Return of the Prodigal Son...

I really meant to write sooner than this, it's been about three weeks since my last post. For the two weeks following the previous posts, I was quite the vagabond. I spent about half of the nights at my parents' house, but I also spent several nights in Provo, a night at my brother's house in Riverton, and a night in San Francisco. I mean, why not, right? Just kidding. The night in San Francisco was actually because I went to a one day training with the organization that we're going to be working for here in Peru. I say here because here I am, I'm in Peru. We'll get back to that. The few days I spent in Provo were because I was finishing up a few days of work at my branch of Wells Fargo. They were good times there at that branch. We joked several times that we should've started a blog about "the 5th West Branch" and record all the funny/strange/awkward experiences that we had, because they were just about daily there.

So anyway, I'm in Peru now! I left on Monday, so come tomorrow it'll be a week since I've been here. Time for me has been rather more slowly than it did at home, but I suppose that is normal when someone has been adjusting to something new. It hasn't been a bad adjustment though, it's been pretty fun. I'll go ahead and give some of the main events of the days that we've been here, and give some of the highlights that I can remember. Oh, and I'm going to go backwards, since the blog format puts the newest on top. I'm all over things being in the same format! Go ahead and skip to the bottom and read upward by days if you want to follow in chronological order.

Today, Sunday, May 18: Today we were able to attend church in Huancayo at an LDS meetinghouse about 7 minutes from our hotel on foot. The meetings were great, and I enjoyed having them in Spanish once again. I was definitely reminded of how Hispanic people just don't sing the same as we Americans do in our meetings... And they like to make up their own melodies sometimes. After church, we took some time to rest. The two girls wanted to take a walk, so I'm taking advantage of one of their computers to write this. So, Peru is fun so far. I don't know what I expected, so I guess it's what I expected! The people are pretty nice, and I like the food. The driving is crazy. Lines are "more like guidelines," as Captain Barbosa said about the pirate code, and people take advantage of every inch that they can find. But I must say, they definitely know what's going on around their car, so in comparison to Utah drivers, they're much more attentive. I'm having a good time. Right now I'm off to play Mau with the girls, a card game in which we use Uno cards and add a bunch of rules. It was a favorite on my mission, and now that I'm in another country, I'm going to resurrect it!

Saturday, May 17: Again, the morning was used for training purposes, and then we headed off to a bus station and got on a bus at 1:30. The ride was almost 8 hours long and took us out of Lima and into the Andes Mountains. We went from sea level to around 12,000 feet in a couple of hours, and then back down to 9000 or so. It was interesting. The mountains were breathtakingly beautiful, and I got some pictures. When we arrived in Huancayo, it was dark so we got a taxi to our hotel, went to the store and got some food, and hit the sack.

Friday, May 16: In the morning, we spent a few hours training one of our team members, and then went to lunch. In the afternoon, we were able to go to the Lima temple and Cam and I attended a session. I always enjoy going to temples that I haven't been to before.

Thursday, May 15: We spent the working hours of the day meeting with our Freedom from Hunger contact, Luís García, as well as PRISMA, a partner organization that we'll be working for during the next three weeks. In the evening, Carly, Chelsea, and I went to a church party that we got invited to. It was a different chapel than the one that we found originally. We talked to a lot of people and played some foosball on a really weather-beaten table.

Wednesday, May 14: After sleeping in a bit, I got up and Cam and I had a relaxing morning checking our e-mail and such. We met up with Chelsea around 1:30 and we walked around Miraflores, the part of Lima where we were staying, and we found the LDS chapel there. We saw the beach, or what we could of it through the thick fog/mist that seemed to stay over Lima the whole time. Also, we played soccer with some of the kids at the church. I scored a goal and was pretty proud of myself until later on I stole the ball from a kid on my own team...oops.

Tuesday, May 13: Slept in till 9 am, yee ha! Jet lag? No, I just slept through my alarm, really. I got ready for the day, and then I knocked on the door of a girl who is one of my partners. She and I were the only ones there so far, with the other two planning on arriving Tuesday night (until we found out that the other girl missed her flight, so she'd be a day later). So she and I spent the day touring around a bit. We saw a large hill of adobe bricks called Huaca Pucllana, some pre-Incan ruins. Turns out that Tuesday is the only day of the week that they were closed, so we didn't get to take the tour. Oh well. Then we went and got some food. I got ceviche, a traditional Peruvian food of some sort of seafood in a sauce, heavy with lemon and cilantro. It was pretty good, but I was a little sick of fish by the end of it. I don't really know what kind of fish or seafood it was... Then Chelsea (my partner/colleage) and I went to downtown Lima and walked around a bit. We took a tour of the Iglesia de San Francisco, on which we went to the catacombs below the church and saw more human bones than I've ever seen in my life. There were over 25,000 people buried down there, and since then it has been dug out and arranged for tourists to see. Interesting. Then we returned to the guesthouse and played some games. Cam arrived around 11 and I picked him up with a professor that he knows, and I just met. Then I slept on a couch in the professor's apartment.

Monday, May 12: Woke up nice and early to make sure I got everything packed and also to put away as much of my stuff as possible. Slept in 30 minutes more. Woke up for real to make sure I got everything done. And then the majority of this day was spent flying. My mom dropped me off at the airport and helped me get checked in and ready to go, and then said goodbye. She's so great. My flight took off at 9:50 am and I had an hour layover in Atlanta, finally arriving in Lima, Peru at 10:51 pm. They're an hour ahead of Mountain Standard Time, so essentially it was only about 10 pm for me. The flights weren't bad. On both of them I slept for a while, and on both of them I watched a movie. The movies weren't really that great, though, I watched Jumper and The Golden Compass. Both had weak storylines, in my opinion. Or just weren't well done. Anyway, I arrived in Lima, went through immigration, got my luggage, changed some money into Soles, went through customs, and found the taxi driver that was waiting for me. It was about 25 minutes till we got to my hostal/guesthouse, and then I got in and the owner gave me my room key. I stayed up for a little while because of my excitement about being in Peru, but I finally went to bed.