The dogs of Lima

Photos:  

*Dogs of Lima  

*Machete: We aren't sure what you'd do with a machete as part of a wheelchair repair tool kit, but were requested to find and purchase them. We can't wait to see how they are used.  "Samurai Wheelchair-Repair Guy"?   

*Other tools for wheelchair repair.   

*Inside the area broadcast   

*Mary with the traffice of Lima on Avenida Javier Prado in the background   

*Rob walking into the church building on one of two or three wet days in Lima during our 18 months of living there.   

Well, the people of Lima must take their pets very seriously. Just look at this sign outside a pet salon that we walk past on our way to the office. If I had a poodle, it would be pretty tempting to take her here. While we haven't seen any of these in real life, we did see one wearing red shoes.

Due to the "cold" winter temperatures here in Lima, we noticed right away that most of the dogs around town were wearing sweaters. The winter temperatures here can dip as low as 55 °F at night in the coldest part of the winter.

Enough about the dogs, here's a little bit about what we have been up to this week:

The wheelchair specialists who will be conducting an advanced technician's repair training in December, along with the delivery of 600 wheelchairs, have given us the assignment to put together tool kits for the 20 people who will be receiving training. First step--figuring out what in the world the Spanish words are for all the tools, glues, foams (for seat and cushion repairs), tire pumps, inner tube patches, etc. that we have to buy. Try finding a good translation for "heat resistant synthetic high viscosity lubricant" or "water resistant super glue"!  We didn't even know there was anything other than regular super glue so it has been exciting.

Second step--try and figure out where they can be purchased.  Third step--price out how much they are at various places to get the best prices possible. Coming up--the purchasing of the tools and other items, finding a shop that will make the custom tool carrying bags from the PDF and jpg files showing the bags and getting them ordered, and getting it all put together. Mary put in a lot of time doing comparison shopping and then Rob went with her to an additional store after dinner Friday night. Date night--shopping for tools.  :-)

During a video conference broadcast via the internet Sunday evening, Rob assisted in providing training in preparing for emergencies (natural disasters) for 88 stake, district, and mission presidents (church ecclesiastical leaders) in the areas of Peru where the government has declared a state of emergency ahead of the rainy season. The emergency preparation is precipitated by the coming rains (pun intended), but the preparations are necessary for volcanic activity, earthquake, civil disturbance, or any other potential emergency situation. The scoutmaster (Rob) never thought he'd be working through Emergency Preparedness merit badge topics in another language on another continent.

Thursday we were taken to Immigration and received our residency cards. This time the traffic was worse and it took us two hours to go the eight miles from home to Immigration and about 30 minutes coming back. We spent about an hour there getting fingerprinted again, taking our photo, signing some documents, and then eventually receiving our residency card.  Now we won't have to pull out our passports to use a credit card. We will also be able to use that card for in-country travel.

We are getting settled in here and are very grateful for the staff in the Area Office who arrange all of this. We simply go when and where they tell us to go. We are happy to not have to figure it out ourselves, as an American family we met at Immigration have been trying to do for more than a year in order to get residency permits. They've had to travel twice to Chile because their tourist visas expired.

Friday we met some other couples for dinner at the local mall. It is about 3 kilometers (just under 2 miles) from our house. We decided to walk it since traffic is really heavy that time of day. We mentally marked a few vehicles as we walked past them stopped in traffic and they never passed us so it was faster than taking a taxi, cheaper, and we got some exercise besides. At least that exercise bit was how Rob justified getting a tasty appetizer before dinner. We walked across our first pedestrian overpass on our way to the mall and got a photo of Mary with busy street in the background. We determined it was a good idea to walk rather than sit in a "parking lot" that is long and narrow.