Living in Peru

Well friends, Its been over a week now. I feel like adjusting to life here wasn't too difficult, but living here still brings a feeling of surreal. I'll walk around Piura and still have reality checks that I'm in South America. Its a strange feeling. But I'm loving it. Learning to live and experience a new culture is really fun.

So far, I've really enjoyed our projects. Most of them are outside of the city in rural areas, those are my favorite places to visit. Monday's I've go to the school here for Special Education kids. Its basically babysitting but I enjoy it because I get to play outside with the kids for a few hours. All they really need is some TLC and I enjoy spending time holding hands and playing with them. Some of the kids love causing trouble, but mostly they are all really sweet. I enjoy them.

Last week we did a lot of painting. We painted a preschool way out in the dessert. Going out there is when I first really saw how poor these people are. Everyone lives in shacks in the dessert, they travel by donkey and carry their water each morning from a source a few miles away. There is a strange beauty about the life they live. They all seem happy and grateful for what they have. I suppose they know nothing else, but it was humbling to spend a few days with them.  And the children are adorable! A few of them helped us paint. They love us and we love them. They'll crawl into our laps, take pictures on our phones and tell us stories for hours. I can't ever understand them... but they're adorable. I love the children here. A lot of our group went to the private Orphanage in the city and painted a mural. I was only able to help a little bit with that project, but I love spending time with those boys! They are so funny and so cute. I love serving these children so much.

Wednesday last week I went with Rachel and Ben to a beautiful small town in the Andes Mountains called Huarmaca. I fell in love with it. I am a mountain girl at heart. Living in Piura can be hard, as its a loud city and its in the dessert... so spending two days in Huarmaca was so enjoyable. Getting there took 6 hours, and 4 of those hours are on the craziest bumpy twisty road I've ever been on. I got car sick... I ended up throwing up 5 or 6 times throughout the ride up. It was horrible. We were with Jiame, who works for the Government. So we had a Government truck and driver. Everyone was really patient with me and would stop when I needed it. I was grateful for them. Because it was the worst. Ben is an awesome country director, he was giving me water and trying to make me as comfortable as possible. Needless to say, it was a long 6 hours for everyone. But the beautiful surroundings made it a lot easier. The Andes are quite spectacular.

The purpose of our adventure was to have a meeting with the city manager about a project we're assisting with in a couple of weeks. A large group of eye doctors are coming here from Utah to give the people free eye exams. Those in our group who speak Spanish will be translators for the doctors, and those of us who don't speak it well will be checking people in and helping set up and such. I'm pretty excited, mostly because we'll be living in the mountains for a week. After the meeting, Rachel and I got to spend most of our time at the Orphanage there. They gave as a room to sleep in and fed us. And we taught English to the girls, they loved it! The facility was really nice too. They made us really good food and I didn't want to leave. The girls were so sweet. I loved sitting down to eat and talking to them, I was really grateful for Rachels ability to translate for me.

We were able to find dramamine for the ride back to Piura. Thank goodness.

The weekends here are fun! We get to go on mini vacations. This last weekend we went to Mancora. Its a little beach town about 3 hours away from Piura. It was SO beautiful. I am always amazed how inexpensive everything is here. We stayed in a nice hostel on the beach for 20 Soles, that translates to about $7 USD. I could literally walk out my door and there was the ocean. It was so relaxing and beautiful. We had a hammock, which I loved. The food was SO good and also inexpensive. It was a perfect beach day, hot and the water felt good. I drank a coconut, ate creamoladas, went horse back riding at sunset on the beach, played in the ocean... sigh* it was a little bit of paradise. A weekend well spent.

I love that I can be in the desert, the mountains and the beach all in one week. Its been wonderful.

I feel like words can't fully describe the feeling of being here. So hopefully the pictures I post make up for the rest. I really love these people, I love being able to serve them and be with these beautiful children. And although its hard that I can't speak the language, I can still get to know them and learn from them. I am so grateful for this experience.