Home Again

Well, it's obviously been a really long time since I updated. The last time I posted, I was getting close to finishing up my service in Tambo Grande.

On Dec 7th, I headed down to Lima after having a great goodbye dinner with Meg, Juana Jacqueline, and Rachel. On the 8th, my brother was supposed to arrive at 5 AM and ended up getting in after midnight due to some flight delays. We did some last minute rearranging and still ended up arriving in Cusco on the 9th.

Cusco is up around 10,000 feet so we had two days to get adjusted to the altitude before we took off on the four day Inca Trail hike to Macchu Picchu. I was really excited about the trail, had been planning to do this since I first decided to apply for Peru, but I was really nervous too. I've gotten fitter in Peru, but I'm still not amazingly fit. It was hard, I'll definitely admit that. The second day is almost all uphill, going up for 1200 meters. I took something like 8 hours to do it, stopping every 20 meters or so to take a breath, but I made it! There were times when I really wondered, "Would it be so bad if I turned around and went back to Cusco?" Luckily, I had told everybody that I was doing this and I did not want to live with the shame. The trek was gorgeous, somehow I'd forgotten that on the way to Macchu Picchu, you'll spend the whole time in the Andes. It was a beautiful, unforgettable trip and it was a lot of fun to do it with my brother. Arriving in Macchu Picchu, we just had this amazing sense of accomplishment. There's a lot more I can tell, so if anyone wants to hear more stories, give me a call.

After Macchu Picchu, we spent a few days in Puno, near Lake Titicaca, and then a day or two in Lima. We had a good time, but both were definitely ready to get home. Of course, getting home was slightly more difficult than planned. I checked my flight info online and realized that my flight from Lima to Newark was four hours delayed and my flight to Detroit was cancelled. I spent an hour or so in limbo, making phone calls. They told me the earliest I could get into Detroit was Christmas Eve, and I was like, "Oh no, I am not spending three days in Newark." I managed to get a flight to Houston from Lima, and then a flight the next day to Chicago. I would have to spend the night in Houston, but better than nothing. After a whole lot of running around the airport, I managed to get on standby for a flight to Detroit, where I was the absolute last person called. I made it Detroit only about five hours late.

Being home has been interesting. I'm in love with modern technology, like the microwave, washer and dryer, fabric softener, wireless internet, traffic laws...all that and more. I love having my car back, I love the cold, but there are things I miss and things I can't get used to. I'm still trying to throw away my toilet paper, who knows how long it will take to get fully adjusted. I'm working on applying for jobs, getting connected at church, and more. This is likely to be my last post on this blog, but know that I would love to hear from any of you. Just leave a comment with your email and I'll be in touch. Thank you all for your support over the past year. I couldn't have done it without knowing people at home were there for me.

If you would like to see some pictures of my end of the year adventures with my brother, there are links to two facebook albums on the right.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Well, it has already passed, but it happy Thanksgiving to all! I was part of an excellent Thanksgiving celebration here in Tambo Grande, courtesy of Rachel's and my efforts, the help of her host mom, and the supplies my mother provided us when she came in October. It was a great, but truly random collection of things. We killed our own turkey (with the help of Rachel's host mom) so the turkey was most definitely from scratch and then we had Stove Top stuffing. :) Regardless, it was delicious. I was actually surprised by how much I wasn't grossed out by the turkey killing. Granted, I didn't really participate, I was there to play photographer. I guess a year of buying chickens that look like chickens in the market and eating everything from guinea pig to goat have changed my outlook more than I thought. There are pictures in my latest Facebook album, link on the right. Just be warned, there are a couple graphic turkey killing shots!

Musing

I´m pulling into the home stretch of my time in Peru, and so I´ve been reflecting a bit on the past year. Just last week, I went to Lima to have an end of the year retreat with my counterpart in Lima, Kathleen, and the director of Notre Dame Mission Voluntters, Sissy Coor, who was in from the States to visit with us. The retreat was great, as it really gave me a chance to look objectively back on this year, the good and the bad. It was especially nice to be able to share with Kathleen, since we´re both able to understand the frustrations of working in Peru and to provide some additional insights.

Since I got back, I´ve been working on going through my things and deciding what needs to come back with me, what needs to stay, and so on. As a part of this process, I took down my quote wall today. About eight months ago, I started putting up quotes that inspired me, made me think, etcetera. I´m bringing them all back to the States with me, but I wanted to get the quotes down on paper before I left. So today, I spent some time at the therapy center writing down qutoes, and this one seemed especially relevant in the midst of my end of the year review.

"Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate no on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything."
-- Thomas Merton

In looking at my year, I´ve done a lot of things, but I can´t really say there are any great results. I´ve failed in as many things as I´ve succeeded. And it´s not as though I have mountains of friends to show for it. But in all of that, I can see some personal relatioships that have developed, some students who really genuinely wanted to learn, some of the girls from miercoles cultural who made even the worst days there worth it. It´s been a year of a lot of ups and downs, but I´m so glad I came. And I´m especially excited to celebrate Thanksgiving this week! More on that later.

Election Day in Peru

It´s a few days late, but I have to throw out a happy little post about election day. I´ve been following the news online right up until election day, trying to answer questions that come my way from the Peruvians, like "Didn´t Obama win when he beat Hillary?" and "Who else is running anyway?" but on the 4th, I had to find a place with cable so I could watch the returns in real time and actually "see" what was happening -- though I could have done without CNN´s crazy hologram. What was that anyway?

I ended up in Piura, camped out in a quad room at the hostel with about 20 people, mostly Peace Corps volunteers, but some other American volunteers, some Swedes, and some Germans, all crossing their fingers and hoping for some good news. I know it wasn´t nearly so cut and dried in the States, but when you get a group of international volunteers together, most of them support Obama, so there was great celebration when the networks called the election, though none of us actually believed it until McCain made his concession speech.

