Those Crazy Adams

So some nights I am a bit of an insomniac. This usually happens the night before I am going to do a big project or something that I am really excited about. Well tonight we are going to a dinner party with 8 people and I was asked to bring dessert. One of the girl's birthdays is Sunday. Also... I have been wanting to make a cake using fondant for a long time and thought I would combine the two. I found out here favorite cake was strawberry with fruit inside. Soo...

Yes....it is 2:21 AM! I couldn't sleep! I was too excited for the project! And once I started there was no stopping me. I hate to leave stuff half done.

The strawberry cake. One layer of lemon cream frosting, then strawberries, then crushed pineapple, then another layer of strawberries (I had just started that one).

Then on goes the top.

Then I frosted it with vanilla frosting.

Then...I had some fun with the fondant.

And this was the finished product. At 2 in the morning my mind is pretty creative!

A side view. I can't wait to eat it! I won't tell you how long it took me to clean up my kitchen after all of this was done! Let's just say that it was getting light. Embarassingly....I slept until noon on Saturday. But I slept soundly knowing my project was done and not hanging over my head.

And I still have some left!! Hmm....what will I make now! Stay tuned. You may see more on the blog soon.

We went to Peru over Chris' school spring break with 40 other students and teachers to do dental service and to be tourists. We were gone for 10 days. It was a phenomenal trip. These pictures are only a few of over 600 but I think it summarizes what we did during the trip. Peru is beautiful and together we helped over 1000 people. It was an experience of a lifetime.

Packing up. We only got one suitcase each because the other was full of dental supplies. Needless to say it was VERY hard for me!

The back of our T-Shirts. Our scrubs shared a similar emblem. We went with an amazing group of people. It was endless laughs and entertainment.

We left SFO late at night so we took pictures at the San Salvador airport during our layover.

Getting on the bus in Lima. It was HOT! Look! It's a Mercedes!

Ready to roll!

Our tour guide Raffaele Beltram.

One of the LDS churches in Lima.

Our first night in Lima. We went to this resturant at the Larcomar plaza a few blocks from our hotel which is like the Beverly Hills area of Lima. It's not as nice though.

While we were waiting for our food we took a stroll. The resturant was on this beautiful cliff right on the beach.

Chris was so happy to be back in Peru. He was like a little kid. He served his mission there.

The first part of the group. Half of us flew out the first day and the other half came the next.

Inca Cola. Or as I like to call it liquid bubblegum. We love it!!

Hmm....Lomo Saltado, Pollo Saltado, and Papa La Hucaina. Our Peruvian favorites!

We went for gelato after dinner. Chris was SO HAPPY!

On the bus from the airport terminal to our plane to Cusco. It was 3am.

The lobby of our hotel in Cusco. We had to spend the first day mostly relaxing and chilling out trying to get acclimated to the 12,000ft altitude.

Yeah...we look tired!

The Jesuit cathedral in the main plaza in Cusco.

This fountain in the Plaza de Armas spit on you every now and then. LOL.

The Catholic Cathedral. We couldn't take pictures inside. It was HUGE and very beautiful inside.

The poor make their children beg on the streets because they know that their children would get more money. It worked on us! However, because it works, you see 5 year old kids out on the streets as late as midnight begging . It was SO SAD. I had a really hard time with it!

A Quechua woman

The babies were attached to their mother's back by a blanket tied in this interesting way. I never figured it out.

The children were selling flowers for the processional for Good Friday later that day. You throw them on the coffin of the deceased Christ as he is carried by.

At the market that day there were some people performing some dances from the Incas.

Inside the market. Look at the chicken out in the open with flies flying all around. Yuck!

And beef sometimes still bleeding. Enough to make you vegetarian in Peru right?

The grains were just out in bags to be scooped. Our friend Dave bought some. Sorry the lighting made this picture so weird.

The dogs were in the market licking up the juices from the meat. The smell was pretty bad. Cusco and pretty much anywhere in Peru has a lot of stray dogs everywhere.

Yes those are cow heads laying out to be sold. I wonder what you do with those...

Waiting on the street for the Good Friday processional.

The altar boys.

Here comes the coffin of Christ. They stopped occasionally burning incense and offering prayers.

The coffin.

More prayers.

Chris and I both threw flowers on the coffin. Chris got in trouble for smiling. This was a solemn procession. The Peruvians take it very seriously.

The Inca walls in the city.

The famous 12 angle stone representing the 12 great Incas.

The temple of the Sun or Curicancha.

