When I got off the airplane this afternoon in Buenos Aires, I felt a certain degree of apprehension. I couldn´t tell you why, because I don´t quite understand it myself, but it was there. It is still lingering there, to some degree. Stacie and I have started that enevtable ¨last leg¨ to our trip. It is a time that I have been looking forwards to and dredding at the same time. Looking forward to the new cultures, differenes in language, foods, peoples and landscapes. Dreading the fact that it means that our trip is almost over. Even though we have two and a half more months, I feel like it is going to fly by and before I know it I will be taxing down the runway out of Quito headed back to the good ol´ EE. UU. (Estatos Unidos, United States). We have so many things planned for these next 2 months and I am so excited about what we are going to do.

A quick update, we are planning on spending the next two weeks or so traveling down south. Exploring the upper regions of patagonia and the lake country up in the Andes here in Argentina. Then we head over to Mendosa, the wine country, to work as WWOOFers for a few weeks at a buddest comune/monestary. So crazy. Then it is the 6 hour bus ride to Santiago where we are going to be working for one of my dad´s friends for a while with whatever they need help with. Then it is on the road again, up north and allllllll the way back to Quito to fly home. With, of course a quick stop in Lima to say goodbye to Joe and another stop in Mancora for a last relaxing time at the beach.

So, it is going to fly by!

I do want to share more stories, but there is a line up of people to use the free internet and the girl next to me has no intention of getting off, even though I´m pretty sure she has been on here for the last hour or so.... I´m always the good person. haha. But I will soon.

still alive!

I realize that it has been a long time since I have last posted and so much has happened since then. Leaving Ayacucho took us up in a whirrlewind of adventure after adventure. Marcus comming down to visit, Machu Picchu beauty, Beaches and Sand Dunes, Christmas with Joe´s host family here in Peru, Petrogliphs in the dessert with Joe at the start of his vacation, Araquipa and Canyon country with his other YAV friends and then hiking down to the 2nd deepest canyon for New years. Then back to Lima for a day and off to the Jungle, where, unfortunatly, I got sick for most of the time. But none the less, beautiful. Then it was saying goodbye to Joe for 2 more months and now stacie and I are at a beach a few hours north of Lima (Barranco) where we are waiting to fly down to Buenos Aires for the next leg of our adventure.

I have so many stories that I would like to share, but know that it will just have to happen later in person. Tomorrow I will write one of them here for you all. I didn´t bring my journal in here today.

Anyways, I am alive and doing fantastically well.

Happy new year and Love to all!

Last day

Today is our Ultima Día aqui. I have liked being here for a month. It is going to be really strange to start traveling again and just be constantly on the go all the time again. I´ve really liked having my bag unpacked and tucked under my bed and all my clothes piled in a (rather neat) pile next to the bed. Minus the cold showers, having a place to put bathroom stuff has also been nice. And, then of course, it has been wonderful getting to know a city better than the guidebook, to be able to stand infront of the Mercado Central and know which line will take me home.

--side note, a few days ago, Emily, one of the other volunteers and I were downtown a bit later in the evening, around 7:45 and trying to catch a bus home. Knowing that the busses stopped running around 8 or 8:30, I was starting to get a bit more desperate when the lines that I knew took us up the hill weren´t appearing. The rain had started too, adding to my desire to be somewhere warm and somewhere with food. So, when I heard a call out of a bus saying it was going to Vista Alegre, Carmen Alto (which, is where we have been living) I grabbed Emily and jumped on. The first few blocks were the rout known to me, but then we veared away and started climbing unknown roads. After about 10 mintues of slow uphill going, I pushed my way up to the front to ask if it was going close to the casa hogar and from the myriad of responces I got, I gathered we were close but not there yet. We ended up getting off right down the street from the casa hogar and it was perfect. I love helpful people and the ability to get around without really knowing exactly where I am. Ok, end of side note--

Tonight we are going out in the traditional volunteer fashion to get drinks at a new bar that is opening tonight by one of our peruvian friends, and then go dance the night away. I´m ignoring my throught and tired body and will go to, and will just sleep the day away on the bus to Huancayo tomorrow.

All in all it has been a wonderful month here and, despite the occasional sickness and the ever present questions of Am I doing anything worthwile? I know it has been a good thing and I am a little sad to leave!

A lot of pictures

This pictures is from a few weeks ago when stacie and I and our french friend Lila went to the town of Quinoa (yes, like the grain) and saw this giant oblisk that you can see from Ayacucho. We also got to ride horses! It is beautiful country.

We made crepes with the kids to sell in the street. It was a LOT of fun and I felt like i was perpetually in a waiting for a disaster to strike frame of mind, but it was fun and nothing too terrible happened. I think Luis, the one with the big smile on his face managed to ¨accedentally¨ let an egg ¨slip¨ on to the floor... but if that is the worst that happens, I am happy!!

