day 7: after a week in peru...

ahhh! so it´s been a few days in peru now and i feel like i´ve lived here for months, not just 4 days. it´s a strange feeling but at the same time, i´ve found that i´m extremely spoiled here! i´m living with a family of 3- mi mama anfitriona and 2 hermanas . the dad currently lives in españa and i had the chance to talk to him on the phone, but both of us were like... erm, i cant speak spanish... so that talk did not happen.

in any case, i will be living in a very small town close to where our training center is located for 3 months. in that time, i will have running water with hot showers available, and possible wireless internet sometime tomorrow. yea, this is very spoiled. most of the other volunteers definitely do not have hot running water and if they want to take a non freezing shower, they bucket bathe. there are internet cafes, and i know some volunteers live very close to them but HOW LUCKY AM I???? i am well aware. so i´m gonna go ahead and thank the dear baby jesus for all of this.

especially my family. i don´t want to leave theeemmm because i looovvee ttheeeemmm... en serio. they have been absolutely amazing, both in helping me with my spanish, or rather my castellano, and in making sure i know wth is going on around me. they´re just so amazing and i wonder if this is what it feels like to be the youngest with 2 older sisters, although one is younger than i am but right now, i´m definitely the baby of this family. for goodness sakes, mi mama makes me lunch and walks me to the corner every morning to make sure i get there safely to meet my other compañeros. i freakin love it.

besides feeling like i used up all my karma chips to live in such an amazing place, i´m doing pretty well. i walk with others who live near me to class every morning, which is located roughly 30 minutes away, and we learn some spanish, sometimes medical things , sometimes about peru history , and sometimes about youth development. ´

i understand that i´m going to be in my current location of buenos aires for 3 months, but i´m already getting really nervous and excited about my 2 year site. i wonder if it´ll be coastal, mountains, desert, or ...???? dunno. anywhere. i don´t know if i´m going to be the first PC to be stationed there, or simply taking over and continuing in a region that has had members before. i know nothing.

knowing nothing doesn´t bother me. the one thing that continues to irk me is my inability to speak castellano. i can undrestand it much better now and my language abilities are starting to return, but i´m def still struggling with conjugations. i mean, i´m sure things´ll be fine but until they ARE, my nerves will continue to fry at the edges.

something that i find interesting is that the PC really stresses how to be safe in Peru. We have had some instructions on keeping our things safe, which is mostly common sense but i wish there were some more instructions regarding taking cars from our cities to neighboring places. i definitely got a little lost tonight, but thankfully one of my compañeros lives next door to me and happens to now be my cousin because his host family is related to mine and he is also a super chill guy who just doesn´t freak out like i do, so that was nice. less me running around screaming BUENOS AIRES??? and more calm, rational thought.

anyway, it´s nearly 10:30, i have a cold and i need to sleep because i wake up around 6am every morning to do my workout before a shower and breakfast. by the way, i´m going to gain like 50 lbs while im in peru so don´t freak out when i get back after my time here. the food is amazing, and it´s mostly carbs and starche. also, peruvians drink soda. not water. so i might have a rather toothless grin greeting you...

i´m hoping to start running in the mornings with my other compañera but we´ll so how that turns out. i like to sleep. i´m gonna go do that now. chao.