June 15th: LIMA

This was the last day that our KY team (which was actually from my cousin's church back home) was here in Peru.  What a blessing their team was to us.  All of them were such hard workers and a great encouragement to all of us interns.  Plus, they brought us nutella and peanut butter! How much better could it get?

Here are some more thoughts from my journal:

We said goodbye to our first short term team in the Lima airport tonight. We went on a small bus from the airport to Flor's house. (Flor is the lady that we stay with over night each time we have to go to Lima to drop off or pick up a team. The bus right to and from Lima is around 10 hours.  It's about a 20 hour round trip.)  Our friends, Jose and Juan Diego made sure that we got there safe, and they still make fun of me for having 4 years of Spanish and knowing the little that I know. :) But they have been a huge help in learning Spanish while I've been here.

We spent 3 days in Lima at Flor's house.  We dropped off our 1st group and had to stay and wait 3 days to pick up our next group who was coming from Harrisberg, PA.

I found a side note that says: "I learned a phrase that the guys use down here as a joke, it's 'tocame que soy realidad.' - meaning 'touch me, I'm real.'  Apparently it's from some famous soccer guy from Peru who said it one time to a woman who was freaking out about meeting him." :)

June 16th -

The first thing that I did this morning was open my letter from Erica which actually ended up being from Michelle! (Erica Griffith wrote me letters for specific days throughout the summer and some of them ended up being from some of my other friends!)

Every meal in Peru consists of chicken, rice and potatoes.  But I have loved every meal that I've gotten so far.  It's all very delicious.  We ate at Flor's house for breakfast and lunch today.  I am learning how layed back this culture is.  Often times in the States people will just eat meals and then run to the next thing on the schedule. Here, that is not the case.  Oftentimes we are found sitting at the dinner table talking for an hour or more after we are done eating.  This culture is all about the importance of building relationships with people.

At 4:30 Jose picked us up and we took a bus into central Lima. This is like the Washington DC of Peru.  It was so beautiful.  There were lots of historic buildings and statues everywhere.  I took lots of pictures, so I'll have to put those up on the computer sometime.

It gets dark at 6:30 here, so around 7 we went to El Parque de Aguas.  The Fountain Park.  It was one of the most beautiful things I've seen. There were some incredible fountains; in the middle of the park, there's a fountain that does all of this crazy stuff.  It sprays water, but then is like a water and light show mixed together. There is also a much more intense version of the fountain in downtown Cuyahoga Falls, where it's like a game to get to the middle without getting wet, and then make it out dry again too.  I was the only one who failed at this game.  The fountain was huge and Juan Diego saw the water coming, but thought it would be funny to see me get wet.  So i was drenched and had to also go to dinner that way. Wonderful.

Every day I have my hora de espanol.  Hour of Spanish.  My friend Vicky is from Venezuela and she is fluent in Spanish and English, so it's been wonderful to practice spanish with her each day.  In Lima it was especially fun because our friends liked for me to try all that I knew in Spanish and then help me better say things and understand.

On Friday we had our intern meeting and organized our thoughts and prayed for our incoming team from PA.  Later we went and bought a "Tres Leches" cake for our friend Jose and surprised him at work for his birthday.  That was really special.  Then at 7:30 we went to the airport to pick up our first real team that we would lead on our own. Once we finally found them we had pizza in the airport and I had fun hanging out with my team.  I got to know Justin, Jess and Kaylen the first day, and had a good conversation with Brandon.  That first night we slept in a hotel in Lima (which was actually really nice) and in the morning we got home for our 10 hour ride back home.

I can't tell you how much I missed my Peruvian family back home at Albergue.  It was so wonderful to get home and see everyone's familiar faces.