Culinary delights (or at least experiments) include southern barbecue, "biscuits" (in England these are scones, but here they are called biscuits and eaten with chicken), grits, and banana pudding.
There were some surprises - taxis that cost approximately 10 times as much as they do in Lima, free tea and coffee on the train, and huge green open spaces and woods.
I went for "CHE" training (Community Health Evangelism) - it's a global network with people of various professions and context working in community development. The training focused on a participatory teaching method and how to get a programme started (just what I need), and I came away with hundreds of lesson plans on various topics in both Spanish and English.
It wasn't all theory - in fact pretty much all of it was practical! - here we are debating development priorities for a fictional village.
In the few days before the training I stayed in Charlotte, where SIM has its USA office - and working in the USA office was Andrea, who until recently was part of the Peru team! It was lovely to see her again, visit some places around Charlotte, go to church together. She also solved my "how do I get to CHE?" problem with her car - thanks Andrea!
I also took the train for a day in Greensboro, to meet Stefy - we had worked together in Ecuador 6 and a half years ago but she left to get married. It was brilliant to see her and meet her little daughter.
The bad news - I had been ignoring an occasional slight twinge in my left foot, but when I went out running on a frosty morning in Marion, it turned into very un-ignorable tendonitis. I took it easy the rest of the week but all the walking involved at airports on my way home (even though I asked for a wheelchair at one) did more damage. Since then I've been on and off crutches and trying to work out what my limits are. At the moment I can manage 2 flights of stairs and 2 blocks to the bus stop...
On my way back to Abancay I've been staying in Lima for a week or so, to catch Jeremy Simpkins (the leader of my network of churches in the UK) preaching in Lima, and to be at Anna's send-off as she heads to the UK for several months. One of the highlights - we went to the theatre for the "retablo" - various scenes and dances from a traditional carnival.
