Pictures of coffee-making

koffiebonen aan het drogen / coffee beans are drying






bijna klaar (kleur is al gewijzigd naar bruin)/ almost ready (colour is changing into black)




de boon uit het fruit halen / to take the bean from its fruit

Balance after 4 weeks

Hidiho!

Somewhat four weeks ago I was in the air on my way to San Francisco. Incredible, but we are already four weeks further in time. Time races and the impressions have been counting. So I would like to share the first ones of Jaén, Peru.

* in a restaurant you can eat what is made that day, ordering from a menu is done in expensive diners (read: 2 euro for a meal; a cheap dinner is 0,5 euro)
* they make that menu but if you are really late to enter there is a chance it is sold out
* a quick snack in between is quite difficult, because the restaurants are closed between 11 and 4, they only eat on regular eating hours
* you can eat delicious cakes and pastery (yes Queen!!!)
* rice with almost everything
* they seem to work a lot and they don´t seem to need much sleep at the same time
* you actually have clothes with little pockets in the inside of the pants to store a cell phone or some money (they are customed to theft, that's for sure)
* just outside the village Jaén there are still communities without clean water
* wine tastes more like Martini
* the food: ceviche (raw fish in a slightly spicy sauce), humita (mais with cheese), tamales (mais, cheese and chicken), empenada. chicha morida (mais fresh drink), fried cheese, ... all good!
* sunny and sometimes rain for half an hour
* there are one-day-in-a-week-open-markets as known to Belgians but also permenant markets with a roof
* there is a herbal shop (where you can buy hallucinative cactusplants) and the guy has one blue and one brown eye (he gave me an extract of a tree as a repelant)
* I go and eat at señora´s Nora. She has a dog with no hair because it is too hot here, a skinny cat, chickens, perroquets (papegaai), little birds (parkieten)
* mototaksi´s as seen in Thailand are also here the means of transport, even for two streets (off course with theft you would think twice)
* every Sunday there is the flag ceremony (patriotism mixed with militarism)

I have a room with Lizandro and Desi, and Eva as well and Rosillo as well, so three tenants. They have three children, two sons and one daughter. The oldest son is a soldier and lives in San Ignacio, the youngest studies to become a doctor and lives in Trujillo. And there the three tenants come in handy because it is a private study. Anita is living in Jaén and just gave birth to a baby girl JeniferAnita, a little sister for Elmer. She is a bank employee and will get paid during her three months of absence.
Do you know that they did not yet have a name untill two days after the birth? And the family and friends made a list with names. In Belgium the name is a secret untill the card or telephone comes. Here they told everyone the sexe and they invented a name after the birth. Ne güzel! Isn´t this great, no pressure, no nothing.

I do start to miss some little things ;-)

Beso!