Also must say I loved Obama´s speech. The expectations of him are so high that there´s no way he´ll be able to fulfill them all, and I think his speech reflected that. Regardless, I´m feeling hopeful. :)

Life, the Universe, and Everything

Wow, so I realized it´s been quite some time since I last updated my blog. Sorry folks, this blog gets only semi-regular updates. Mainly, until last week nothing really spectacular had happened, and writing a daily "I went and did the same things I do every Tuesday" didn´t seem very appealing.

Anyway, my big event of the month was a visit from my mother. I went down to Lima to meet her flight, and from there we visited Arequipa, Peru´s second largest city, which is fourteen hours south of Lima by bus. It´s a beautiful city in the mountains, surrounded by volcanoes, and with a town center made almost entirely of white volcanic rock. Made for a very pretty place to visit. We also got to try lots of amazing food, including alpaca meat. Who knew the llama relatives could be so very tasty?

Mom also came to Tambo Grande, to see where I live and work. It was a trip, and I greatly enjoyed having someone around to say "See! It really is as crazy as I describe it to be." Taking Mom to the market was particularly fun. I´ve kind of gotten used to buying beef from the man who cuts it off a big leg of cow hanging at a stall, but at first glance it´s definitely a surprise. Mom´s reflection overall was , "You really don´t realize how many rules you live under until you´re in a place that doesn´t have them¨." For example, in the States a restaurant would get shut down if you had dogs coming in off the street to try to get scraps. If someone decided to start his own "radio" show by getting on a loudspeaker every morning at 6:00 AM and broadcasting his views and opinions, his neighbors would all call the cops. Here, anyone who tries to shut him down gets denounced on air.

It was hard to say goodbye, but I´m realizing that while I´ve had the end in sight for quite a while, my time in Peru really is ticking away. I´m very much looking forward to being back in the States, but I´m trying to enjoy the seven weeks or so I have before I leave Tambo Grande.

I just added a bunhc of new photos from Mom´s visit and some other highlights of the past few months. The link is to the right, "Further Adventures of a Peruvian Volunteer".

Google Maps is the Best (but not in Peru!)

"Excuse me, do you know where Sra. Maria Culckicondor lives?" my mototaxi driver and I stopped for the third time to ask a local person. "She has a disabled son, Luis Andy?" My thoughts drifted slightly, fondly recalling my job in San Diego. I used to make home visit to families there too. However, to find the families in San Diego, all I had to do was type in a complete address to Google Maps. Presto, step by step directions. In Peru, things don't exactly work that way. In towns like Tambo Grande, people usually have an address, though it can often be "Block D, Lot 7" or something like that, or a house without a number that you just have to hunt down.

Once you're out of town though, the whole system changes dramatically. In the smaller towns and caserios, the only address people give is the name of the town. Oh, I live in La Rita. It's like me saying, "Oh, I live in South Park (my San Diego neighborhood)" and expecting people to be able to find me. The crazy thing is, though it's less than an exact science, it actually works. You arrive in a caserio and stop to ask whatever group of women that are sitting outside (and there's always some group of women, doing goodness knows what) if they know this particular family. Usually, you end up making at least two or three wrong turns. Someone will tell you to take a left and head on past the water tower, and when you ask someone else, they tell you to turn around and head the other way.

Finding Andy Alvarez and his family took about seven stops for directions, including one at the local medical clinic. Andy is well known by the staff at the clinic, so we stopped there and the nurse gave us the "address" as it were for their house (obviously HIPPA is not a concern here). They live at the end of a little road off a little road on the other side of the canal, none of which have any names. If I didn't have Raul, my wonderful taxi driver and specialist in asking for and understanding directions, I never would have found them.

Scene One

Every once in a while, I get bitten by the writing bug. I get inspired to write something semi-creative. It doesn´t happen often and the results are nothign amazing, but a slice of typical Peruvian life yesterday gave me the itch to write. So here goes, a little scene from my daily life:

"Okay, suck in, lift up, please!!" And yes, the inner monologue works and the passenger side door closes. Sigh of relief. Now all I have to worry about is crushing the poor man sharing the passenger seat with me. I may have lost some weight here in Peru, but my newly "svelte" self is still not meant to share a bucket seat with another adult.

When in rural northern Peru, well, car design isn´t exactly at the forefront of people´s mind. No, at S./ 1.50 each, cramming in five passengers rather than the standard four the car was designed for means the driver makes a grand total of S./7.50 (about $3.00) for a twenty minute trip...more if he can find people who want to ride in the back of the station wagon. And so, in a car with two bucket seats in front, one person wedges himself in next to/on top of the gearshift (no automatics here!) while the other contorts herself as best as possible, halfway up on the door handle to allow a teensy bit of room.

I shudder to think what might happen if any of these colectivos were to get in an accident. Technically, the driver and front seat passenger in any car are supposed to wear seatbelts. This is obviously not enforced. Even in the nearest big city, I once rode in a taxi where there was only a shoulder strap - lap belt and buckle nowhere to be found. The driver told me, "Don´t worry, we´re in Peru!" as though the belt that might keep an errant cop from giving him a ticket would somehow protect me from a headon collision. Clearly automotive safety standards are viewed a bit differently here.

Back in my squished front seat, I finally relax as we reach Cruceta. The car stops and I´m ready to scramble out, but the door won´t open. Again, typical Peru, the passenger side door only opens from the outside. I reach out the window, grab the outer handle, and tumble out of the car. Next time I´m racing for the back seat.