Kristin

The last week has gone by really fast. We start meeting people here in Chota and make some friends. On sunday we went to a small protestant church which I think we will be joining this year. It reminded me a little of the Norwegian "bedehus", but I think me and I.M. will like it there. Afterwards we started talking to a guy in a farmacy, who invited us to eat supper with he and some friends. It seemed the cook was french, and the food turned out delicious. Thank goodness we understand more and more spanish and are more able to communicate with people. But still new words pop up like commercial windows on the Internet... After 2,5 weeks we are in the process of adjusting to the new place, the market,  the huge half pigs hanging outside the slaughter, the peacocks and dogs making terrible noise constantly, and all the new and exotic animals... Last sunday we encountered a TARANTELLA in the stairs.. Inger Marie (IM) discovered the creature and started screaming, without telling me nada of what it was. I had to pass it and call our colleagues to have them come and help us. Joel showed up and thankfully he managed to kill the beast with a piece of wood. Uh- ridiculous. Hope it will never happen again in my lifetime.

Besides that the days are also filled with more comfortable things such as bunches of laughter in the office and confusions when it comes to culture. For instance, putting your pointing finger and your thumb together, while stretching the other fingers, in Norway means "perfect" or "brilliant". Well, here in Peru it turned out yesterday that it means something totally different. While working in the childrens festival yesterday, packing and loading all the stuff in the truck, IM did this "signal" a couple of times to coordinate with our coworkers. They seemed a little confused and a smile occured, but she assumed the smile was because of someting else. At the end of the day we asked them what this signal means to them. Giggling they told us it means "gay". So much for that. "Bedre lykke neste gang"...