"Home"

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This is my last week at "home," although I'm pretty sure that I don't spend enough time here for it to merit that title-- and I am cramming Spanish so much it almost feels like I'm in a Spanish speaking country. I don't normally watch TV, but I have been watching hours of the Spanish channel. I listen to only Spanish music. I am translating several of the children's books people (mostly my mom) donated into Spanish, "helping" my sister with her Spanish homework, making more Spanish flashcards and flipping through the hundreds I have already made, limiting my thoughts to only things I can think about in Spanish... it's awesome. I am so excited and scared about spending the summer in Peru, although the fear is not so much fear of danger as it is of overwhelming awesomeness.

I arrive in Lima on June 1st, and for a month I will be taking Spanish classes for four hours a day, five days a week. At the end of the month, my Peruvian friend Maria Grazia and I will travel to Cusco. I'm still trying to figure out if I'm interested in Machu Pichu or not. Sometime during the month of June, we will also be making a trip to Tacna to visit her family. Tacna borders Chile, so there will probably be a trip over the border for a few days, just to see. On July 3rd, I take a bus to Huancayo, a city in the Andean highlands. There has not been much touristing there in recent years, due to terrorism by a group called the Sendero Luminoso or "Shining Light." Actually, I'm not sure if there was ever much touristing in that area, but anyhow... it's relatively safe now. While I am there I will be working with street kids through a program called Angeles que Aguardan. It's a local, grassroots organization run by a single Peruvian mother from her home office. I am psyched to have eliminated the middle-man, because it is much less expensive for me and therefore I will have more money to put directly into the local economy. I will live with a family there for a month while I do my service, then I will return to Lima for a few days before flying home to the United States.

I have no idea what to expect from this, and that is of course what I find most exciting.

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Photos

my cat
she's very strange

Comments

[George]

HI Katie
Me gusta mucho leer tu bloggo. Buen suerte con la lengua Espanol. Mis hijos la estan estudiando y se quejan mucho.