June 7 and I was surprised to find myself still in Peru

The morning started off early with the family's rooster sounding the alarm at 5:30. Me and Alison tried to get a few more moments of precious sleep but all too soon the phone alarm went off. Since neither of us are morning people we have a set of alarms that go off: the first at 6:45 then the second at 6:50 then the first snooze at 6:53 then a third alarm at 6:55 and the a second snooze at 6:58 then a fourth alarm at 7:00 and then we finally resign ourselves to getting up. At first I thought I was back in my bed in the U.S. and it was weird that we were still in Peru, I had to remind myself that no, that wasn't a dream but something I actually did.

Our small concrete room. My bed is the one with the orange cover.

Our room is the black door on the second story balcony

The harrowing stairs! The top one is three inches higher than the rest and gets me every time.

The disconnected kitchen and small garden where the chickens and dogs live.

The patio, the kitchen is to the left and back and our room is on the right.

The gorgeous vine tree thing in the patio.

The hallway to the front part of the house.

The view from outside.

Our street.

Alison and I had to leave at 7:30 to get to our new job at a local public school teaching English. We were assigned different teachers and for the first time in three days we parted ways. I was assigned to help Professora Eleonora and she is a tall, skinny woman who welcomed me into her class right off the bat which was absolutely wonderful. I was very helpful in the class, going around and checking the kids' work and helping with pronunciation. The kids had a wide range of personalities, there were some that were clearly very smart, and some that were very social, and some who got bored easily and would make trouble. There was even a girl in my class with my Spanish name Adrianna, she had a learning disability and would hear a phrase and then repeat it loudly for ten seconds or so, and it was hard to include her into the class activities. While reviewing another kid Carlos' work he spent fifteen minutes trying to convince me that a giraffe was larger than an elephant.

The next class I did I was reunited with Alison and Alison's teacher Katia as we took on a class of almost forty first graders.

Most of the students were hypnotized by our blue eyes and Alison's blonde hair and said we looked like princesses. Most of the girls are obsessed with Disney princesses and even the boys have favorite princes. They asked if we'd been to Disneyland and said they'd like to go except it cost "millions of hundreds of dollars." The school is very underprivileged, some kids don't have notebooks or even pencils and there is no technology.

My next class I worked again with Eleonora with third graders and I got my first chance to lead an activity which was reading the instructions for a project in English, First, Next, Then, Finally, except I kept messing up the order of the words and confusing the class terribly! I felt terrible!

The third grade classroom.

In the afternoon Alison and I returned to the youth center, INABIF, after another three course lunch that filled us up to our ears. This time we helped kids with their homework and I spent most of my time helping classmates Maria and David with a survey that they had to do for math class of 20 of their classmates favorite activities. Upon reading that she had to ask other people, Maria promptly made up her own numbers, and when I pointed out that they should at least add up to 20 she simply put the number 20 next to the word students on the bar graph they were creating from the data. David couldn't have been more different, he was shy and would only ask his classmates if I went with him. However if I left Maria alone she would complain and call out for attention, or fall out of her chair so that I would come back to see if she was alright. I felt both their behaviors were a product of their hard circumstances, Maria needing attention and David used to not getting it. The poverty was also evident when I was told to be careful that the kids didn't steal the 5 cent pencils we were using.

After work Nicole, Joyce, Alison and I went to the main square and explored around, going into the main cathedral.

The impressive colonial era cathedral.

The huge space and golden center piece.

One of the incredibly ornate shrines on the sides of the cathedral.

Nicole is a Catholic and even goes to a catholic university and was explaining everything as we went through which was super interesting.

Then we had dinner on the plaza and explored the city some more.

What we found was no salsa spots, a empty karaoke bar and this empty arcade. Which was strange, stranger, and even stranger. After that we decided to go home.

June 6 We arrive in Ayacucho

The small propeller plane bumped and whirred over the Andes mountains which stuck up like knives into the sky, the sharp peaks topped with snow and glistening mountain lakes. I was reminded of the remoteness as we looked down on the dry barren landscape, we had climbed above the tree line long ago, and all that remained was hardy brown grass and cacti.

