Peru 2014 - Part 7 Lima and the meltdown

Thursday August 21

 Today was really hard.  I had a melt down but then was also uplifted by prayer, all in the same afternoon.
 At 10:00 last night, Giancarlo called me to let me know he had been called in to work today and could not come get us at the airport, so he had arranged for a private cab to pick us  up according to our flight schedule. 
Our flight from Cuzco was running late. When the plane landed in Lima, I got a call from the taxi company, but it was noisy and I could not understand anything. Apparently, they had waited, then left because our flight was over an hour late. We finally got it worked out, the service resent someone with my name on the sign but this driver did not have the directions that G had told them for the hotel. I could not understand any Spanish at this point. I tried to call American Airlines from my Peruvian phone, and no matter how much I tried to call the English speaking number, I could not get anybody that spoke English. I was sooo frustrated. That's when the meltdown came. I cried. Mark was getting reception on his phone here, so I called from his phone. With no international plan it was an expensive call ($37), but it was in English! The cost to change our tickets would be over $1200, so we decided we could figure this town out. We will have Giancarlo with us for a couple of days this weekend to help us.

 I was really glad I had written down the name and address of our hotel in Lima before we left last time. I gave the driver the address and he made some calls and off we went. After the hour and half ride through Lima traffic, we got to the neighborhood and could not find the hotel for a while. Everything looked the same to me, and I could not remember what the building looked liked, only the name of the hotel. I was about in tears. Finally we found it and checked in for three days with the plan to possibley come home early on Monday. I was frazzled and could not understand
 Mark took the lead, looked at our location on Google, and then we went walking the neighborhood. We noticed that our hotel was next to the English school Britanico, so we took a photo in case we needed to come back by taxi. Most people know where this place is. We found Giancarlo's house and the park. We sat in the park and a group of ladies came over and invited us to church. They were just the kindness I really needed at that point. After a nice conversation in clear, slow Spanish, they gave us hugs and prayed over us. It was amazing.  I found out later the name of the park is Parque Evangelico - makes sense park of evangelists.

Now, I know not only can we do this, but we will still experience amazing every day. I think I should soak in every minute.
We went to dinner with Giancarlo and his wife and stepdaughter, Yova an Valerina. It was "chifa" which is a fusion of Chinese and Peruvian. Apparently, at the same time hundreds of thousands of Chinese were building railroads in USA, hundreds of thousands were working in the oil fields in Peru. And of course, in just about every place that needed cheap labor at the time.  There are about 1 million Chinese here in Lima, and chifa restaurants everywhere.

The food was good, even Mark enjoyed some of it. Fried wontons with sweet and sour sauce was his favorite. Really it was like much if the Chinese food at home except no buffet or breaded items. It was a nice dinner and we walked back to their house, probably about a mile. We watched a movie in English, then came back to our hotel and crashed. I am fine now, thanks to my husband, the Christian ladies in the park, God, and my friends. I am ready for more adventure. I am actually thankful for the difficulties - it makes me stronger, and more confident in the end.