Lunch

I haven't done much updating recently. Whoops.

Sunday, after church at Santa Isabel, I went to eat lunch with Manuel and Marina, a couple from the congregation. I would guess they're in their 70s. They live with their children and one grandchild about 4 blocks from the church. This was actually the third time they've had me over for lunch. Manuel and Marina's house is very simple. The floor is partly just the ground, part concrete. The "roof" is a makeshift patchwork of plastic tarps and strips of some sort of reed/bamboo woven together. The walls are primarily brick, but also include places where they seem to have been made from whatever was handy. The whole house is thus open to the air. While much of Santa Isabel's congregation are solidly middle class or even professionals, this couple is definitely not.

Sunday, I felt very blessed and honored to be eating with Manuel and Marina, as I always do whenever they invite me over. I enjoyed simply sitting at the table, talking with them, and watching birds fly down onto the floor outside the kitchen to eat and drink from the rice and water that Manuel and Marina leave for them. Meanwhile, they both worked to prepare lunch for the three of us. I would offer to help, but I know that they want me to just be there and relax. They enjoy "serving," so I should enjoy "being served."

Sunday I ate Pachamanca, which is a very traditional Peruvian dish. You could call it "Peruvian Bar-b-que." It consists of meat (on Sunday, it was chicken), two types of potatoes (one is "camote:" sweet potato) and some kind of large beans cooked all together with some sort of sauce in a whole in the ground. It's one traditional Peruvian dish that I actually really like.

My conversations with Manuel and Marina are always pretty basic. They ask me about my family and life back home in the US. They talk about different places in Peru I should visit, or different Peruvian foods I should try. On Sunday Manuel told me a story about how they used to have a dog, which even scared off two men trying to rob their house after the dog was already very old and partially paralyzed.

And then, after eating some of the best cantaloupe I've ever tasted for dessert, I left to take a siesta for the rest of the afternoon until the evening worship service, allowing them to do the same.