The view as we arrived in Ayacucho

Our first sight of Ayacucho! The city in the desert. The plane touched down on a dusty runway lined with cacti and crumbling concrete houses. The remoteness was even more obvious as we waited on the runway while the two or three runway workers rolled out the staircase by hand, there are flights only twice a day here (three arrive about 5:30am and three arrive at 3 or 3:30pm).

The view as we arrived in Ayacucho

When our luggage arrived we picked it up and headed out to meet our new host family. Rudy and his nephew Antonio had come to meet us. They were both extremely nice, especially since they had been waiting hours for us because they thought we were on a different flight. Rudy is an economics professor in the local university and Antonio is a student. As we drove through Ayacucho Rudy told us all about the city and the culture.

The houses here are like giant hollow bricks that have been piled on top of each other or attached together with the grace of a three year old playing Legos, all in arrays of topsy turvy structures. The streets are dusty and full of stray dogs chasing empty plastics bags or rifling though other trash. The ride home was also terrifying because of the lack of any road lines, street signs, or road rules. It's basically a free for all where every intersection is a near death experience, I've only seen two traffic lights so far.

Our home is wonderful, the front door leads into a short hallway with a few rooms and then out into the back patio which has this beautiful red vine covering one wall and a detached kitchen in the back corner. Alison and my room is on the second floor off the balcony overlooking the patio. Like the other homes ours is built out of cement blocks and our room is cement all around. We can see all of our neighbors from the balcony.

We unpacked and took a wonderful four hour nap before waking up for lunch. In Peru there is really only one meal of the day and that is lunch. Breakfast is bread and a bit of butter and marmalade, lunch is a three course affair involving soup, a platter of rice and potatoes, and usually some kind of chicken, and fruit, and then dinner is nothing more than leftover bread from breakfast. At lunch we also met the other volunteers in the house, Nicole and Joyce.

Nicole: A nineteen year old college student studying at a Catholic school in the northeast. She's smart and confident and is one of the fastest walkers I know even those she's short - and she doesn't look back.

Joyce: A seventeen year old recent high school graduate from the greater Toronto area in Canada. Even though she's only 5'8'' we've yet to meet anyone here, male or female that's taller, which goes to show how short Peruvians are. She wants to be a doctor.

In the afternoon all four volunteers took two rickshaws to a local youth center to start volunteering.

The tiny rickshaws

Lanes? Two way streets? Meh who needs them anyway.

The center is a place for children whose parents can't look after them at the present time for a variety of reasons from custody battles to work hours to having an unsafe home environment. The kids ages five to eighteen stay at the center until four and the volunteers help them learn English and do their homework. It was intimidating at first because there were so many kids and all in one big open patio but the kids are wonderful, I spent over an hour practicing English with one sixteen year old kid named Luis. He was so eager to learn and I was reminded what an advantage it is to have English here, it opens up so many opportunities, which is especially important for these kids who have been unlucky in the lottery of life. The center was severely under-resourced and it took me fifteen minutes to acquire paper and pencils, and when I finally got them I was told to watch that the kids didn't steal the pencils. The thin, wooden one cent pencils.

After work the four volunteers went for dinner in the plaza de armas, the main plaza and center of Ayacucho.

The view from the restaurant

The whole day had been a bit of a culture shock. Everything looked, sounded, smelled, and tasted different and especially for Alison who hadn't been to a third world country before. Ayacucho is a very local city and we hadn't seen but one other foreigner the entire day. It felt like the other side of the world.

June 5th finally arrived!

The morning started far, far too early. My alarm went off at 4:20 and I dragged my eyelids open to find the world dark and silent. I stumbled into the clothes I had carefully laid out the night before and grabbed the two packs I had spent a week carefully planning and packing. The day was finally here. I was leaving for a five week trip to Peru, four of which would be volunteering in Ayacucho, a remote and impoverished city, and the last week traveling the sacred valley.

The DIA stallion at dawn

Both my mum and my dad had gotten up to take me down to the airport and as we left the house we found my cat with a baby bunny rabbit in her mouth. We then spent an unexpected fifteen minutes chasing the cat chasing the bunny rabbit who had managed to free itself before I unceremoniously threw the cat into the house and slammed the door. See you in a month!

At DIA we meet up with my friend Alison who would be doing this trip with me, and we said goodbye to our parents and they left. Alison described it best by saying it felt like we were being kicked from the nest and we were going to have to learn to fly. All by ourselves we had our first scare when we miscalculated the flight time and showed up to the gate only to see the last five passengers remaining to still get on the flight! Yikes!