This place was fascinating. They talked about how the Incas believed in three levels of eternity and spirituality. Then they had this small pool of water randomly in the garden at the bottom of the temple. They made a fountain out of it but isn't that strange? Look familiar?

On the right the Inca wall. On the left the Spanish version of it after they destroyed most of the temple and built their church on its solid foundation. Much of the Inca part still remains but it is mixed with lots of Spanish.

A shot of some of the group. I'm in the pink wearing my new Inca Cola shirt. Chris is hiding next to me.

Inside the courtyard of the temple.

An Inca doorway.

The temple had beautiful views of the mountains in the distance.

An Inca toilet. They had indoor plumbing.

and a urinal

The one Inca imperfection. A small piece of stone that was reattached after it broke off. It is seen as a good luck emblem and people touch it.

So...not to be left out...

we each touched it.

This shows the symmetry of the building. The windows all line up to show outside.

Next stop...Saxawaman. Yes it sounds like sexy woman. It was up high in the mountains overlooking Cusco.

The stones were huge.

Another group shot with about half of the group.

More Llamas

Another ruin. I forgot the name but it just looked like a big pile of rocks until we got close. Sorry this picture is so blurry it was taken from inside the tourbus.

Our tour guide explaining to the group that this area was where they took the Inca and mummified him. It was considered a very sacred place.

The rock hallways.

This hallway is in the form of a Llama head which was another sacred symbol.

Speaking of Llamas. Just chilling out with the Al Paca.

The first dental day. This day our group worked with some children at an orphanage. I was responsible for OHI (Oral Hygiene Instruction) all in Spanish. I learned to speak it in high school and remembered a lot of it, especially when I could only speak Spanish. I also assisted Chris in some things. I had a great time with the kids.

The kids were so cute! Unfortunately they were very sick. About 12 of them had fevers and colds. And yes....it came home with me as a souvenir. I got a very nasty cold.

They were so excited to get toothbrushes and small prizes. The crayons were the first to go.

Chris working on one of the kids.

I was trying to get a shot of the two of us and failing miserably.

I tried to get some pictures of us working together. I let the kids wear my sunglasses because they always complained about the light in their eyes.

The dentist who let us use his office. The group of 40 people were spread throughout the city of Cusco and there were just three of us at this office.

Off to Macchu Picchu. We stopped at a lookout point as a break for the two hour bus ride and saw these super cute Quechua kids. The parrot was very fiesty and bit some of the people in our group when they got pictures.

The corn in Peru has HUGE kernels. It is also starchy and tough like a potato instead of juicy. But it is very good.

Now the long train ride to Auguas Calientes (about 2 hours) at the base of Macchu Pichu then another bus up to the top of the mountains.

The mountains were so beautiful, green, and jagged. I have never seen mountains that were so straight up and down without rolling hills. This is from the bus.

More from the bus.

Getting higher. We are almost there.

And we arrive! The pictures make this place look so small. But after spending an entire day hiking around I can say that this place is HUGE. It just looks small from this view and from the size of the gigantic mountains around it. The city is really big and the terraces are huge as well.

Here we are! It was so peaceful there with the fresh air and big mountains.

This is the famous shot that everyone gets. But it only shows a small fraction of the place.

I followed this llama around and was talking to it for fun.

Well then his head shot up and he was inches away from my face. We both jumped back scared half to death. Chris snapped the shot just in time. It was really funny.

This shot should be on a postcard of Peru.

This was not a place for someone who is afraid of heights.

Welcome to the Adams house!

I thought this was a cool shot from one of the doorways.

Chris going down a huge staircase. The city also had a complex system of waterways to allow fresh water to run throughout the city. So water was running everywhere and some people were playing in it.

This was a stone pointing in every direction. It was said to emit energy. I don't know about that but lots of people swore it was vibrating.

We almost fell off this ledge. LOL. Chris was really scared can't you tell?

This picture shows how straight down it went. It was literally a mile down. I was freaking out standing here but I wanted the cool picture.

This rock is carved in the shape of the mountain behind the clouds that is almost always behind the cloud cover.

We found this cool statue in Auguascalientes while we were exploring waiting for the train ride.

The toilet paper had little puuppies on it. Interesting choice...

About 75% of us (including Chris and I unfortunately) got Montezuma's revenge. It wasn't so bad for us but for some of us it got really bad. One girl had to be hospitalized. Good thing we were traveling with a group of doctors and that antibiotics can just be bought at a drugstore down there. This is Megan getting strapped in to a wheelchair as we flew back to Lima. She was very sick. Poor thing!

Back in Lima for a city tour. We went to this famous old hotel that was built in the 20's and has been preserved in the same style.

