Highs and Lows

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I'm in one of the many internet cafes here in Huancayo. Green Day is playing on the radio. 'You can't go forcing something if it's just not right...' How appropriate. I don't know what I'm doing here. I planned on staying in Huancayo a month, but it's just not clicking. I don't know what to do.

This is turning out to be less of an adventure and more of a pain in the ass. I like doing community service work for many reasons. (1) Because I can. (2) Because every time I've done it in the past, I've undergone huge personal transformation and my purpose in life has become clearer to me. (3) Because I can't usually think of a good reason why not.

But this isn't going like normal. I love the kids that I work with, but I'm feeling very alone. I'm feeling like I'm 20, in Peru, by myself, with the potential to have an amazing out-of-this-world experience, and instead I'm doing something that doesn't feel right and may very well not be helping anyone at all.

I'm breaking my Number One life rule (never to do anything just because I think I'm supposed to). This trip has been a lot of that. All the obligatory tourism. All the schedules. I can't do it anymore. I may totally ruin this reference by leaving the organization early, but I have to. I would be very upset with myself if I returned to the US without making this trip as amazing as it could possibly be.

Brief list of notable things,
alternating between things that suck and things that don't suck

1. The first four days in Huancayo, I only bathed once, because the first contact I had with the freshly melted ice water made me too sick to even think about trying it again. The past three days, I've been boiling water in a tea kettle, bringing it upstairs to a small basin, and dumping cup fulls of water over my head and only my head because that's all I can afford. I'm pretty gross. If I knew I'd be doing cold showers anyways, I would have stayed in a rural area.

2. One of the good things here that doesn't exist in the US: almost all the men here are AMAZING dance partners. Why? Because they aren't told that men who dance are gay. So they do it confidently, as they have their whole lives, and they do it WELL. I love it.

3. I can't sing. I don't have a voice because I'm sick, I can't find a guitar, and I have no idea where my suitcase carrying all of my CDs is.

4. The 25 year old guy in the family I'm living with is really hot, we have a lot of the same interests and....

5. He doesn't speak English and my Spanish is limited, so any kind of deep conversation or validation of the connection I feel with him is pretty much off limits. I've been having this problem a lot. Even when I meet Peruvian English speakers, they don't understand me when I try to talk about anything abstract. One of my favorite things in life is exchanging weird and abstract thoughts with other people! And I can't do that here! I don't know if it's the cultural bump or the language barrier, but it's very frustrating. Brings new meaning to the phrase 'Nobody understands me'.

6. New experiences. Seeing the stars of the southern hemisphere, eating alpaca and guinea pig, waking up to an earthquake, bargaining at a market, being told that I speak Spanish well, joking and flirting in Spanish, helping kids with their math homework in Spanish, being alone and in charge of twenty students...

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Comments

[Nicole]

Follow your instincts!
Seriously, hon, this is YOUR TRIP! Don't feel obligated to stick to any plans that you made, and if your heart is trying to lead you somewhere else, follow it! You are free to do what you want, when you want, and go anywhere that you want to. What's a bad reference in light of having an amazing adventure you'll remember for the rest of your life? You better have some damn good stories when you come back to Boulder. I miss you like crazy! When we have our crazy round-the-world trip, we have to go to Argentina, okay? In addition to everywhere else.