This is Freddy. He is quite possibly one of my favorites. Occasionally, he has a crying fit where he will just start bawling for no reason, but most of the time he is great. He has the best laugh and also loves it when I read to him at night in my oh-so-wonderful spanish! Somehow he tollerates it. I just love sitting there with him curled up next to me before he goes to sleep. So cute!!

Remember when I said that I missed the rain? Well, lately I really don´t as much!! It has turned into spring here. Which, unlike our typical cloudy overcast every day springs, means incredibly HOT days with bursts of showers that are often so strong that the streets get incredibly flooded. I took this picture when we were piled 7 in a taxi on the way back from selling those crepes that I told you about. I think we all had doubts that the taxi was going to make it up the road!!! The streets have no real drainage, so it is really dangerous to be caught in it. And we live on a hill, so all the water just flows down the hill. It is always an adventure trying to get anywhere when it starts to rain.

This is Nilda and Maria Antoinettia, two of the lupes that I get to work with quite often. They are so cute. Maria A is so affectionate and just plain adorible. Unfortunatly, one of the past french volunteers taught her about her name sake, and now she keeps on doing this slitting motion at her neck with a huge smile on her face. I´m just glad she doens´t know what it means....

Nilda is a doll. Quite literally. She is SO small for a 5 year old. The only time she is not laughing or smiling is... well never. I was going to say when you feed her, because she always tries to spit out the food the minute you put it in her mouth, but really, she is smiling through that. She thinks it is a game. I do not, when there is food all over my clothes by the end of it!

This is the other Maria. Maria Jesus. She is pretty cute too, but can have a nasty temper. One time she bit me. I wasn´t fast enough at understanding what it was that she wanted.... oh well. She is still pretty darn adorible! She was helping me make crepes here. And by helping, I mean that we had a bowl that had a little bit of batter in it (like 2 tablespoons) and she kept on mixing it up. The lupes, especially the Marias, love to be involved in the activities that the other kids do.

This is Christopher. Cri-cri. Crrrristo. Whatever. Don´t be fooled by his cute adorible face. He is quite the hand full. Sometimes he is great, but man... when he is in a bad mood... I don´t think I´ve ever heard a kid yell, scream, cry and hit that much. I think he is a little spoiled... being the youngest of all the kids

Last but not least, look who came to visit me for the weekend! This is taken at a really beautiful spot that overlooks the whole city. You kind of just bush wack your way up to it, but once you do, you have a view of the entire place, along with the ravine right below us to the left that kindly helps to block out some of the city noises. It is the most quiet, relaxing spot I have found around here. If you can tell, Ayacucho is the sprall down to the right. It pretty much goes all through the valley to the blue mountains in the back. I think it might be about the same size as bellingham, but with around 500,000 people crammed into it. Personal space is non existant here!

Okay well that is a little snap shot of my life the last month... there are plenty more pictures, and so many awesome things that we´ve done here... but this helps a little anyways. When we get to Lima, I´ll borrow a computer so I can edit and hopefully post some more.

So much love!

A Hora...

Life here in Ayacucho is going pretty much the same every day, but not in that bad same sort of way. I am really enjoying being here. I love getting to know a community- to know when and were to catch a bus, how to navigate the maze of marcados, how to scare the peros (dogs) that rule all the streets up by where I live... it is great. And the great thing about this city, is although I know the center really well and from my house to there, there is always more to explore and more to see.
I think I have mentioned the dogs here in almost every post that I have written. Only reciently has it actually become an issue... 3 of the volunteers have been attacked by them! Not brutally, just nipped at, Casey had her pants torn and Tony had a small bite on his ankle. ....And I don´t have my rabies shots. Haha.... I remember sitting at the doctors office, reading over the list of shots, mentally calculating how much this was going to cost me and deciding that rabies shots weren´t really worth it. So much money for such a slim chance of contact. I didn´t think it would be an issue. And, don´t worry, it isn´t. The doctors and police here say that there have been no recorded rabies outbreaks here. There are just a lot of dogs!

Today I worked in the morning with the Lupes again, taking them to therapy across town with a few of the other señoritas and Papa Gil, the founder of this place. Nothing all that exciting happened at the therapy place, but I had a great conversation with Gil about life here and how this work is his life. He is a quiet, rather reserved man, but when he startes to talk about this place, he gets incredibly impassioned and you can tell that it is not just work for him- it is his life. It was wonderful to talk to him about why he is here and how he considers this his home.
It was very encouraging to me to hear all of that. One of the biggest reasons why I am down here is to see how I handle it all and if I think that living overseas is something that I can see myself doing long term. So far, I have been incredibly happy with life down here. I am finding it easy to feel at home where ever I am and am enjoying the people. I know that the culture shock will set in soon and I will wish that I was home, but for now, while I miss people and home a lot, it is more a dull ache sort of miss than anything else. I´m sure I will when Thanksgiving comes, and then Christmas.... New Years.... my birthday... but I am confident that the life that I am getting to experience here will counterballence all of that in a way that makes it possible for me to continue to thrive here. So here at the 2 month mark (in 3 days) I am happy with life and glad to be here experienceing a true peruvian life style. I know that if I can handle life here, where I have to step around pigs and dogs, where I am constantly struggling to make myself understood (and doing much better at it!) and where I know that I will forever be viewed as an outsider--a Gringa-- then I am happy and excited about the future and what it is going to bring.