The journey to Peru would take over 25 hours. The first leg was Denver to Houston then a five hour layover there followed by a seven hour flight to Lima followed by another five hour layover in Lima followed by another one hour flight to Ayacucho. It was bad enough already but for unlucky Alison and I we had just run a half marathon the day before and our sore legs protested the confined position the entire way.

Before and after the half marathon

Alison even won first in our age group with a blistering time of 2:05!

Another scare happened when we got on the seven hour Lima plane assuming we would be fed dinner only to hear over the announcements that a light breakfast would be served in FIVE hours. Mortified and starving we dug around in our bags and pulled out a few granola bars, needing to eat a lot because of the run. But just as we'd given up hope a trolley trundled past with that unmistakable reheated mush scent. It turned out the announcement had been a miscommunication and we savored every bite of what we were told was chicken and rice.

In Lima airport our bags were no less than in the last five to appear out of a plane of 300 passengers and we were sure they were lost, but they arrived and just like that we were finally in Peru! And I was unceremoniously welcomed into the culture by getting yelled at by a cleaning lady in the bathroom reminding me that they don't put toilet paper in the toilet in this country. Oops.

The five hour layover in Lima was also the hardest. We arrived at 11 at night and, not being able to check in until 3 in the morning we also couldn't fall asleep on the hard floor of the public check-in wing. Instead we played card games to keep ourselves awake that slowly declined in mental capacity as we grew ever more exhausted, first it was poker, then crazy eights, then go fish, then war. By the end we were struggling to figure out which card was higher.

Yucca chips

Alison tried some fried yucca chips we found in the airport. We also had a sandwich which we think was alpaca meat because that definitely was not chicken!

We went through security and found our gate but still managed to turn a five hour layover into a close call when Alison remembered she had to buy water for her motion sickness medication last minute and we rushed onto the bus to take us to the plane.

We were expecting small but not a propeller plane! As we sat down on the tiny plane with the twenty other passengers and experienced one final 30 minute airport delay, it seemed even less truthful than at the start of the journey that we were really going to Ayacucho!

Reflection

Sunday October 25th
           So, this is the end of this blog. The end of a chapter of my life, and it's taken me a while to finish but I have now. I think Peru changed me in more ways than I can ever fully realize, but, looking back the biggest lesson I learned was just that life comes in many, many different forms and that my home state of Colorado, and my home country of the U.S.A. are just a small, small part of the great human experience. My way of living is not the only way to live, and my purpose in life is just that, my own purpose, and many people have completely different purposes. I am so incredibly grateful for my time there and every single person I met along the way, and I wouldn't change a second of it if I could, not the food poising, or getting my phone stolen, or trying Quoi, or even that horrific night in Lima airport, that is the worst night of my life. And now I look forward, to finishing High School next year and going to university, and having many, many more adventurous!

           So I know that I kind of left things on a cliffhanger, me being on a plane to Rarotonga, so if you want to keep following my adventurous as I travel to Rarotonga and New Zealand you can read all about it here.

