We spent the next few days getting settled in and Brad and Jenna still needed to find a place to live so a lot of the week was devoted into finding a place for them to call home.





Roky’s is one of Jake’s favorite restaurants so far, they claim to be the best chicken around.





Jake’s favorite dish is called Pollo Saltado. Its chicken tomatoes and onions over French fries with rice on the side. They absolutely love French fries here; they are served with everything and anything you could imagine. I’m still trying to figure out the rice and potato mix.



Delicious. This is my favorite meal called Tallarin. It’s a whole bunch of noodles with peppers and onions. Sometimes they serve it with spinach as well. Oh so good. These two dishes are what we eat a lot of. I’ve eaten more carbs probably in the last three weeks than I’ve eaten in a whole year! But it’s wonderful. However, Peruvian food does have its downsides. You have to stay away from any fruits or vegetables that you can’t peel and you can’t drink the water here. If you do, you won’t be a very happy camper the next day.



Most people don’t have cars here so taxis are everywhere you look! Most of the time they are pretty cheap but it starts to add up. Here we are all squished in the backseat. Jake’s holding the famous soda here. Inca Kola, it’s delicious. The bad thing about beverages here is no one really drinks water because you have to purchase it out of a bottle, so all you get is pop. And for someone that doesn’t really enjoy soda it’s been quite the adjustment.



One night Jake and Brad played soccer with some friends in the ward down here and we just chilled with these cute ninos all night. They were so cute and so excited to find we were Americans, but we couldn’t understand anything they were saying! The Spanish is coming along but its hard work. I am learning little by little and can understand and speak more every day.



Huaca de la Luna…this is the famous ruins here in Trujillo. We had an English guide teach us about the ruins. The funny thing is we couldn’t even understand her English! We would’ve been better off having the boys translate for us and her just speak in Spanish.



All of the bricks are original; they just started excavating this site about 15 years ago so it’s pretty new. This is where they believe they did the human sacrifices.



This picture was of their God. All of the faces are slightly different because they would carve everything by hand. The colors were also symbolic but I don’t really remember when they were symbolizing.




Me and Jakers at the dig site




Sorry the picture is kinda blurry but this is an empty tomb that was robbed by the grave robbers.



The lovely Brad and Jenna. You can see the layers of the temple where depicted with different paintings. There were 5 layers of the temple and each layer would consist completely of bricks to make the next level and so on.




Here is the outside of the temple and that was pretty much all of it. It was really interesting to see an ancient civilization. I always try and picture what the people were doing way back when.
And we are almost up to date. One more night to record, finally!

Bienvenidos a Peru!

Hola todos! It’s time for a much needed update and when better to do it than in Peru. How we got here is actually an ironic story…

Jake is studying International Business and it’s a requirement to do an internship outside of the US for 3 months. We had always been planning on doing the internship in Puerto Rico seeing that’s where he served his mission. On a whim last December we decided to visit Puerto Rico, mostly so I could get an idea of what it would be like for 3 months there and maybe find a place to get settled in to. We had so much fun visiting his members, playing at the beach and just hanging out together. But it was too much like the US and I was expecting a little more 3^rd world, for some odd reason I wanted to live in a very foreign country. So with a little help from Jake’s mom and a Peruvian neighbor we had an internship. Jake would be helping out at a little store that some members in Trujillo owned and in turn they would give us a place to stay and food for the 3 months. We planned on going June-Aug. But as it got closer we found out the family we were staying with would be in America for July and Aug so the plans changed to Sept-Nov. I was a little nervous on how we would pay for the whole thing but I knew it would all be taken care of. And by some miracle it was…

Jake received an email from USU about an internship in Peru…Trujillo, Peru. The same country and the exact same city we already had arrangements for. This internship would be helping small businesses start up and learn how to run it on their own. The wonderful thing about this internship is they would give us a scholarship for $3,000 dollars to go and work. Luckily Jake got the internship and the worry about finances was settled. And an added bonus about this internship was there is another couple going so I have a friend! It’s crazy how things just work out and fall into place like that. We still planned on living with the Meza family so we didn’t have to worry about finding a place to live either when we got here. Anyway, so here we are.

