Phew: Life and Pictures from Arequipa

Well, like Catherine eloquently wrote, it's been a long last month, but things are getting better slowly, progress is being made on the thesis, and preparations are moving forward to head home. I've gotten really sick twice in the last month, Monday and Tuesday I couldn't do anything but lay in bed... I was literally in bed for almost 48 hours straight--it was very rough.

All better now however, and my stress levels are down. It's been a relaxing week--went to see Harry Potter yesterday (opening day), and somehow got tickets. Well, not all of the shows were sold out, it's not as big a thing here in Peru. Besides that we've been working a lot with our advisers on the thesis thing.

One of our friends leaves Sunday for the US, and I automatically said "I'm sorry" jokingly. Then I realized that I wasn't sorry for him, I was sorry that it wasn't us going home! I miss a lot of things, luckily we're back soon to a less stressful and controlled environment. Our days are built around "acceptable dining hours" at the house we eat at. Very sad actually.

Well, I was sick for the Arequipa mission (among other issues and being very occupied as the only translator in Dental) so I have only one album of pictures to share with all of you, but here they are!

Clinic Arequipa

Vacations to Machu Picchu and Puno

One of the few vacations I actually did take in my 6 months here (the other being to Chile for 3 days to renew a visa). Wow we worked hard! The photos are in reverse order from the actual events.

Family Tour - Lake Titicaca

Family Tour - Bus Cuzco to Puno

Family Tour - Horse Tour

Family Tour - Machu Picchu

Family Tour - Valle Sagrado

We're still alive :)

We have 5 weeks left here in Peru. We are not doing the Arequipa Eye mission this July because they do not need more interpreters, so the June Arequipa mission was officially our last mission. We our using this month to help out in the MMI warehouse three times a week, and then the other 2 days plus weekends we will be doing research for our thesis. I have done 2 interviews so far, one with Tania and one with Brian. I also did one electronic interview, with a nurse who lives here somewhat permanently, Karen. Luckily Will has a tape-recorder on his MP3 player, so I haven’t had to worry about copying down things too much. It helped a lot. Now I just have to transcribe stuff over to paper. I have a few more people I want to interview, so I need to talk to them about what times are good for them, but at least I’m making some progress, which is good.

Other than that, things are going okay. We are trying to wind down after doing 3 missions basically back to back, we had like a week break in between Colca-Puerto, and 2 weeks between Puerto-Arequipa but we went to Machu Picchu and Puno the week before the Arequipa mission so we didn’t really get to rest too much. These past 3 months have gone really fast because we’ve been so busy. The Arequipa mission was probably not my favorite. It was huge, it was all a blur really, and I wasn’t able to meet many people or able to get to know many. I got really sick, and I’m still sick, so it made it even harder to relax and focus on the mission, and the whole mission was really stressful. But oh well. I wish it was different, because I know some people had really enjoyed the experience, so I’m sure it was because I was so sick and stressed from traveling and working the past few months.

So, now we have a month to help out in the warehouse and get things ready to come home. I think we are both ready, as much as we like Peru it’s time to come home for awhile :) Anyways, it was about time one of us wrote a post :)

Catherine