So the last month has kind of blown by pretty fast. I’ve spent a lot of time in my site, teaching English, and working on presentations on worm composting. The last week, I’ve been away from site helping another volunteer do some surveying. Fletcher didn’t have any experience with a theodilite, so I was more than happy to aid him in his work. One of his annexes has trouble with water pressure, so we’re doing a hydraulic analysis on the pipeline. It was fun playing surveyor for several days, what we didn’t know was that the pipeline was about 6 km long, and included some rugged terrain, so some of the stations took some creative thinking, but I thought we did a pretty good job. I guess we won’t know until all the data is gathered.
It was the first time in my service where it actually felt like a 9-5. We have about a couple more days to finish the profile, and gather the data needed for the analysis, but I’m glad my experience in engineering actually helped a bit. I’m also helping out in my colegio, teaching English to three different classes an hour and a half a day on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. The classes vary from basic English to maybe not as basic English, but I’ve learned to enjoy it. For the high school kids, I taught them two songs “Yellow Submarine” by the Beatles, and “It’s Friday, I’m in Love” by the Cure, to help out with vocabulary and pronunciation. I don’t really know if it helps any, but it breaks the monotony of listening to a teacher, and listening to music is fun.
This whole experience has been so great, and I can honestly say that I’ve made a good number of lifelong friends here in Peru, but our first group of volunteers from our region decided that it was time to take the next step, and start a family in the states. Although I did get to say goodbye to them, and sing some of our favorite tunes together, I didn’t really get to say how much I’ll miss them. My first month here at site was rough, since I was alone, and without a host family, but Amy and Preston were right there for support. They lived about 2 hours away from me, and 20 minutes from the beach, so whenever I had to get mail, buy some stuff at the market, or smell the Pacific…they were there. I can’t really say that I’m sad about them going since they are going to be future awesome padres, but they were doing great work at their site, and were people volunteers looked to for advice or needed someone to talk to. With Preston I’m going to miss basically all our conversations about the NBA, and with Amy, I’m going to miss talking about everything else, and her phone calls and messages to head to Cerro Azul. Looks like I’ll have to find some other beach buddies…
Anyway, I have a busy week ahead of me, and got a few errands done which I’ve meant to finish before I headed to the states. I finally bought a bike. It’s pretty cheap, and it’ll probably break on me within the first weeks of usage, but it’s my baby now. I can’t wait to get my helmet, and have people in my town stare at the “chino con su casco.”
It’s hard to believe that I will be in the states in two days. It’s a quick trip for 5 days to attend a wedding in Chicago. Everything is pretty much planned for me, so all I have to do is show up, look good, and be on time. Hopefully I’ll have some time to get some deep dish, see a Cubs game, and do all the things I won’t be able to do for a while (i.e. throw toilet paper in the toilet, drive a car, use a washing machine, watch an NBA playoff game, etc.)
I have to pack now, so I have to go. I think I’m going to pack all my dirty clothes and aprovechar the washing machines of my friends who live in Chicago. God I miss being home, but like I always said to my friends when I was in Hawaii, “home to me is the place wherever I’m not.” So I’ll be missing home wherever I go, whether it’s Peru, Spain, Hawaii, or Cali. I hope everyone enjoyed Mother’s day, and I’ll hopefully have some stories from the states when I update this thing in a few. Until then…cuidense y God bless!
You can see more pics at this link:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2122520&id=19510535&l=c51a9ada50
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