After an 11 hour plane ride we finally made it to our destination, well not Trujillo but Lima. A girl from our ward back in Salt Lake is from Peru and was nice enough to arrange for us to stay with her family in Lima. We got here a week before the boys had to go to work so we thought we’d spend a few days in Lima touring the city and just hanging out. Here’s a quick recap of what we did those couple of days…

This was our room in Lima. My first thought was perfect, I’m sure I’ll get through these 3 months nicely. What more could you ask for than a flat screen TV. Maybe this wasn’t as 3^rd world as I thought it would be.

Our first stop was the Lima MTC and the beautiful Lima Temple. The first picture is of the soccer field at the MTC, Peruvians love their futbol!

Those Peruvians sure do know how to party! We had so much fun the second night we were there at a birthday party. Prior to contrary belief about getting really skinny here, all Peruvians do is eat and eat and eat! The food just kept coming, we kept thinking the meal was over and they’d bring out another course. And they love cakes, and pastries, and cookies, and candy. There’s no hope for us here!

The next day we went knockoff shopping. Jake and Brad bought their Lacoste polo’s for 8 bucks, pretty darn cheap I’d say! For girl shopping there wasn’t a very wide range selection. It was almost like shopping at the little Asian stores, it all seemed pretty cheap quality to us so we just had a fun time hanging out and people watching. The streets are so crowed here! People walking everywhere and cars driving wherever they want! It’s hard to feel safe in a car when there are 3 lanes available but there are 5 lanes of cars. Just a bunch of organized chaos I guess.

The time came for us to leave our nice little abode in Lima and venture off to where we’d be living for the next 3 months of our lives. I was excited to get going and finally get settled in instead of living out of a suitcase. We took the Cruz Del Sur bus to Trujillo. It was the VIP bus so we felt pretty special. The seats reclined all the way back and that was very important seeing we’d be in the bus for 8 hours straight! We were on the top of the double-decker bus and the next time we ride I think I will be requesting the bottom. The whole time I felt like we were going to tip over!

Note…we would weave back and forth the double yellow lines and one wrong move we’d end up in the ocean. A little scary...

Here we all are still smiling after an hour…seven more to go!

Home sweet home is the house right above the red garage. When we pulled up to the house I was thinking “Are you kidding me…I thought this place was in a gated community!” However, their idea of a gated community is someone standing at the end of their street blowing a whistle all night. Oh how I missed my clean, wonderful room in Lime. It’s fine though, after a trip to the Plaza Vea (the local Wal-Martish store) and a couple hundred soles later it finally felt like home.

Luckily we have hot water, the only downside is the only hot water there is is in the shower...but I'll take it!



Our food storage, we keep everything that's open in the fridge. Jake claims if you don't you will get bugs. I'm not too sure about his logic but he's the boss.

I bought that picture of Christ at a little shop in Lima; I thought it fit nicely in the kitchen.

Our beds are two twin beds pushed together...the funny thing is we end up just sleeping on one anyway.

And there’s our home. Not as nice as the US but it’ll do. This makes me grateful for carpet! I can’t wait 'til I get home and I can just rub my feet on the carpet. I think everything is tile here because it gets so dusty and dirty! We have to sweep once a day and everyday there is a huge pile of dust, also we don’t have a dishwasher, which is a shame cause if you don’t wash your dishes right after you do them then you will get all sorts of creepy crawlers. If this trip teaches me nothing else it for sure will teach me to be clean!

There is more to the post but I am way too tired to be staying up waiting for all the pictures to post. Why does is take FOREVER? If anybody knows a good way to upload pictures let me know! Otherwise I will be working on this for quite sometime. Miss and love you all!