Its been much too long

So I'm catching up on blogs, and I'm going to post 4 in rapid succession. Sorry for the delay, hope you enjoy the reading...

Its been awhile and for that I apologize. (JUNE-JULY 2011)

I was struggling to write something for my blog recently because I wasn’t sure how I could accurately portray my recent life without falling back into some saddening anecdote of how I had to go back home on emergency leave to be at my older sister’s funeral. So now that it’s out there, that’s about all I want to say about it...

...I was home for about 20 days then I came back not really sure how to proceed with my Peace Corps service. So I did what most confused volunteers do, travel. I was back in time for Semana Santa in the end April and went up north to Huanchaco and Chiclayo. I was met up with Krista Latta and we had a wonderful time exploring ruins and eating way to much pollo a la brasa. I then returned to my town and my time there was mostly filled with me explaining why I had to leave in such a whirlwind and where I had been for over a month. I didn’t really plan any upcoming events because I knew that in a week and half I had another trip planned; to the wild and steamy jungles of Manu.

Once again I rendezvoused with my travel buddy Krista, but this time we were also joined by her Aunt Jill and Uncle David from the states. All in all we made a pretty lively team, and with our binoculars ready and hiking boots tied, we set out to with Manu Expeditions once we arrived in Cuzco to go as far as tourists can go into the Manu reserve. Once we crested the mountains outside of Cuzco the scenery immediately changed from dry shrub to lush cloud forest, and the vegetation and humidity only got thicker as we went further down towards the Madre de Dios River. We spent 9 days between river and jungle travel, staying in various bungalows along the way and spotting as many animals as possible. Our guide, named David as well, was incredibly knowledgeable and patient as we were continually awed at various common jungle animals and plants that he’s surely seen millions of times during his 20 years of guiding awe-struck gringos. We made it through the trip with high-spirits, low rates of malaria, and with a huge list of animal sightings especially numerous tropical birds and cool monkeys. And just to put this in there, we saw a jaguar! Ha!

I parted ways with David, Jill, and Krista in Lima and I went back to my site with mixed emotions. Mixed mostly because I couldn’t really see where my service was going to take me next. I kind of had a pre-mature sense of achievement when I went home for the emergency leave, and now it felt as if my motivation was pretty low. It felt like I was running a marathon and at mile 20 they stopped the race then told me that I had succeeded anyway, and then 2 weeks later they called me up and told me to run the last 6 miles for good measure. The sense of accomplishment and purpose just really isn’t there. Either way, I returned, re-scheduled my classes and got caught up on current local events.

Not to my surprise my sleepy mountain town hadn’t changed a bit and getting back in tune with my classes was easy. I’ll be honest in saying that I’m just now, almost two months since going home, feeling okay with being back in Peru again. Though its an understatement to say my service has a different taste to it. I think I’m now racing to the finish simply to have a successful and complete two years, and I’m trying to find some sort of “cruise control” for the rest of my time. So with three months left of travel and 16 days of vacation I think I can make a good run at it, and then after August September won’t look so long since I’ll be planning on leaving in October. Sorry Diego, the third year position just isn’t for me.

But don’t get me wrong, I’m still going to enjoy my time as much as possible, and I’ll fight off the “senior-idis” that is slowly encroaching on all of us Peru 14ers. I’m going to continue with my environment classes and maybe even work a bit more with the health post since the staff nurses are changing which could bring new ideas. I never thought that the my service would provide me with this variety, these two years may be the longest of my life simply because they’ve been so full of activity its hard to believe they aren’t over yet.