Champing at the bit

Yesterday (Wednesday), I went and got my credentials at the embassy. I can't say much about it because clearly some shadow ops guys would be after me. Jen will be going there in her work capacity, but also our mail comes weekly and the health center and community center will be available to us. In fact, today I took Carter simply to play frisbee on the soccer field since it's the closest to the hotel.

I was not up to much more. The culprit, ingested at this morning's breakfast, was most likely the pineapple juice or the acidic papaya. The result was nothing too horrible, nothing too scatalogical...mostly achy and tired after a stomach ache, but a brief bout of the chills was also not pleasant. It isn't Montezuma, but instead Pacha Kamaq's revenge...although a little reading tells me that he is supposedly banished to the sea now, so perhaps only bad fish can be blamed on him.

We are kind of champing at the bit right now...we haven't gotten local phones yet, I'm not allowed to drive the company car, AND I have work coming in. All in all, it means that there hasn't been a ton of cross-cultural experiences so far. I don't doubt that they are on the horizon, but for now I'm spending a lot of time in a hotel room. Colegio Roosevelt is very english oriented, which has helped Carter not feel threatened. But even that, we're eager to have him connect to spanish and Peru before he gets too habitualized to the bubble he is in.

Jen was given a nice book of essays, though, that were selected to give a broad picture of Peru. Last night I read a cool one by Hiram Bingham, who "discovered" Machu Picchu when locals led him there. Here's a link to an online version.