http://kiwilandandrarotonga.blogspot.com/

Day 28 - Hell

Sunday July Twenty-sixth
    Well one day turned into the next in an unremarkable fashion and I was still sitting by the shoe shining stall, still waiting, the only difference was I was getting more and more tired. Four hours of sleep is so little! My brain was slow and my eyes couldn't focus on much for a long time. There was so much movement, energy, and noise around me but I was just there in the middle, quiet and basically lifeless. Then, incredibly, things started getting worse. Ever since my trip to the Amazon and that horrendous bout of food poisoning my bladder just hadn't quite been...right. I needed to go far more urgently and frequently, and it was getting worse. Now it had become very, very bad, and I couldn't rest for more than thirty minutes without needing to jump up and scramble to the bathroom with my two huge backpacks, which fitted into the stall like a square peg in a round hole. This situation rivaled the one in the Amazon, I was deliriously tired, mentally fatigued, physically ill, and desperately alone. It was indescribably awful.
     After about an hour of sitting near the shoe shiner and his stall, he asked if I needed help, or a phone to call someone to pick me up. It was such a randomly nice gesture that it actually managed to make me feel a little better, especially so because when he first addressed me I thought he was going to bother me somehow or ask for something as so many do in this country, but I learnt you have to treat everyone as if they're going to be like this guy, really nice!
     One o'clock finally rolled around and after what seemed like forever I tiredly went to the ticket counter. There was already a huge line that had formed in advance and I waited at the end, wondering if my bladder would hold, you spend so much of your time in airports waiting. Then a ticket agent came down asking if everyone had a boarding pass, I didn't yet so she moved me over to a different, thankfully much shorter, line. However it was incredibly slow and everyone at the front seemed to be doing something very complicated and time consuming, more so than just printing a boarding pass. I was suspicious and worried.
     When it was my turn I learnt my suspicions had been justified as I found out that they had overbooked the plane and they had no seats left. I quickly told them that I had checked in already at a machine, but they said that I hadn't. I didn't understand how that could be, but I later learnt that the machines are notoriously faulty and shouldn't be trusted. The enormity of this single sentence overwhelmed me, I had three more international connections to make, and I already had no extra time thanks to the Cuzco weather cancellation. As my heart sank into my toes I started trying to negotiate a ticket onto the next possible flight, but like the icing on the worst luck ever cake the next flight wasn't until 11:50 am, arriving a full 11 hours and 30 minutes after I was supposed to get in to Los Angeles, and nine minutes before my flight to Rarotonga left.
        I stood there having nothing left to say. My eyes welled up with tears, the lack of sleep, hunger, and bladder issue all made my feel like I would just melt into a puddle. I needed someone else, anyone, the cold plastic lady at the desk just wasn't cutting it. The awful severity of my situation was not lost on me. If I missed my Rarotonga flight not only would I have to pay $200 but I would also miss my family's connection, and have to wait a day and a half in Los Angeles for the next one. And it was all my fault! If I had just checked in online before I came, or acted on my gut instinct at the machine that something wasn't quite right! Oh how disappointed I am with myself! With no other choice I checked one bag, and took the ticket from the cold plastic lady who was so indifferent to my situation she didn't blink an eye as I began to full out sob in front of her.
       Then things got worse, because you know, why not at this point? I had already sunk so far below the lowest point I had ever been before that I was just in free fall off the edge of a cliff, I had the worst bathroom urge I had had and couldn't find a bathroom. Although eventually at the end of a maze of halls I managed to locate one, the stalls were too small for my bags, so being alone at the time I left them outside the stall and ran in, but was too late. With soaked pants I sat down and contemplated my situation, it seemed unreal, like I was in a dream, or it was happening to someone else. I was so done, just so, so done. Done caring, done feeling terrible, done travelling. And that was something I never thought I'd ever think.
       I rummaged through my bag for any other clothes but of course almost all of them were in the checked bag. It felt like I was cursed. I found some pajama shorts and a pair of pants that I got on the street back in Cuzco that gave my legs a rash. I put them both on, and threw my jeans in the trash. If only I could have thrown my whole situation away that easily.
       In utter exhaustion and misery, I walked through security and then through the empty three o'clock halls like a zombie. The cold plastic lady had given me a card that gave me access to the VIP Avianca lounge to 'make up for everything' but predictably when I got there I was told I could only use it for four hours, and I had six until my flight to San Salvador. I turned around and meandered out into the VIP lounge hall, sat down on the reflective white floor and burst into tears. The stress, exhaustion, and disappointment all coming out. I just kept thinking how no one in the world knew or cared about my situation in that moment.
       That made me realize that I was the only one that I could rely on, that I was the only one that could fix my situation. A small fire was lit and I started thinking rationally instead of emotionally, which was hard because my brain was working at about three words per minute, but I tried to think through my situation anyway.
       I decided that the first thing I had to do was to let someone know. I re-entered the lounge, started my four hours, and used a phone to call my parents. It was the middle of the night there too, but it was so so nice to hear their voices on the other end, no matter how grumpy they were at first at being woken up. Then they realized it was me and I told them what had happened. Mum was just sad for me, Dad was pretty disappointed in how I handled the whole situation. It was really nice to just download everything, it's amazing how much of the stress and sadness I was able to transfer away just by talking about it to people who really couldn't do anything from thousands of miles away. I hung up feeling like my downward spiral to hell might have just halted.
       I then decided to head to the gate of the flight I had originally booked, because as I had learnt from watching my favorite TV show, The Amazing Race, you're never 100% going to miss a flight until it leaves. I arrived just as they began boarding and kicked myself for not thinking of this sooner. I ran to the counter and asked if there was any, any way I could get on the flight. She said no, and to go away while she boarded everyone. I stepped away and watched crying (yet again), and brokenhearted as all those passengers boarded, blissfully unaware of how lucky they were! I somehow couldn't make myself leave the gate though, even though I didn't know what I was going to do, I couldn't give up! As the last of the passengers boarded I was getting desperate, and ran up to one of the passengers telling him my situation. Upon hearing my tragedy he immediately offered up his ticket, in what was one of the most selfless and nicest acts I have ever received. However I should've known those evil airport people wouldn't have any mercy, and told him he couldn't do that. Why? I shall never know, I had paid for a ticket onto that flight, they couldn't provide me one, and he was offering his. It seemed like they just wanted to be cruel to me.
       As the plane was being prepared to leave I still couldn't force myself away from the gate and the window, watching the plane, so close, yet so far. I pleaded my case again and again to the agents that arrived to help close the flight. Then one man took mercy and radioed to see if there were any seats, and merciful luck there were two free seats! My hopes skyrocketed for the second time! But then, for yet another inexplicable reason which I was never told, I was denied using one of those seats. Oh the unfairness! I had paid for a seat on that flight, there were two free seats, and yet I couldn't get on! Oh why, why why?! I watched through blurry eyes as the plane left.
       Now I was really screwed. I had three international flights ahead of me, four in the next four days, and I could do nothing but watch my last hope taxi away. The flame was extinguished, and I felt dark and empty. I went back to the exorbitant VIP lounge and sat in the comfiest chair in the world, with mahogany floors, TV's, attendants, soft music and a calming ambiance, a breakfast bar, and a small indoor garden, feeling worse than I ever had before. I was then forced to update my family on yet another failure.
        But I could not stay, there's no rest for the stranded! To another Avianca desk, to another unfeeling attendant, tears flowing from an unquenchable source. I had entered a new level of tired, a new level of frustrated, a new level of physical discomfort, a new level of disheartened.
        At one counter I met a guy that helped me communicate a little better with the agents, as I didn't know much airport lingo in Spanish. Meeting him made my situation a thousand times better, and once again I found myself unbelievably grateful to a complete stranger. He was in a sticky situation too, his ticket was a staff ticket, which he could only use if there was an empty seat on a flight, and he couldn't know that if he wasn't at the gate. He had already spent three days in and out of Lima airport waiting for an empty seat, a victim of the airport just like me.
         After we both failed at making headway in our situations at that gate we went to go get coffee. It was so nice to keep my mind off my situation that my mood improved ten fold. His name is Joseph and he is twenty-eight. He's from Ecuador, lives in DC, but spends most of his time travelling around the world as a mountain guide. He's even climbed Everest! I met a man who climbed Everest! We had coffee, played cards, and walked around the airport stores.

