Lima, Peru

I guess this is it. Bye, Peru blog? I don’t know what I’ll do with this blog now. Maybe leave it be until next time I go traveling.
Time passed in the strangest way. I’m not sure if I’ve been here two days, two months, or two years. I feel like I still have a summer to return to in the U.S. but will be back in school tomorrow. I feel like my career is around the corner. I feel like I was a freshman in Harvard a year ago. I feel as though I’ve had a bite taken out of my life– something I can’t explain and don’t understand. An alternate universe of sorts. My memory must be getting worse, or maybe I’d started caring less.
Maybe I’ve been expanding horizons, breaking habit, slowing time these two months. Not really stepping out of the comfort zone– more like stepping out of the fire, getting away to think. Pero igual, el tiempo ha pasado volando.
I came in expecting some sort of earth-shattering, tear-jerking experience working in the poorest districts of Lima. And indeed I went to some of the poorest places in Lima, and I went there and colored. No, I wasn’t inspired by the work. This trip was about the people.
People. Lives. I shared in the lives of many people on this trip, which was definitely a step out of my comfort zone. I am not a people person at all, but I nearly lived the day to day lives of others.
Most of all my host family. From coming here to leaving they didn’t just host me; they accepted me with open arms as part of their family (I was spoiled to death). They were my first introduction to Peruvian hospitality, generosity, and warmth. But what impressed me more than their INDULGENT generosity was their fallibility. You like people for their merits and you love them for their flaws, ¿no es cierto? This family really tugged my heartstrings by being dysfunctional, quarrelsome, spioled, distant, depressed. But with Peruvian warmth. I never anticipated that this was what it would mean to get to know “my host family.” Now my complaints from before about my family’s over-generosity, my old “caricatures” of them, seem ridiculous. Talk about a story unfolding.

Peru by numbers.
Eight weeks, eight cities, one world wonder, four family members, two Koreans, six pounds, three schools, two thousand dollars, three thousand pictures.

Never the same summer.