Ready for adventure

These last few months have been filled with lots of travel among the members of our family. Britt, Addison, and Valerie have made separate trips to the US for work (in Britt and Valerie's cases) and pleasure. Britt has traveled nearly non-stop across the Americas for other work-related trips, too.
Now, Jeremy is preparing to go on a 2-month trip across South America - starting with Cusco and Machu Picchu, working his way to Lake Titicaca, Bolivia, and eventually down through Argentina as far as he can go.
Stay tuned. It should be quite an adventure.

Dance judge

For the past 30-plus years, Valerie's office has hosted the Olimpapas, or potato olympics. This is an in-house event that starts with a big opening ceremony, features lots of fun competitions (e.g., ranging from volleyball to fussball and running races), and finishes with a grand finale that includes a big dance competition. This year the staff was divided into 5 groups, and the theme was movie musicals.

Valerie held the honor of being one of the judges. It was a blast.

Team "Thriller" got high points for costumes and creativity

Team "Grease" had great choreography and a nice prop (the MG convertible in the background)

Team "Mama Mia" had great energy - and got extra points for integrating a potato and then a potato weevil in its routine


Team "Mask" had great dance moves and a very green star

Team "Footloose" combined great dance steps and a spirit of togetherness that was charming and contagious

Potatoes

Though Valerie works in a regular (albeit unusually large and pretty) office, with a computer and meeting rooms and such, the setting for her new job is quite different than those she's come across in the past. It involves biology labs, greenhouses, and fields and fields of potatoes, sweet potatoes, and other tuber crops.

The commute is tough, but the work campus is lovely. The office buildings are surrounded by gardens with exotic flowers, lots of birds (including a large quantity of humming birds), and sports facilities. She really likes being able to walk around the potato fields at lunch to get some fresh air - and keeps meaning to bring her running gear to really take advantage of them. Most of all, she gets a big kick out of working for a place that has wheelbarrows - and from time to time sends its staff home with freshly picked bags of potatoes and other crops.

post potato harvest shovels

There's lots of random farming stuff lined up against one of the back walls


Greeeeen acres...

Storage and out buildings

Valerie's office, the lantana bushes outside are often visited by hummingbirds

Wheelbarrow, fields, and hills of La Molina


Freshly bagged potatoes

Paper bags origami

fields and hills

more freshly bagged potatoes out in the fields

random camera shots

I thought it might be fun to pick five of the last ten photos in my camera to see what sort of story they would tell.
Since it was a fairly ordinary week with no special event or visit, the photos offer a fairly random snapshot of our life here.
photo 1. This was taken at Huaca Pucllana, a nearly 1000 year old pyramid complex in the middle of the Miraflores neighborhood of Lima. Lima is littered with these pre-Columbian mud-brick temple-pyramid places. There's one about 5 blocks from our apartment, for example. But Huaca Pucllana is one of the more interesting ones, and it has the distinct advantage of having a lovely restaurant. We went there for Sunday lunch today, because the SUN FINALLY MADE AN APPEARANCE, and we wanted to sit outside in a pretty place to celebrate.

photo 2. this is a Rear Window moment. It is part of the view from our bedroom window. It intrigues me because I can't decide whether there's a messy artist living there, or if they are rehabbing something. Probably the latter, because the buildings here are pretty upscale, with apartments staffed with maids who wouldn't generally put up with this level of disorganization.

photo 3. I took Bacchus to the beach this morning, because it's wide open and he can run off leash. He loves chasing the sea gulls.

photo 4. It was windy, and there were big ships on the water today. It leant the place a more maritime feel than usual.

photo 5. You do have to appreciate the abundance of exotic flowers here. These birds of paradise grace the garden outside my office building.