I will be eternally grateful to you Joseph! You turned four hours of hell into a time I actually enjoyed, which is amazing.
   

Joseph and I found these while looking around the airport stores!
     I don't know how many of you readers know about Paddington Bear, but he is an English storybook character who appeared Paddington Station in England with nothing but a suitcase with a tag that said 'Please look after this bear'. The story describes how he came from deepest darkest Peru, specifically Lima. I named my blog after this and was really, really tempted to buy a Paddington Bear from Lima, Peru even though they were $40!
      I had to spend another awful hour begging yet more heartless airport people at another desk called the Avianca Connections Counter, which is as awful as it sounds. I wanted them to move me to an earlier flight to L.A. through San Salvador that only had first class tickets, but they refused to upgrade me. I got pretty annoyed, they got annoyed back. In the end they were no help, probably because they didn't want to help, and eventually angrily told me not to come back.
     Then things got worse, Joseph left, and I was on a carousel of hell, going from counter to counter around the departure hallway pleading to be upgraded. I was done begging, but I just had to beg and beg again. Those airport people are awful. I didn't get anywhere, I was just going around in circles.
     Eight o'clock finally arrived, I had not slept in 26 hours, and only slept four hours in the last 36 hours. I was starving, my legs were almost unbearably itchy from my street-side pants, and I was incredibly worried about the fact that I wouldn't have easy access to a bathroom on the flight. I walked onto the flight like a zombie.
      The flight was over all too soon and I depressingly disembarked, dreading dealing with a whole new set of airport people. They have so much power, but so little brains, and hearts. I ran to the bathroom, and then checked the screen for the next flight to L.A. which was earlier than my current one. I started speed walking towards it as it left in under fifteen minutes, the humidity and heat aggravating the awful skin reaction my legs were having with my pants.
     I was ten feet away from the counter when all of a sudden the agent looked up and called out to me.
     "Adrianne Nicole Holland?" I was sure I was delirious and had heard him wrong,
     "How do you know my name?" I asked as I got to the desk,
     "I have your boarding pass for a flight that leaves for L.A. in ten minutes!"
     "What?" I said in disbelief, but he pushed a real boarding pass into my hands that had my name on it and was in fact for a flight that left in ten minutes. I was now very sure I was hallucinating. Slowly however as I waited in the boarding line I realized that it was true, and a wave of joy and relief washed over me that made me want to burst into tears all over again! I had a flight to catch! How, who? I didn't care I was so happy I started telling people all around me in a completely uncharacteristic way.

