Six months ago, Peru 20 walked off a plane into a new
life. Peace Corps has a funny way
of messing with time. Sometimes it
feels like I’ve already been here a lifetime. It’s as though each day contains three or four days and
things that happened back in the US are a distant memory. More often, however, it feels like I
blinked my eyes and 6 months went by.
Suddenly I find myself living in Peru, having people call me a
Tantarina, and I’m not even sure when this all happened.
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| Town meeting at sunset |
It seemed appropriate that on the exact day, 6 months after arriving in
Peru, I visited my host family in Lima.
We spent hours sitting in the kitchen talking about my life in the
sierra and how they are doing in Lima, while they systematically tried to feed
me until I exploded. Then, we
hooked my camera up to their TV, and I showed them all the pictures of Tantará
and my new host family. Many
Peruvians who live on the coast have very little contact with what exists in
the sierra. While Rita is from the
sierra, she moved to the coast early in life and has been there every
since. So they ooh-ed at the
pictures of alpacas, were amazed by the mountains (especially when I pointed
out where I have to walk to get to some of the families I’m working with), and laughed
at the picture of a cow outside my house.
For some reason, showing them where I’m living and what I’m doing made
it more real to me than anything had before.
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| Back with my Lima family! |
The rain is slowing just a bit now, and in the mornings the
sun comes out and illuminates the green mountains with clouds clinging to their
rocky cliffs. Lately, I just can't seem to get over how beautiful it is.
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| Looking across the valley at Huamatambo, another town I'm working in. |
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| The view outside the window of the Municipality where I am sitting right now. |
