Peru. Has egg white in it, but it kind of tastes like a margarita to me.

DESSERTS:

Mazamorra morada: Also made from purple corn. Jelly-like texture.
Leche asada: Flan.
Arroz con leche: Rice pudding.
Alfajores: Crumbly cookies with caramel filling.

Taza and I got haircuts today (at different salons). After my horribly botched haircut last month, this time I went to our version of Carmen (high life hairdresser of Charlotte). My appointment was for 2 pm, but I didn't get into the chair until 3:15. Although it isn't anything close to what I asked for or expected, it's a "good" haircut I guess (nothing like last time). My top layer falls around my lips... eek. I'm sure glad I grew out my hair before coming here. Otherwise I'd be in real trouble at this point. I did have a moment in the chair of remembering that missions involves sacrifice, but as Tim says, if this is the worst it gets, I'll be awfully lucky.


In other news, Tim finished sewing Taza her second bed last night. Looks like we need some fresh ideas for sewing projects. Tim's is far more complex than mine and a little more posh to suit her. I've included a photo, but he says you can't see the "finer details" from it. As he finished sewing it last night, he mentioned that sometimes it's amazing he's not gay. Oh dear. The truth is that I love having an artist/mathematician husband with an eye for beauty, a passion for creating new things, and the technical/logic skills to do just about anything he puts his mind to.

Her other new nickname is "La Gordita," the little fatty. She has been frenetically eating her food since we switched to Pedigree Junior canned food. I'm glad she is growing, but I'm not loving her gas.

In her defense, I must say that a lot of this size is her hair growing out. I can still more or less touch my thumb and middle finger around her chest.

Today Tim's foot was giving him a lot of trouble and he didn't come to school. When I got home, he was pretty bummed. He didn't want to sit around in bed all night, but neither did he want to go anywhere. Sounds like time for "Dating for Dummies." For Valentine's Day, one of the things I gave him was a "pack" of 10 date options. Each card said what occasion the date would be appropriate for (Sat. morning, a late night out, etc). Tim opened a card that said "something fun to do at home on an empty night." The date was a game championship with wine and cheese. We picked up some Peruvian wine, Manchego and fancy Cheddar and came back home to play a long night of Boggle, Gin Rummy, Bananagrams, Yahtzee, Miles Bourne, and Scattergories. In the end, Tim won by a hair.

PS When I read him this blog prior to publishing it, he insisted that I change the report. "I think I conquered," he says. Hmmm.

Tim is now walking (hobbling along) without his special boot. His foot is still swollen and discolored, but he is improving every day. He has enjoyed his physical therapy to some degree and marvelled at the miraculous power of electrodes passing currents through his muscles.

Taza's still acting like a normal, happy, precious, non-epileptic puppy. Her new nickname is "La Pituca" (the snob). After all, what's more high life than a toy poodle puppy with a pink ribbon and seizures? After talking to another American vet yesterday, I decided that the parasite (worms) theory was a high possibility. People are supposed to deworm puppies before they sell them, but hey, we're in Peru. If she wasn't eating a lot and the worms were taking the few nutrients she had, hypoglycemic seizures could have resulted. This morning I took her to the vet here and they gave her medicine for worms. I now have the delightful task of examining her feces for a while. I must say that (doggie) bodily excretions have become less and less frightening over the last two weeks as I have changed the paper in Taza's "potty box" a few hundred times a day. Maybe that's something new parents can understand.

Our team in Puerto Supe is very graciously facilitating/supervising the repairs to our home there. It's nearly remodeling at this point, not to have anything fancy, but have something structurally sound. A few walls had dangerous cracks and they have now discovered that there is a leak under the floor. Our parquet (wood?) floors will be ripped up and replaced with concrete, unfortunately not the fancy stuff that's appearing in the US these days but plain polished concrete. I'm thinking warehouse. We get some color choices: red, black, green, yellow, or any combination of those. Oh dear. Looks like I need to start keeping my eyes open for area rugs.

Taza continues without seizures, much to our delight. We went to the vet this morning, and she will continue taking her medicine another week or so before she has a blood test to show if she is better. We are very hopeful but still confused about what exactly is going on.

The vet we saw today was the 4th person in that clinic that has treated her. There are no medical records and none of the other vets were there, so I had to give him all her history. He told me she must be epileptic, so then I had to explain to him why the other vets don't think so. A few months ago I would have been annoyed; today I was amused. Why would they keep medical records?

Everyone here seems to be an expert on doggie care. I am realizing now that I am far from ready to raise a child in Peru. I just don't have the patience for all the advice, especially because I disagree with a lot of it. More than one person has suggested that she is having seizures because I'm not giving her people food (milk especially). I actually would follow the culture in that regard, except that my Peruvian vets insist it's not a good idea. Today a vet happened to show up at our language school and my teacher asked him for some advice for Taza. He thinks it's parasites, which surprised me, since that didn't come up at all from my normal vet or from the one in Charlotte I called in a panic on Saturday. Someone else told me today that Taza's seizures are due to stress from me taking her places with me.

