Earthquake...

From CNN... "A magnitude-7.9 earthquake struck off the coast of central Peru on Wednesday evening, reportedly killing scores and injuring hundreds. The quake was felt for two minutes, according to Peruvian media. It was followed by several powerful aftershocks."

In Abancay, I felt my bed shaking for about a minute but I wasn't feeling totally well and thought it was just my head spinning... until I heard the news reports. So I think it's all OK here in Abancay as we're probably about 10 hours away from the epicentre but most of the damage is in the south of Peru near the coast in Ica.

Please pray for Peru, we have the news on and it doesn't sound good with over 300 killed and 1000 injured. Pray for the families who have lost loved ones, are injured or have lost their homes.

Chuquibambilla

Last week my friend Sandra invited me to visit her village... Chuqui (I found out later that it's actually called Chuquibambilla... pronounced Chookie-bam-bi-ya) - so as this year isn't just about learning Spanish but also about learning more about Peruvian culture... I thought it would be good to see more of my state of Apurimac and experience a bit of the reality of life outside of Abancay.

So on Friday afternoon, off we went. I've been on a lot of buses in Peru, but from Abancay to Chuqui was probably the worse so far - 5 hours and I was ready to chuck, only the first 20 minutes were paved and the rest... bumpy, windy and 4 hours too long.


We arrive in Chuqui, I'm feeling pretty sick and it was freezing...! It was a small town on the side of the mountain in the middle of nowhere... adobe houses, pit toilets, animals... though bigger and more developed than I had imagined.


There was a conference happening at the church, so we went along for some of activities and some of the meals. It really hit me how different life is in the villages when I found myself eating soup with interesting animal parts floating in it while some kind of animal was being chopped up at my feet. It was hard not to imagine bits of whatever animal it was flying up and ending up in my soup... while trying to avoid the intestinal looking things already in my soup.


I've always thought that I couldn't handle not having a flushing toilet and a shower... but I'm proud to say that I managed quite well for 3 days! I was quite surprised, cos at first I was like... I don't think I can do this, but now... I'm like... I could definitely do this! Probably not forever, but a week or so would be cool...

We also went hiking, and that was heaps fun. The Andes are just amazing - it doesn't look like it's that far away, but then it takes forever to climb up and down a mountain.... seriously it doesn't look that steep from across the mountain and when you get there, it's like... I could fall, get pricked by cactus and die!

Anyway, it was a great experience, enjoyed getting to know Sandra's family, didn't get sick, survived the bus ride back, it was cool! Totally outside my comfort zone and it was great to see the needs of churches outside of Abancay. Praise God for the opportunity to go to Chuqui!