to DC!

This week I went to Puerto Chicama, about one hour and a half north of Trujillo, for an evening to enjoy some nice tranquil time at the beach to read. It was too warm to wear a jacket, but too windy to be comfortable with the shirt off, so not a perfect beach. Finished reading Catch 22, and started a few other books, one that I bought in spanish called The City and the Dogs.

We gave another little training and had about eight doubly confirmed people, with the most recent confirmation happening the very same day, but only two showed up. One of them was 20 minutes early and the other 45 mintues late. doh! The training went as well as it could go having only two people present. We taught them to seperate their personal money and their business money by assigning a fixed weekly income of what is necessary to cover their needs, and yo only pay tithing on that portion that they assigned to themselves as a personal wage. Previously they have either been paying tithing on all of their sales income or on the money that is left after paying their expenses of a sale and their families expenses.

So after all this talk of moving offices, it is finally officially happening this week. By this wednesday, the current office must be emptied. Monday and Tuesday we will be moving things in the back of a pickup truck out of the office, which is about a half hour drive away to the other side of the city. The office is in Miguel's house. Miguel's house is still being constructed and is pretty beat up in a dirty part of town. He has invited us to live at his new house with him for about 30 bucks a month, but it is far away from the city, and also very likely area to get robbed and my stuff stolen.

I will be moving my stuff to a small room in the same building. The room is full of junk and spiders ricght now, so that will also be my work for the next few days. As long as I am in this building I have access to internet, so I'll still be pretty connected. Once everything gets settled I will leave my laptop and everything that I have in my new room and take a bus ride to get to the office everyday. I like the ward and area that I am at so I would much rather commute than to move. Take care and hope everyone is well.


The view from the hostal.From my walk along the beach this morning. All these white birds are herons.

Happy Fourth!

I have had an incredible weekend here. The other intern here, Joel, and I went for a little trip this weekend. Last Thursday at about four we left to go to Chachapoyas, a city further in the mountains to the north, and arrived at 6 in the morning. We went with a tour group on Friday to go to some ruins called Kuelap. The civilization that built this fortress is pre-incan and supposedly had light skin. The fortress is about a thirty foot wall that is about a mile wide and has three tiny entrances. Pretty impressive to see in the middle of some awesome mountains.

Saturday we went with a group of Canadians to hike to the Gocta waterfall, which they say is the third tallest waterfall in the world. It was a 6 kilometer hike (4 miles?) one way, in a kind of humid mud, even though we are still pretty high in the mountains so it was somewhat difficult to breath. We swam near the bottom on the waterfall very briefly, but the water was so fresszing we could not stay long. That same nightwe rode to a different city Pedro Ruiz, and caught a bus to go to the city of Tarapoto, which is in the Amazon region.

We arrived in Tarapoto Sunday at 3 in the morning, a found a hostal to stay in until later. Once we woke up we went to a waterfall right outside of Tarapoto. The city is an amazing place a entirely different from Trujillo. Very tropical with only motorcycle tricylces to get people around. After swimming all around this waterfall, which was still cold but a lot more durable, we went back to the city and walked around exploring for a bit. We boarded a bus around 3 in the afternoon and arrived here in Trujillo just a few hours ago (about a 20 hour bus ride home). The buses are pretty nice, they recline a lot, but they play really stupid movies (early 90's action films) with the volume too high even after I ask them to turn it down, so it can be pretty terrible.

So this trip was almost cooler than going to Machu just because it was so out of the way that it was not touristy at all and we were with the locals the whole time. Not many of the roads were paved and none of the places we stayed had hot water and nothing seemed to be a trap to steal our money. Very natural and bueatiful places.
Here is the waterfall that we swam at near Tarapoto, very tropical.
That's me. I fell in.
Waterfall Gocta. Two tiers. We walked to the base at the very bottom.
A part of the wall of Kuelap with a few of the many llamas on the outside. I have many more fotos it just takes a long time to upload them. So ask me later. If you want. Or don't ask me later if you don't want to.