Everything made me incredibly happy, especially this grandma who dyed her hair purple. I don't even know why I found that so enjoyable... or why I took a picture to commemorate it...

     My beautiful plane that took me to L.A.
     This huge, ominous problem had just vanished in thin air, a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. When I got to L.A. on time I couldn't believe it, I wasn't even mad when I learned the airline had lost my checked luggage, why not! It was so funny how everything had gone wrong, it's all part of the experience right? I really got the full airport experience.
       And then it was over. I saw my mum, dad, and brother for the first time in thirty days, and it was amazing. They all looked just the same, and that was comforting, but it also made me realize how much I had changed. As my dad took my backpack from me, it was like he was taking all of my worries and anxieties as well, and I suddenly felt such a wave of comfort and peace of mind, to a degree that I've never felt before.

        Together again with my incredibly unphotogenic family! Also my brother's not just incredibly paranoid about a plane crash, his life jacket wouldn't fit in the luggage. I also found out how I had come to have a boarding pass waiting for me in San Salvador. It turned out that my mum had arrived in LA at 9am and gone straight to Avianca and begged the agents there to get me onto the earlier flight. However, she had not been able to tell me as I was flying so was also thankful to The Amazing Race for inspiring me to go and check the counter just in case.
Then we all together walked over to check in for our flight to Rarotonga. Together, one cohesive unit. And I was telling them everything about my trip in pure delight, talking so fast. And I gave them all the presents I'd bought for them. We got onto our next flight with no more trouble, and I fell deep, deep asleep, and dreamed of only good things and Peru.

     Sunset from LAX. Just like the end of the day it signified the end of my troubles.

Day 27 - But I just got settled in

Saturday July Twenty-fifth

     I awoke after only four hours of sleep which was really hard, but it was my last day here so I wanted to enjoy every minute! The first last thing I had to do was go the big cathedral in Plaza de Armas which I hadn't done yet because you can only get in for free during mass which was from seven until nine which was way to early for me! However today I dragged myself up and got there right on time which is practically a first for me. Here's a picture I found online of it

      I wasn't allowed to take pictures inside but it was spectacular, the amount of gold in that place! It was like they were trying to see how much they could possibly put on every surface. Here's another picture I found online

       This was where the priest (apologies if that's the wrong title) was giving his sermon (apologies again) and it was just a really cool experience. There were tons of people there and it was interesting to see how different everyone was, old ladies were standing next to teenage boys, whole family units and single nobodies all came to worship their shared beloved faith. Catholicism here is like a type of blood that connects this whole country and feeds it's beating heart, and there is just something awesome about that!

I then went to a nearby café to have breakfast with U.S. Caroline and two new volunteers.

Monica & Sophia: A Spanish mother, Monica, and her daughter who grew up in California where they now live. Sophia is only fourteen. They were both really nice, awesome people! I think it's something about the fact that it takes a certain kind of person to travel all the way around the world to volunteer for the underprivileged that makes us all really like each other! I've never met such an awesome group of people! Oh so much nostalgia today!

