well, holy shit.
i leave for nueva york in, oh, 18 days. now that i have purchased sheets, i feel a lot better about leaving. i probably should be panicking about lots of other things, but i'm not. good for me!
peru was amazing. cue picture whoring!
i initially started out working as a teacher's aide in the mornings, but i ended up spending many of my mornings with the children under two. good lord, they were cute. should i ever have children, this experience definitely piqued an interest in international adoption. it's ridiculously expensive - but a worthwhile investment, you know.
there was a parrot who lived in a backyard near our hotel. you could see him - his name was pepito - from our window.
i also spent a lot of time translating for english classes led by english-only speakers. it was difficult, but the girls were patient.
we spent a morning in a neighborhood on the outskirts of lima. lima is shrouded in neighborhoods similar to this, kind of carved into the hillsides:
the families purchase plots of land and, as they earn money over the years, they build their homes. thus, many families just starting out live in homes made of scrap metal and wood, or bricks stacked without mortar. however, over the course of several years - 10 to 20 - many save enough to build a fairly nice house, particularly if the family patriarch works in construction.
while the government largely neglects these areas - the food kitchens we visited received little to no federal or municipal fundings - they did fund a project in santa anita in which they provided the materials to build staircases to improve mobility. however, they did not provide labor; rather, the women of the community built the stairs with the aid of government advisors. pretty cool.
i really miss the kids and the people i met there, and i would love to go back next summer for a month or so. around 80% of the kids at the puericultorio do have family, but they live in the home because their families can't support them financially. while i was there, very few of the kids went home on the weekends to visit their families. children under ten or so must be picked up by their parents, and few families have the resources to spend the money necessary for transporting and feeding their child(ren) for a weekend. a lot of the older kids ask puericultorio employees for the money to get home - bus fare is one sol each way, or what would be 35 cents here. anyways, my point was, a lot of the kids have abandonment issues, given their family histories. having volunteers come for only brief periods of time exacerbates that - so if i do go back, i want to stay longer.
so, i'm mostly dreaming of long, bleeding-heart-y trips to latin america, but in the meantime, i'm still working, volunteering, reading bad mystery novels, and being neurotic about packing. jazz festival this weekend! yay!
i keep thinking i'm going to get sad about leaving, but i'm not yet. i have moments of nostalgia, which is highly inappropriate seeing as how i haven't left yet. for the most part, i'm excited and, naturally, more nervous than i'm willing to admit. i feel like i've already gone through an intense grieving process - lame as it is, breaking up with the former enamorado was a huge deal for me - and now i'm pretty much at peace with leaving. how very zen of me.
peru was amazing. cue picture whoring!
i initially started out working as a teacher's aide in the mornings, but i ended up spending many of my mornings with the children under two. good lord, they were cute. should i ever have children, this experience definitely piqued an interest in international adoption. it's ridiculously expensive - but a worthwhile investment, you know.
there was a parrot who lived in a backyard near our hotel. you could see him - his name was pepito - from our window.
i also spent a lot of time translating for english classes led by english-only speakers. it was difficult, but the girls were patient.
we spent a morning in a neighborhood on the outskirts of lima. lima is shrouded in neighborhoods similar to this, kind of carved into the hillsides:
the families purchase plots of land and, as they earn money over the years, they build their homes. thus, many families just starting out live in homes made of scrap metal and wood, or bricks stacked without mortar. however, over the course of several years - 10 to 20 - many save enough to build a fairly nice house, particularly if the family patriarch works in construction.
while the government largely neglects these areas - the food kitchens we visited received little to no federal or municipal fundings - they did fund a project in santa anita in which they provided the materials to build staircases to improve mobility. however, they did not provide labor; rather, the women of the community built the stairs with the aid of government advisors. pretty cool.
i really miss the kids and the people i met there, and i would love to go back next summer for a month or so. around 80% of the kids at the puericultorio do have family, but they live in the home because their families can't support them financially. while i was there, very few of the kids went home on the weekends to visit their families. children under ten or so must be picked up by their parents, and few families have the resources to spend the money necessary for transporting and feeding their child(ren) for a weekend. a lot of the older kids ask puericultorio employees for the money to get home - bus fare is one sol each way, or what would be 35 cents here. anyways, my point was, a lot of the kids have abandonment issues, given their family histories. having volunteers come for only brief periods of time exacerbates that - so if i do go back, i want to stay longer.
so, i'm mostly dreaming of long, bleeding-heart-y trips to latin america, but in the meantime, i'm still working, volunteering, reading bad mystery novels, and being neurotic about packing. jazz festival this weekend! yay!
i keep thinking i'm going to get sad about leaving, but i'm not yet. i have moments of nostalgia, which is highly inappropriate seeing as how i haven't left yet. for the most part, i'm excited and, naturally, more nervous than i'm willing to admit. i feel like i've already gone through an intense grieving process - lame as it is, breaking up with the former enamorado was a huge deal for me - and now i'm pretty much at peace with leaving. how very zen of me.