Dinner, Comida, Dîner

Tonight I am making dinner for the volunteers. There are 14 of us now, which is quite a lot! Especially when you are trying (aka have to) make the dinner for under 30 soles, which is around 10 dollars. Daunting? No, not when everything is so cheep here. Tonight we are making a curry and rice dish.
We make dinner in pairs, every night 2 different people are in charge of thinking of something to make, going to the marcado, getting all the ingredients and preparing the dinner for 8 in the evening. Today I am making dinner with Lila, a girl from France. She doens´t speak much English, so we communicate in a wonderful mix of french, spanish and a few english words thrown in when I don´t know what the word would be in spanish or french. It was so much fun! At one stall, we were trying to buy a few onions and maybe some other vegetables (legumes) and trying to communicate what we wanted with the Señora at the stand. Trying to explan what curry is to someone who has no idea what that means in a language that is not your own with someone else who is comming at it from another angle is a fun and incredibly hillarious task. I am glad the Señora had a good sense of humor about it all.
At the mercado chicken comes freshly plucked for you. Often, there are whole ones hanging by their feet from the front of the stall. The man we bought our chicken from had some cut up into pieces, luckly for us! I didn´t want to deal with a whole one. Indeed, dealing with parts of one was enough to turn my stomach a little bit and make me wish I was a vegetarian!! We asked for white meat, so he brought out his butcher knife and Wam! Crack! there was a brest of a chicken for us. He only had one chicken that was partially disabled like that so the other two we bought were legs. I am just glad he chopped off the feet before giving it to us. I think that would have been a little too much for me. As is, we had to take back the chicken parts, de-skin them and try to cut them into managible portions. We also decided that the neck was not a delicacy that we wanted to eat this evening. That got put in with the skin and gizzards. Lesson learned? Meat is gross.
So we shall see how this dinner turns out! I am excited and glad that I am here, learning so much and surrounded by people and things that are so foregn to me. Also, my english has gotten a LOT worse since I have been here. I find myself writing and thinking and speaking as I would speak in Spanish. No good. I guess that just means that I am being present in my time here!

Also, I got sunburned a few days ago. Every day here is around or more than 80 degrees at some point. So much sun! There is no way that it is mid november all ready!

Okay, off to cook...

El Día de los Muertos

Today is the day of the dead. I am so glad that I got to be here for it!

We took all the kids from the Casa out to a cemetary where the wife of the guy who runs this place is burried. She died from bone cancer just over a year ago. Seeing the way in which he intereacted with the kids at the site, it was easy to see how much this program means to him. At one point in the morning, all the kids gathered around the grave fence and sang songs and then one by one went in and said a little prayer or something. It was beautiful to witness.

I love the tradion of honoring the dead in this way. All around us, there were families- everyone from babies to grandparents- cleaning the graves, planting flowers, pulling out weeds, re-painting, eating, drinking and visiting with all the others families. They have much respect for the dead, but cemetaries are not a place of mourning or crying. I am sure it happens on an indivudual level, but as a whole, it is a place of community and remembering with joy. I know in the states you could never get away with sitting and eating on someones grave! But here, it is what is done. It is all about the communion with each other and with those who have died. I liked it very much.

We arived in Ayacucho yesterday and are just getting settled in. (I realize it has been a while since I have updated this.... we left Colombia, rode straight through Ecuador and into Peru. We spent 2 days in Trujillo with some friends we made and then got to spend 2 whole days with Joe in Lima! That was amazing and so fun to see where he works and his life there. ) We spent last night in the Casa de los volontarios, but we are moving to a hostel close by. The Casa is really loud (everyone else who is there is a native french speaker!! talk about confusing me!!) and our room was right off the main one with nothing more than a curtain to block the noise. Not good when people like to stay up late and I am tired! Also, the toilet was a hole in the floor and the shower was a hose in the back yard. ...Not saying I couldn´t handle it, but it will be nice to have a quiet space to retreat to after working 6 to 8 hours every day with lots of kids. I know I will need it! And for 150 soles a month, I can handle it (that is roughly 115 USD).

I will hopefully be able to post some pictures soon of where we are living, but it is in a very poor area of town. Dirt, dust and dogs all over the place. But the community is great and I am excited to begin working here. Tomorrow I start working with the Lupes- the 7 mentally retarded children who live at the Casa. They have some incredible stories, you can read them here: http://http//casahogarlosgorriones.org/english/enfants.php as well as see a bit of what we are going to be doing. Mikaela, if you read this, I know you would love it here!

Okay, well I am going to go check on Stacie now. She finally succommed to the travel sickness. I have avoided it so far, but I´m sure that it is closer than I think!
Much Love!