Our home is a temple, kind of

Some people say their home is a temple. Ours actually is, although it doesn’t look like it. Our apartment shares space with an evangelical church which has loud, exhuberant services on Sunday mornings and Wednesday and Friday nights.

Our apartment and the church together make up the first floor of Roberto and Christina’s house, but we rent the apartment from Manos Amigas. Our apartment used to be their office until they built a giant warehouse across the street and moved their operations there. They used the church and Sunday school room for packing, which was a nice way to constantly use the space.

The layout is such that the church has two rooms: a converted single car garage which shares a wall with our apartment, and a room with a bathroom and tables and chairs for Sunday school... which looks into our bedrooms. 

The first Sunday after we moved in to the apartment, I was surprised when I walked into our bedroom and saw Sunday School going on, several feet away.

The view from Simon's room: the bathroom

Since the garage is not used for a car but for the sanctuary, Roberto and Christina’s car is parked in what might have previously been a small garden space directly in front of our apartment, close enough that Simon and Giuseppe make faces to each other, Simon in our apartment, Giuseppe inside the car. 

Waving goodbye to Giuseppe

When there is someone at church with strong perfume or cologne, and there often is, we can smell it instantly. When they clean with bleach, we get the fumes, since there aren’t many places for those fumes to go, save our apartment.

And so it is with the noise, too: while people are praying, singing, drumming, crying, shouting, and sobbing, it’s as if they are in the kitchen with us. It is disconcerting at times; it can be downright annoying at others, such as at Simon’s bedtime on Wednesdays and Fridays while drumming and loud, off-key singing ricochet through our apartment.

Simon and I used to escape on Sunday mornings and go swimming at the municipal pool in Barranco. But now it’s winter and the pool is closed for the season. So we make up other adventures for Sunday mornings. Last week we were en route to a park and passed a Catholic church. Simon stopped, parked himself on the sidewalk, and watched the priests do complicated things up at the altar. Maybe he wants to be in church more than I do!

Our little church-goer

The best part about living in this apartment is the proximity to Giuseppe. Simon hears the lock turning for Giuseppe to go to school, and he bolts over to the door to say hi and show him a book or toy. They giggle and poke each other through the bars while Christina loads the car and unlocks the car door. Giuseppe likes to put various stuffed animals on Simon’s head, which Simon thinks is the funniest thing ever. Then he’s off to school and Simon resumes breakfast, satisfied at several minutes with his friend.

The harder parts have been no access to outdoor space (usually solved by walking to a park), internet issues (Mario likes to randomly turn off our internet at critical times), and privacy (such as during several house projects, like painting the house and refinishing the bars on the windows, which have made me feel a little claustrophobic at times).

The workers used the parking space as their work area when they chipped off all of the paint - by hand - off of all of the bars from the windows. This took about three weeks, from start to finish, and was slightly awkward for them and us the entire time.

When the house was painted, the scaffolding blocked our door for a day or so. Yannina had warned us, saying, "don't worry, you can just crawl through." Luckily every time we needed to exit or enter, the painter moved the scaffolding slightly to allow us to slip in or out.

Can you imagine painting like this?! Not only had he been painting while standing on half of a ladder, unsecured, propped up on the scaffolding, but here he is holding on to the bars on the windows while he paints around them!

While there are many, many things I will miss about living in Peru, our apartment and its attendant issues are not among them. It’s been perfect for this year, but I will love returning to our backyard and the peaceful quiet - every single day and night of the week - of our neighborhood.