        After breakfast we decided to go horse back riding around some old Incan ruins called Saqsyhuaman just outside Cuzco. It would be a great way to start Monica & Sophia's trip and a really great way to end mine. It was so great to be around horses again, they say you can tell if someone's a horse rider if they smell horse poop and think it smells good, well I did, it's that grassy smell you know means horse riding is soon! I got a particularly sassy horse with the best name, Cappuccino, but sassy is nothing hard for me to deal with as the horse I ride back in Colorado is literally named Sassy, and boy does she live up to that. One of her favorite games to play is to run laps around the pasture when I'm trying to catch her. So rude. 

         We walked up this little steep path that wound it's way through the countryside where there was nothing but trees and the occasional rural house. It was just such a cool change to hear nothing but silence after being in the city where taxis honk to tell you they're empty, to tell you they're full, and whenever there is a car in front of them. The air was clean and fresh and I just loved it!

Me and Caroline happily on our horses!

Me and Caroline appreciating the view!

Caroline

         We got back to the house around lunch time and I was planning to go help Caroline settle into her new home stay after lunch but irrational María told me I couldn't because it wasn't my house. I don't even know what that means or why that would have anything to do with it. I was actually pretty irritated at this point though because I really wanted to spend my last afternoon with Caroline, but there was no convincing her. Ugh!

        Instead I went to get some more presents that I hadn't found yesterday from a market and Caroline was going to come after she was done settling in. However she never came as María had told us the wrong time that Caroline would be able to meet. So glad I'm leaving today, or I think our relationship would have deteriorated further. We said our goodbyes at the house even though she was going to drive me to the airport, and she said I was one of the best volunteers she's had and gave me a ceramic teapot with a bear sitting on it, and a coin purse, I gave her a card. Then we went to the airport.

      I thought getting there an hour and a half before my domestic flight was pretty conservative but when I saw the length of the check-in line I thought it might not even be enough! The line was barely moving and it started to really worry me, I saw a representative of the airline walking down towards me and I was about to ask him but before I got the chance, he adressed everyone and told us that all flights had been cancelled. He didn't even give a reason her just said no one would be going anywhere. I was in shock. I had four connecting flights, four!

      The problem was I wasn't going home, I was going to meet up with my family in L.A. and fly directly to New Zealand to visit my entire family as we always do once a year. I just couldn't even comprehend the terrible domino affects of missing this crucial first flight.

      María luckily has had some experience with dealing with airport problems, having hosted so many foreign volunteers and pushed me right up to the front of the priority line, using my status as a minor to justify it, although it was only supposed to be for star alliance members. This line was ten times shorter but just as slow.

      While I waited I started talking to a nice old couple behind me in Spanish. They had been told that the flights had been cancelled because of the sunset, the sunset? That happens every single day! It must of been an excuse for some other problem that they didn't want to tell us or something because that's ridiculous! Anyway I kept talking Spanish to them and I kind of wanted to see if I could make them believe I was Peruvian so I pretended to speak English very badly, they were originally from Minnesota. This was going great, and they even offered to try and use their star alliance card to help me out. Unfortunately then María came back and it was reviled that I was actually American and had been lying. This was especially awkward because they had just offered me the use of their card. I tried to brush it of as having been lost in translation but I'm not sure they bought it. 

       At the front of the line I had to sneakily slide over to the non-priority counter and the lady there took pity on my connecting flight situation and got me onto another flight that left about ten minutes later. So I ran like the wind, shoving aside people and suitcases (not really) cutting in line (again) at security (really) and going so fast that I forgot to take off my money belt which contained about thirty coins going through the metal detector, so I had to run back out to the end of the conveyor belt, grab a tray, threw my belt in it run to the front of the line, cut again, and put the tray on the belt and then run through the metal detector again. Meanwhile looking like a complete idiot the whole time.

     I made it on just in time, and was the third to last. The two others who were about a minute behind me, and ran on without their shoes, were the nice old couple from Minnesota. They un-awkwardly got seats right next to and in front of me which was great... Oh Karma I'm sorry for duping old people!

     The plane took off and it suddenly hit me that I was leaving Cusco! I looked down at the city I had fallen in love with and felt deeply sad, I even cried a little, and the whole time I was thinking of that John Denver song.

        "Because I'm leaving on a jet plane

         Don't know when I'll be back again

         Oh Peru, I hate to go."

