"The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of many things...of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings." Oddly enough, the time has come. June 1st we're leaving Perú. The last few months we haven't written much. One of the reasons is everything looks normal to us; nothing surprises us anymore. As Matthias suggested, maybe things will look so strange when we get home that we'll have to write about it. Two years has turned strangers into friends and neighbors. Oddities are now commonplace. Arriving back from a multi zone conference in Chimbote where we said goodbye to everyone, we stepped into our Virú apartment late that night and thought, "Ah, we're home." But wait, this is not home; it only seems like it after two years. During the bus ride from Chimbote I was struck with the realization that the juxtaposition of the stark desert with the verdant irrigated mango groves, asparagus and sugar cane fields no longer catches my attention. A crowded bus with standing room only, except for the chickens that were laying.... this is our new normal. Streets crowded with vendors selling everything from necklaces to 3-course dinners seem appropriate. They squeeze in between the pedestrians, bicycles, motos, cars, vans, trucks, buses and semis that jockey for a spot on the pavement. Avenida Virú is alive. It's as if someone kicked over an ant hill. Wierdly, the scene no longer feels foreign.
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| A normal day at the market in Virú |
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| Business as usual at the dress shop |
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| Produce is getting back to normal after the floods. Check out the white asparagus. |
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| Luis sells his cebada, a drink made from toasted grain. |
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| They just filled the ATM. |
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| Susana runs the family grocery store. |
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| Meanwhile Guillermo's at home laying tile in the new room he built. |
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| Little Abril wasn't even conceived yet when we arrived. |
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| President Pioneer with his family in his print shop. |
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| Patti has two pets. |
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| President Pulido and his family hadn't yet heard the gospel when we first arrived. |
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| Our good neighbors, Erita and Refugio |
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| He has a heavy duty sewing machine for repairing shoes. He sewed bags to carry our Puertas Abiertas displays. |
