A Mixed Culture Family, We Are

In Lima, I'm staying in a district called San Miguel. It's a middle-class area, that's just in from the coast (still takes awhile to get there, though), and about a half hour away from central Lima. The house I'm staying in is the home of Lidia, who is the head of the Tarpuy Sonqo organization. She lives here with her husband, two sons, sister, and mother. And along with that, up to fourteen volunteers at a time. Yup, it's a pretty good sized (and packed) house. Mostly, us volunteers are like a family. We eat together, volunteer together, spend our free time together, travel together. We see the actually family around the house, but they don't eat meals with us (since peruvian time is different than our time, haha), so it's like our own little volunteer family. One thing that I haven't appreciated about this is that, since no one really arrives here at the same time, or is leaving at the same time, you get to know the people really well, and spend all of your time with them, and then they leave. Yeah, there's a constant influx and out flux of people here, which is a good and a bad thing. And they're from all over. Australia, the U.S., Canada, Japan, New Zealand, England, etc. So it's like a big, clash of the cultures family. In a good way. We're all from different places and backgrounds, but we're all here living with our awesome Peruvian family. As Lidia's husband told me to tell my family, my heart is now peruvian. And I think, so are all the other's.

My room… haha. Not exactly clean.

For the first three weeks or so of my stay, I had a roommate, Jade, from New Zealand. She's 18, and has been traveling around South America taking a gap year before college. After she left here, she traveled on to Columbia. Maemie, one of the other volunteers, is also in Comlumbia traveling with her. (she let me borrow her laptop while she's gone for three weeks, so that's why I've actually gotten around to blogging, hehehe). But now, since Jade's gone, I have a new roommate. Her name's Atsuko. She's originally from Japan, but she's been living in Canada. She'll be my roommate for the rest of the time though, so I'm glad to have some one who's sticking around!
 

The view from my window. Some of the neighbor's houses.

Life here is absolutely nothing like I expected it to be. Us volunteers are actually quite spoiled. We have T.V.'s in our rooms, a computer in the living room that is ours to use, tons of books and DVD's, cookies in the kitchen whenever we want them, a corner store literally two doors down with other snacks, and pretty much every convenience, at least by Peru measures. And the best part of everything, is the lady who cooks for us. She is seriously the most amazing lady ever! I love her! She cooks lunch and dinner for us everyday, except Sundays, and once a week she cleans our bedrooms, and she's just generally completely amazing! Her food is fanatastic and I feel so spoiled. Her name is Soledad, and she lives in the area where we teach school, Pachacutec. In fact, I think that some of her kids go to that school. She is totally my hero. I'll tell you more about her food later.

Con mi amor, 

Miranda