this was written sunday night, except for the end.
wonderful, wonderful weekend. why? it was full of music, dancing, family (not mine, but more on that soon), and nature.
so i hit a mid-peru slump, compounded by a mysterious bacterial sickness that kept me in bed for three-ish days, and left me with a finicky stomach for another week. i didn't really know if i liked being here. i started doubting little things. it wasn't good.
and then, this weekend.
-friday, girl's night, with another girl in my program, damarys, and another friend i made here, a med student named tracy. we watched "the reader," at a film festival, which is hilariously translated as "una pasión secreta." try asking for a ticket for that without cracking a smile. great movie, a bit heavy, but good.
-saturday, party, at damarys' apt., with our adoptive family invited (our adoptive family being our mentor, his partner, his sister and her partner, and something like seven or eight assorted cousins, all between the ages of 17 and 25). supposed to start at 8, everyone arrived at 10 in true latin american fashion, haha, to eat chifa (peruvian chinese food take-out) and have our drinks, and dance, dance, dance, dance. Did I mention there was dancing? There was, indeed. Until 6 am. not only was it wonderful to be dancing/celebrating/having fun, the family atmosphere made me really happy. i felt right at home with salsa blasting and people staying up til the wee hours of the morning and spanish conversation everywhere and joking nonstop. it was lovely. :)
-sunday, hiking, near a place called chosica, a cute little town about an hour outside of lima. we hiked about an hour, ten of us, to get to a waterfall, up these crazy hills and "rock forest" and around "curvas peligrosas" as the carved wooden signs said. it was beautiful, sunny but not hot, and the mountains were gorgeous as usual. when we finally got back to the cars, we got to see some cow-milking action. it was great. on the ride to dinner, the three of us girls starting a karaoke sesh that lasted about an hour, we were so hungry and thus delirious.dinner was great, sleep that night was even better. you try hiking after sleeping two hours on a couch. haha.
now it's wednesday and my work has taken a turn for the SUPER INTENSE; i met with my mentor last night to work on my manuscript (i have to write a paper for publication), and left feeling overwhelmed and super behind. i'm happy to be finally working with some direction on the paper though, instead of just doing data analysis and crunching numbers.
como todas las cosas se juntan al final! i feel like i need another two weeks here. these two for work and those two for relaxingggg. and exploring more of peru. there's so much i haven't seen. and now i feel there's so much potential for more work here, now that i have contacts and a better idea of how to maneuver over here. we'll see, who knows? i could always return, huh.
back to work, sorry for the jumble, hopefully a more coherent post comes out of the next week or so. home in ten days, ahh!
love.
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