The lobby of the hotel.

There was a cool old car in the lobby.

One of the ballrooms.

One of the beautiful cathedrals in the center of Lima.

The roof of the cathedral. It was very ornate. I loved it!

A small side chapel dedicated to the man who founded Lima and who the cathedral was named after.

The coffin.

Peace in Latin was written on the floor.

The church was FULL of these ornately carved altars.

Dave ( a friend of mine since freshman year in college and a fellow classmate of Chris') and I playing our Peruvian instruments in the park. Some people in the group dropped money at our feet.

Another dental day. This time we crammed in a taxi Peruvian style and headed out to our location. There were 10 people in our group this time. Not all in this taxi.

Our group minus one taking the picture.

This was a chair that they just put outside in this tiny courtyard and hooked up all the equipment so we could have more chairs to work with to help more people. The people in this seat were lucky because it was about 5 degrees cooler out there than inside. It was like spa dentistry outside in a garden. Only not so peaceful and relaxing.

Chris working on a deep filling on one of the patients.

Still working. He had a lot of patients and pulled 8 teeth out of just one person. The teeth we saw were horrendous! I was helping to triage patients and again doing OHI. This day was long but SO FUN! I loved talking with the patients and easing their fears. All in Spanish of course.

Some of the group.

This one is for you Joe! Guiseppe water!

The changing of the guard at the President's palace. They played all kinds of fun songs with the band.

They also had a very funny unique march.

The Peruvian flag high up on one of the hills in Lima.

The San Francisco cathedral.

The courtyard inside the cathedral.

The beautiful library inside with lots of natural light. The picture came out crazy with all the light and our wide angle lens. It doesn't do it justice. Notice the two ornate wooden spiral staircases.

And underneath the famous catacombs.

They wind all underneath the cathedral.

Yes those are all real bones. Apparently they only kept the skulls and the femurs. Weird that they lay them in patterns...It was a little creepy and smelled of an old mildewed basement.

One day there we spent the morning and afternoon at a private beach club reserved for the military officers there. They invited us. The beach was pretty. We had a lot of fun on the water slide at the pool there.

We met up with a family that Chris baptized on his mission. It was a sweet reunion. They hadn't seen eachother in 8 years! The grandson was so cute! We got this picture of him picking his nose.

We took them out to dinner for an American meal. We were ready for one at this point. So we went to Tony Roma's. It's one of the nicest resturants there. LOL.

Then we took the whole family bowling. They have never been before. There were 9 of us. We of course held our tradition of having bowling names. Chris was Poderoso which means powerful one in Spanish and I was Sacsaywaman after the ruins.

I taught Lao how to bowl. It was so cute. We had the bumpers up because no one had ever bowled before except us.

Pablo was really good. He had this funny skip as he went to bowl. It was really funny.

The whole group. The Besera family.

We had a great time!

Chris with his dear Pablo and Rene Besera

After bowling we took them for gelato and then had a tearful goodbye.

The very last night in Lima we had a beautiful dinner at this old resturant built at the end of a pier out in the ocean. I think it was the fanciest resturant in Peru. Their most expensive plate was about 90 soles or 30 dollars. The dollar is still strong there. It was like being on a vacation with everything seriously discounted. The resturant was beautiful.

The Rosa Nautico or Nautical Rose.

My favorite! Causa Limena. It was so good!

We sat at round tables in this octagonal room surrounded by windows. We watched the ocean the whole night.

With it being the last night in Lima we all paid in Cash Soles, Coin Soles, American dollars, and credit cards. LOL. For such a nice and classy resturant the service was atrocious! It's kindof a pet peave of mine because I was a server myself. We were at the resturant for 2 hours before we saw our drinks and longer for the food. Oh well! We enjoyed the company. We just had to remember that we were in Peru which became something we said a lot when things like that happened. And they happened a lot.

Chris and Kelly. She was an amazing mentor and so helpful. Chris was able to learn a lot from her expertise. She was really cool.

We had a 4 hour layover in San Salvador on our way back to SFO so we sat in a sports bar and had smoothies and watched final 4 basketball games.

We bought sodas on our way out to go get on our plane and were stopped at the gate. Since we had bought them in the airport after security we thought we were safe. We explained this to the guard and that even in America we could do this. SO...he took our caps. LOL. So we got on the plain with capless sodas and drank them before we took off. Just remember we were in Peru right?

The lady next to us on the plane had the cutest little puppy and I got to hold him. We got home sick and utterly exhausted but we had the time of our lives. We hope to do a dental service/ vacation every year. We really got to learn about the culture and the people.