Boricua en la Lima

This weekend I had signed up for another 10K , this time I signed up to do my first race with my husband.  We "trained" one time which basically meant running five miles the Sunday before.  During training we started off really fast (like (8.5 minutes per mile, fast for ME!) and I quickly realized I wasn't going to be able to keep up that pace.  So once we hit the half way point I told my husband to go back on his own so that I could run/walk.  I had no energy that day but I chalked it up to "it happens" -- some days you just don't have as much energy as others.  What I didn't realize is that night I was going to get the stomach bug from hell which would put me in bed for the next 48 hours. So to run a 10K "competitively" 3 days later was kind of a daunting thing. So as much as yesterday I wanted to run WITH my husband (not in the same race as him!) I told him at the beginning "you do your own thing I'll do mine".  While there'

I've been delaying posting this week. First I got sick with a stomach bug which left me in bed zonked out like a zombie and then there was a death of someone we know in Lima who sadly took his own life at a very young age and left behind mourning parents and grandparents. I can't imagine something more painful for a parent to go through and I still cannot wrap my head around it. It's been a very tough pill to swallow and both things have made me less than grateful for the last few days. But after hearing mass today at the funeral I heard the message of gratitude over and over again. And it just so happened to fall on Thanksgiving which is not even celebrated here in Peru. I haven't been to mass in so long but I definitely heard the message loud and clear. So today I give thanks because though it is very hard to be grateful at times I know it's the only way. I give thanks for life, health, and these beautiful munchkins.

Yesterday I did my first race as a resident of Peru!  Hadn't trained for squat because between my mom's visit and the kids' ongoing sickness I haven't had much time for exercise.  Definitely don't want my mom to leave (which she does tomorrow) but hopefully once I'm back to a "normal" routine I can fit exercise into my day a little bit better. I was scheduled to run with two of Jose's cousins, although one of the cousins we couldn't find at the start of the race so it was just Marco and me.  Marco doesn't run often but he does other types of exercises pretty much every day so he's fit (not to mention much younger than me!).  So he went in with a goal of doing 10K in 45 minutes and all I wanted to do was less than 1 hour.  Although once I started and I realized how humid it was and how out of breath I was (and out of shape!) all I wanted to do was finish.  I tried to keep up with Marco but around the 7th Km when we opened a gap betwee

With all the craziness of activity that's been going on these last few weeks (now both kids seem to be sick not to mention crap that goes wrong with Jose's grandma's house all the time), there hasn't been much time to take my mom to do tourist thing (other than what I like to call the gastronomic tour of Lima).  So today we did the express version of the "Turibus" of Lima to take her to see some of the most important sights.  Thankfully we also got lucky and got the sun to come out, although not at the catacombs which we visited!  Good thing the kids weren't there because they would've been pretty frightened.  In fact, there were kids in the tour that weren't so happy with that particular portion of the tour.  We had taken the kids to see the catacombs in Rome while we were living in Switzerland and they were already pretty scared.  While these catacombs are smaller overall (they've only dug one level deep vs. the 3 that are there below the