Day 139 25 Dec 2008

We're back from vacation with kids until the 20th when we go off to Ecuador until 4 Feb when Teri has to be back for a seminar. I'm two weeks behind on my days so here's Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, and Christmas. I suggest reading in chronological order. Teri will hopefully post something on the vacation before we go to Ecuador.

CHRISTMAS DAY

After toasting Christmas at midnight we hand over our gifts to Katia, Marco, and Lia, their five year old daughter. Marco gets a bottle of French sparkling wine, Katia gets a book, and Lia gets three books in English that Teri copied from an online source and stapled together the black and white pages that can be colored. Behind a decorated synthetic Christmas tree, already opened, is a gift for Lia from her mother and father—an electronic keyboard.

The room we’re standing in is a living/dining space, 8x20 feet, with a glossy black-tiled floor, eight original oil paintings hanging from front to back on the left wall, a couch and two chairs in the foreground, and a dining table for six set diagonal at the other end. On the right is an 8x8 anteroom with the tree and other Christmas decorations, then a bathroom, and short hall leading to a kitchen—at first, it seems a very small house. Marco leads us by the dining table and we step outside into a covered patio area, 14x16, with a rustic oval table and chairs in the center and several other captain and occasional chairs around the perimeter. There’s an open door on the other side of the patio and I can see a queen-sized bed in what looks to be an 8-feet wide bedroom—it’s a spacious house for three. We sit outside for a short time while Marco has a cigarette and Katia disappears into the kitchen.

At 1:15 we’re led inside to the cherry dining table where Marco sits at the head, Teri and I on one side, an empty seat opposite me and Lia opposite Teri, while Katia serves plates filled with food, and then joins us carrying her own plate. We continue to drink champagne from tall flutes as we feast on turkey, rice with peas, potato salad, and cold corn casserole; the food is all delicious, but only the rice with peas has any heat left in it, the turkey and potato salad are lukewarm. It seems Katia has done what Yobani does; she prepares the dishes ahead of time, serves food onto plates and refrigerates them, and then nukes each plate when it’s time to eat—in this case I think Katia hurried the nuke part.

Marco is wearing an open-necked casual shirt and trousers, he’s about 5’-9” with hair cut very short, and has a broad flat face with animated features. Katia has on a loose fitting summer dress that clings to her in the right places, shows a little cleavage, and reaches to her ankles—she is a 5’-3” dark-eyed beauty. Lia is wearing a frilly Christmas dress and she will one day be a dark-eyed beauty. Teri is wearing her form-fitting pink blouse and black pants and is quite fetching in my eyes while I have on an open-necked dress shirt and dress pants, my formal wear.

Marco mistakenly opens the bottle of sparkling wine we gave him (Teri told him it was for New Years Eve and we brought chilled white wine for tonight) but we gladly drink it with postre (dessert) which is Paneton de Teri (Paneton is traditional Peruano Christmas fruitcake) which is actually Grammy’s boiled fruitcake (Grammy is Teri’s grandmother on her mother’s side). After postre, about 2:00, we move outside to the patio where Teri proceeds to teach Lia how to play Jingle Bells on her keyboard. Lia does well, but eventually loses concentration and wants to play CDs with children’s songs in English, so she can showoff for us by singing along.

Around 3:00 Marco asks if we’d like an orange juice and vodka drink and we happily oblige as we enjoy chatting and listening to the continued fireworks bursting all around. At 3:35, a few minutes after Marco tries to put Lia to bed, but Katia has to finish the job, we say it’s time to go. When we step out onto the street for a taxi we can see and hear parties still going strong in several of the homes in their neighborhood. We’re home and in bed about 4:00 where we lie there and listen to the sounds of neighborhood parties and fireworks until we conk out.

I wobble into consciousness around 9:00 and Teri gets up soon after that while I roll over and go back to sleep until 10:30. It’s a very slow day with Teri managing a bit of school work and I spend a good part of the day lying on the bed reading Gentle Ben by Walt Morey, the story of an Alaskan Brown Bear and the boy who loves him.

Neither of us is hungry most of the day so we have fruit juice and crackers only, but by 6:00 PM we gather ourselves together on the promise of brochetas at Tribi’s. As we walk there we speculate on whether it’ll be open or not on Christmas because we are amazed at how few people there are on the street; it’s slightly eerie as we walk by the largest park of my three parks tour and it’s deserted—there are almost always young lovers on three or four of the ten benches spread around the park—tonight there’s not a soul. When we get to Av Guardia Civil there are lots of cars and people and bustling activity—noise and exhaust fumes—Peru!

We finish our brocheta and beer at Tribi’s and up drives a huge van and 12 people get out, many of them gringos and one of them a tall light-haired man whom we recognize; the sign on the side of the van says, Santicimo Sacramento. Since we’re one of two couples in the place, the only gringos, the priest (he is dressed casually, but with a clerical collar) says hello as he walks by and we tell him how much we enjoyed the service last night. It turns out he’s from Oklahoma and came to Piura 15 years ago after graduating from University of Oklahoma. He tells us his name is Father Joe and that he’s part of the local archdiocese and Teri informs me later that that means he’s not a member of a particular order like Franciscans or Jesuits. One of the gringos with him tells us that he was Joe’s roommate in college and he’s here with his family in Piura visiting his old friend. We talk about the Christmas pageant and he explains that Joe was always very demonstrative and walked his own path so he wasn’t surprised at all by the unorthodox program at the church last night. Piura IS a small town, we say to ourselves as we stroll home