      Well that's how I sang it anyway. 

      The flight I had originally planned was direct from Cusco to Lima and then I had three others, one from Lima to San Salvador, then San Salvador to L.A., and then L.A. to Rarotonga where we had a three day stop over before continuing to N.Z. However the one the Cusco flight person had booked me on was a connecting flight through Aerequipa (further south) to get to Lima (north of Cusco). So that was annoying, but at least I could sit with the old couple during my layover in Aerequipa. They told me all about their life as missionaries and all the crazy things they did!

Thanks for overlooking the whole I'm Peruvian thing Ruth and Bill!

       Then the next flight to Lima, two of the now five flights that I had to take, and I got into Lima at around 10:30 but it felt much later due to the lack of sleep from last night. Then I walked over to a check-in machine as the counters didn't open until one am and so I used the machine, I scanned my passport in and it came up with my flights and I pressed check in, I thought that that would be enough, it told me at the very end to go to a counter and I assumed that meant so that I could check any bags I needed to. Happily I went and found a little nook between a wall and a shoe counter and settled in until one am.

Day 26 - Epiphany

Friday July Twenty-fourth
     The house just felt so empty this morning. Tommy, Hunter, German Caroline and her husband, and Lara have all gone. Lara only for a short trip to visit her boyfriend, but the rest permanently. It was just me and U.S. Caroline left, although I guess I don't need to distinguish between them anymore! How sad!
     My last day at work was also sad, I made my teacher and the teacher's assistant cards and got them cupcakes, and my teacher Jacky got me a cool Peruvian pencil case and the mom of the second most troubling kid in my class got me a really nice small shoulder bag and belt which was so nice of her. She probably knew how much patience it took! I then gave the kids each either a little toy car or a hair clip. It was so sad! I'd become really attached to them all, and I loved my job, kids are a never ending source of amusement, but it was also really satisfying to watch them learn and grow! It was also the last day of school for them before winter break and so I got dressed up yet again in traditional clothing and the whole school had a fiesta where we celebrated Peru's day of independence, which isn't actually until next week, so we had traditional dances and as per usual a ton of food. I didn't eat the food though as the traditional dress was tied really, really tightly!

Me and Jacky my classroom's teacher

Nataly and Adriana in adorable mini costumes!

Marcela and Nataly in matching costumes!

     In the evening I went out to a giant Artisan's market to get gifts for everyone back home as the local school were I had been teaching English had already started their winter break. Then I walked one last time back home, through the dirty rubbish filled streets lined with tiny shops where shopkeepers would try and sell you the same stuff as the next twenty stores. I had never really thought that much about poverty during this whole trip, seeing as my Kindergarten was so privileged, but I thought about it now as I was preparing to return to a first world country.
     So much of so many people's lives here is centered around survival. They have to constantly worry about where that next sol is coming from to pay for that next meal to give them energy for their next job to get that next sol for that next meal and so on and so on! It must seem like money is the most important thing in life.
     But the lack of money is not the most amazing thing I've seen here, it's how poverty brings people together, and how strong the communities are around here. How everyone looks out for everyone else. This kind of community centered society is exemplified in how they kiss each others cheeks when they greet, and are so warm and friendly to complete strangers like me! It's easy to think I'm better off than they are because I have an easier lifestyle, but I'm not sure that's necessarily true. In the U.S. as I'm sure it's true in other first world countries, since we have everything we could want and a seemingly infinite amount of time, we forget how important the simple things in life are and instead our lives are centered around the competitive need to be the most successful or the wealthiest. I've never really had any struggles or life changing experiences that put everything into perspective that are so common here, and because of that I don't think I know as well as people here what the value of life is, and I don't think I appreciate as much what's around us and what we have. It's a bit sad to think actually that the more you have the less you value it.

A picture from my pensive walk home.

       Me and Caroline talked a little more about María and we think that she just gets really really emotionally invested in people so that when things are going great they're going really great, and when they are bad she feels personally attacked to a degree that the other person never intended. Also she is just a really illogical person which doesn't help anything. So deep down she really does mean well but sometimes she gets so caught up in trying to do good that it ends up all bad.
       After dinner me and Caroline went out salsa dancing one last time to send me off and I was so sad and so happy at the same time! I really, really don't want to leave!

U.S. Caroline and me from another night :)