We have had a tough and dramatic few days. Shortly after lunch Friday, we caught Taza twitching and chewing the air. I thought she was playing until it happened again an hour later plus foam in her mouth. Tim and I freaked out and rushed her to the vet. They gave her a blood test, a distemper test, and kept her overnight for observation. I was a complete wreck. When we went to get her yesterday, the minute I picked her up she had (another) seizure. I handed her (twitching, foaming, and urinating) over to the vet and burst into tears watching her convulsing on the table. When she recovered, she was exhausted, filthy, and traumatized to the point that she wasn’t responding to her name and was hiding her head under anything available.

Although she has perked up since then and seems to be acting normally, the news isn’t great. Her blood test showed that she is anemic, most likely just from not eating enough, and that she has some kind of inflammation. The vet says it’s either epilepsy or head trauma from a fall. It’s looking more and more like head trauma and possible neurological damage. We are waiting now to see if it cures itself or not. If not, there’s not really any hope. For now she had a cortisone shot and is on some kind of doggie anti-seizure medicine. We’ll be back at the vet tomorrow morning.

I never dreamed I would spend so much heart and time praying for a puppy. In the last two weeks, she has become part of our family. Please join us in praying for her recovery. In the meantime, we’re pampering her as much as possible (although still trying not to give in to whining). Here’s the bed I sewed for her with the sewing machine Tim gave me this week.

Last night Miriam and some other ladies from my church here in Arequipa were sitting around discussing their plans to visit all the women of the church in the next two months. They go in 2s (like the disciples, they said) and drop in on people in the mornings. They stay for 1/2 hour to 1 hour usually, see how things are going for the person, and pray for her. Miriam says it has made an incredible difference in the church. I can imagine that if I were down and out (or just fine, for that matter), I would be touched and honored by a visit. It connects the women in the church to one another, fosters community, starts a chain of expressing love that I expect continues past that visit, gives people a chance to share about their lives. "Going visiting" goes beyond the after-church-coffee talk.

Why is it that visiting one another seems unattainable in the United States? Are we really so busy that we can't give a little time to one another? And wouldn't God be honored by the offering of our time? Could it be possible? Could we make it possible? Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another-- and all the more as you see the Day approaching. Hebrews 10:24-25

PS Cultural note: Miriam told me that they absolutely never announce their visit. If they were to call ahead, the hostess would be "required" to clean up the house and prepare something for them to eat.

What a day! At 4 pm I (Hannah) tried to go to an Al-Anon meeting listed on a pamphlet I picked up in the Al-Anon office in Lima. It was supposed to be Quinta Romana #105, but I couldn't find it. There were no numbers between 104 and 108. At 5 I tried to go to another meeting, but found out from someone in the office building that the meeting ended nearly 2 years ago. Hmmmm. I think I'd better call the office and ask for a contact person. Anyway, at this point in our Peruvian journey, I was neither surprised nor frustrated.

Tim had an appointment at 7 pm at a sports clinic in town for a second opinion on his cast. They agreed with him that it was unnecessary and potentially harmful and rented him a boot to wear instead. As I write, he is in the middle of cutting off his plaster cast with wire cutters. Visit to the specialist: $17. Renting the boot: $5/day. He will also start physical therapy tomorrow, which they say will have him recovered in 10-12 days. Wow! Physical therapy: $5/hour. Again, neither of us are all that surprised by the fact that his first doctor gave him a cast for his sprained ankle, even though we have heard again and again from others that that kind of treatment is antiquated.

To celebrate we went downtown for a drink. The chalkboard outside Istanbul, a fun Turkish sandwich shop and bar, said they had Happy Hour specials- 2 drinks for 10 soles ($3). It sounded good until they brought me two mojitos and Tim two cuba libres (along with some tasty falafel). As it turned out, I think they were all about 1/2 strength, so it wasn't a big deal. Nonetheless, a surprise. Ah, Peru! Land of surprises!

I would like to take a moment to praise Randall Dean Fink. He begged me to be permitted to go through my mail while we were overseas and although I was excited to have such a willing secretary, I was a bit nervous. After all not receiving/dealing with certain mail in time can lead to some disatrous situations and I'm bad enough handling it when I receive it directly.

I couldn't have been more pleased. It turns out he cares more about my mail than I do. I receive weekly emails listing the important mail I've received along with scanned documents of everything I need and best of all I don't have to sort through or open anything. I hope to use his home address for the rest of my life even if I'm living next door to him. Thanks Randy.

On a side note, please do your best to inform him on the safety and benefits of international baby travel.