Life in Peru

This is my 4^th day living in Peru; the third living in Trujillo. I feel very blessed to have this opportunity, and the past few days have been really eventful and I’ve learned a ton so far.

Flying in from the States was a pretty hassle-free process; my flights were all on time arriving in Lima only a few minutes later than anticipated. The Immigration line at the airport in Lima was extremely long, and my patience was wavering after flying all day. But once I passed through immigration, the driver of Hostal Inquique was on the other side waiting for me amongst hundreds (maybe thousands) of other signs with names on them waiting to pick up someone. It was lucky that I spotted my name so quickly and made it to the hostal safely.

The next day I discovered that the bus line I had anticipated taking (Cruz del Sur) only ran in the evenings so I had to improvise with the help of greedy taxi drivers who took me to the bus terminal in Lima. I didn’t get to spend hardly any time in Lima, only seeing the city through the cab window, but from what I saw the city is DENSLEY populated, packed streets with cars, vendors, homeless, etc. The Futbol stadium was massive; I hope I will be able to get a closer look at it by the end of my time here.

The bus experience was interesting and again I felt lucky to find a bus to Trujillo without much difficulty. My Spanish is still fairly rusty, but managed to buy a seat on a nine hour ride. Being 6’2, the bus organizer placed me in the back row, middle seat with plenty of room to stretch out; again, Very lucky! I’m not sure if it was the traveling from the past day, but I think I was able to sleep about 4-5 hours total on the trip, only waking up to look out the windows at the ‘desert’/arid scenery of the massive Andes mountains. You would think it would be annoying to have vendors board the bus periodically to sell their peanuts, jugos, and empanadas; but having not eaten before getting on the bus, those Empanadas seemed like the greatest food on the planet.

The looks I got, being American, were not so intimidating, more curious as to what I was doing or how I acted. I tried to remain non-entertaining, mostly keeping to myself with limited conversation with my fellow bus riders. I arrived in Trujillo right after dusk, and took an unmarked cab to the address I was given in the welcome pack. The Volunteer house has no markings on the outside, appearing to be any other flat in the city, so I just rang the buzzer desperately hoping that I was at the right place; with it being dark outside and holding my giant suitcase, I was a little nervous to say the least. But once someone let me in, I was greeted by fellow volunteers who were incredibly friendly and were just hanging out on the couches talking. They seemed happy to have another English speaking male in the house now. The other volunteers are from all over the globe: Canada, Britain, Ireland, Colombia, Spain, Poland, etc. I liked the vibe of the place so quickly that I was sad when I remembered I wouldn’t be staying in the house for the first few weeks.

I met my current roommate Andrew; a 25 yr old guy from Ireland and our flat was only a few blocks away from the volunteer house, a shared bedroom, big shower, in a home belonging to a big gordo hombre named Richard. We met Richard that night and did most of our conversing in Spanish, mostly listening to Richard describe his work as a restaurant owner (One restaurant underneath the flat and one a half block down from the volunteer house).

The next day I was taken around by one of the volunteer coordinators, a 25 yr old girl, Barclay. She was super enthusiastic and a calming presence when first traveling around this manic city! We went to her favorite coffee shop after taking out money from the ATM, and sat down to discuss policies and procedures for Volunteers at SKIP. She did a great job of explaining SKIP and life in the city. I became frantic when I realized I had left my Debit card in the ATM that I had taken money out of an hour before our meeting. I began to slightly freak out thinking, “Grady, how the heck did you already lose your one source of money”, but the coordinator maintained her calming presence and we tracked back to the bank’s atm and hopelessly asked if they had my missing card, they did! We came back; feeling relieved and felt that my time here in Trujillo was going to be full of adventures like that day. That very same day, the afternoon group of volunteers was heading out to El Porvenir where SKIP is to do their afternoon shift, and Barclay asked if I wanted to go up and work with Juancho on homework with the kids. I hesitated in my mind slightly, but jumped the gun and went anyways (GREAT decision). At SKIP I just jumped right in, interacting with the kids reading and playing games. I felt at home for the first time when playing a made-up game with the sports director Roger (Spanish) and the kids were grabbing on to my shirt yelling ‘Profe, Profe”. It was an amazing first day, and gave me a lot of optimism as to what my time serving at SKIP would be like.  We piled back into a cab and headed back to the volunteer house.

                Happy To be here!