I’m currently sitting in the car, driving through soybean fields in Delaware on my way to the beach. There’s an iced tea in the cupholder, Taylor Swift in the stereo, and my sister in the passenger seat.
I’m physically moving in a new direction, and it would be easy to mentally do the same. It’s unthinkable that I was in Peru only three days ago. The transition from third-world living to my house in Bethesda occurred in less than 24 hours, a testament to the power of modern transportation and very short layovers.
If I’d been living one hundred years ago, and I’d taken a six-month ship voyage home, I might have had more time to reflect on the transition. But I guess I might have had the opportunity to get scurvy too.
I’m back in the land of hot showers and fresh vegetables, humid D.C. heat and U.S. Treasury dollars. And it feels good. Eight weeks is a long time to be away from home and morning delivery of the Washington Post. But there are things that I miss.
I miss freshly-squeezed orange juice. I miss Dilmar making a beeline for my knees in the morning. I miss the Puka Rumi steak sandwich Kelsey is so fond of, and taking a comvi ride with twenty people, plus livestock. I miss my host mother’s horror at my lack of reaction to the “chilly” Peruvian weather or her attempts to feed me endless amounts of soup. I miss Choko Soda cookies. And I’m going to sorely miss attending little Paulita’s baptism in two weeks.
I feel indescribably lucky to have had the summer I had. I’d never traveled to another country before except to Canada. (Which I’m not sure even really counts). I relished the opportunity to live in another culture and work with children so appreciative of my attention and affection for them. I am grateful to everyone who was patient with my poor attempts to speak in Spanish. I can now successfully tell jokes, yell at kids, and deflect comments from sketchy men in another language. I’m basically set.
So this is it. I’m heading off to school in three weeks and back to work at the Daily Tar Heel. Hopefully my compadres will make it back from the Amazon in one piece, and we might even get some more pictures out of Jarrard. Who knows.
I want to thank all of our readers, of whom there are a creepily large number, for following our exploits and my stories so avidly. Really, the ridiculous number of you who visited the site each day gave a huge boost to my self-esteem. And made me want to give up on school and become a professional travel writer.
I realized that I neglected to write about some great stories from out trip, such as the man driving a motorcycle with a broken leg or our friend performing an autopsy on someone in the health clinic while drinking chicha. I guess you’ll just have to come find me in the fall to catch up. I’ll be the one in the corner, drinking coffee and singing “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” in Spanish. Ciao!
Postcards From Peru 