March Madness

It's the time of year when we would generally be filling out brackets and trying to catch every NCAA game possible. My dad raised me on ESPN and I enjoy watching just about every sport, thanks to him. My favorite, however, has always been NCAA basketball. Tony's done a pretty good job keeping up with sports statistics through espn.com, but I'm pretty out of it and feel pretty lost looking at the teams for the brackets, etc. I've been surprised to realize how quickly significant cultural events like March Madness, the Super Bowl and the Academy Awards lose their relevance when you're not living in the culture that makes them significant.

All the buzz about basketball upsets, favorite Super Bowl commercials (the ones we saw were all for Peruvian products and cell phone companies!), and most liked films give those events a lot of their prominence in society. The people we work with think basketball is kind of a funny sport to begin with, so after explaining the concept of a March Madness bracket they think we're quite strange! We invited a group of boys over for the Super Bowl, but because we hadn't heard much about the seasons leading up to it, the Giants upset over the Patriots didn't have the same effect as it normally would have. Last month I read on a friend's blog that Girl Scouts were canvasing the neighborhoods with boxes of Samoas and Thin Mints. Together we bemoaned the fact that there are no Girl Scouts here in Peru, thought of proposing an international distribution plan to the Girl Scout leaders, but then realized that when no one else is eating Girl Scout cookies it takes away from the "season" of Samoas and the cravings pass!

But we've managed to create a bit of our own March madness lately by keeping busy with the home and church responsibilities. We took a break over the weekend and spent Saturday morning with some friends at Sabandia, a beautiful area outside of town. We rented horses for an hour long ride - quite an adventure! Here we are, posed for a picture just before Tony's horse started kicking...

Tony has pictures on this same tree from years ago with his siblings and childhood friends, so it was fun to take a picture here now that we're married and back living in Peru.

The rainy season is coming to an end here and we're looking forward to the return of consistent blue skies and warm weather in Arequipa. The rain has created deep cracks in the dirt roads out in Pachacutec where the orphanage is located. As the weather starts to clear up the community members will start to come out and work at filling the cracks and repairing the roads. So we're looking forward to what March will bring! Enjoy some Girl Scout cookies for us!