Sunday, October 23, 2011

I am officially one quarter of a century old...

and I have two weeks left as a Peace Corps volunteer, but don't any of you worry, my plans for my immediate future are still pretty vague and fun

I am officially done here on November 10th. I am gonna spend a few days at the beach up north to unwind and say goodbye to Peru then I'm gonna meet up with my friends Pete and Will in Lima. The plan is to go south through Chile to Patagonia, cross over to Argentina and eventually wind up in Buenos Aires. From there, they go home for a nice x-mas, but given my religious persuasions, I plan on skipping x-mas in the states and striking out on my own for a trip through Uruguay and Bolivia before heading back to Lima to fly out sometime around the middle of January. I will spend a few months at home, feeling confused and maybe out of place and then with the same guys we will strike out for the Appalachian trail for a good chunk of 2012. my philosophy on all of this is that I will see if the world is really gonna end or not in 2012 and if it does I will have had a hell of a lot of fun right before hand and not have had a lot of useless money sitting in a bank somewhere and if it doesn't I will have had a lot of fun anyway and convince myself I am ready to do something like go back to school or get a job (and for the sake of those hopeful future plans I took the GRE last month, so I have that in my pocket).
Anyway, expect a lot of pictures like this:


So i am obviously very excited for all of that and additionally, most of the people around time like to remind me that I am gonna be leaving very soon, all of which is making me kind of antsy... but in the mean time I do need to close things out in Yanamito, which is going well. I took my whole school on a trip to the famous Llanganuco lakes

and I have also been working on giving the town's adults classes on garbage management and organic fertilizers. On both counts, thank you to everybody who donated money that supported both projects (more formal thanks forthcoming...I am in the process of getting my act together on that).
So that's the story for the moment...when I have some time to reflect in site I will try and put together some highlights and perspectives on the 2 years and what I will and will not miss about this crazy country.
Hope all is well with everyone in the states and I look forward to reconnecting in a few months.