Festina Lente

I made it to Peru in one piece. Sorry for the delay in blog posts. I’m living in a town called Yanacoto which is part of a larger area called Chosica which is about 1 hour from Lima (east, I believe). I am waaay up in the mountains and there is more dirt, dust, rocks and DOGS than you could ever hope for. On the flip side, the weather is like whoa; it is sunny and 75 degrees every day here and it never rains (at least in the winter). It gets chilly at night – down in the 50s. I live with one senora named Jesusa who has four sons, three of whom are in Argentina to make some dough. One works here in Lima and he tried to teach me how to dance the other night, though somehow I arrived in Lima with two left feet. In any case, I’ll figure it out. Below is a pic of me (looking rather dumpy), and Jesusa and our casa in the background:

and a pic of Yanacoto, take note of the super sweet mountains in the background:

Que mas? I have a teeny little room but it is comfy and has everything I need (bed and dresser). I have to go through my Senora’s room to get to mine so there won’t be much sneaking out over the next three months. We are lucky enough to have electricity but the running water is pretty sporadic. In fact, I got back from my run the other morning to find zero water; running, sitting, standing, in buckets, whatever. So I stank for a little while until the municipality arrived with more agua. For some reason our toilet is broken so it eats up all the running water pretty quickly so I took another bucket shower today. In case you are curious: the *pro* of a bucket shower is that the water is a bit warmer than if you take a shower w/ running water. That is hella cold, but I’m getting used to it, and I still prefer it to my bucket shower.

Hands down the worst thing thus far are the stray dogs. They are everywhere – you cannot walk ten seconds without seeing two or three stray dogs and if you are lucky sometimes they are humping. J/K – that is not so awesome. As you (may not) know, I’m terrified of dogs and have been ever since I was a little kid. They chase you and bark at you when you are running but otherwise they mostly keep to themselves. I found a road I can run on with very few dogs but it is a giant uphill climb. Oh well, better than getting rabies. Oh, don’t worry, I got a rabies vaccination the other day so even when (if?) I get bitten I won’t die, I’ll probably just pee my pants or something.

There are also a ton of kids everywhere that stop me whenever I’m coming or going to chit chat. Then I start talking in spanish (and my spanish is not so good at present) and then they start making fun of me. And then we all laugh and then I stop laughing and they are still laughing. Alas. They are cute and at least I am on the same level as them language-wise (okay, a little below). I think one little girl named Judith has adopted me as her big sis which is super cute, especially because I don’t have any hermanos of my own. She is 11 and I can’t understand anything she says. So it goes, so it goes.