Sunday, September 21, 2014

Wrapping This Thang Up

This will be the last blog post. As most of you know, we are now back in the States and fully moved to Olympia, WA, beginning the next stage of our lives together in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. So here's how our last month in Peru went.

Doing as my family does everything else - at the last minute, they finally came to visit when we had only a month left in the country. We headed into Lima, met them at the airport, hung around Lima some, then went to Huaraz, where we stayed in our community and went out for day trips to various attractions. Next we returned to Lima for a few days and flew to Iquitos to check out the jungle. Then we returned to Lima for a few more days and they headed back to the States while we returned for the last week and a half in our village.

I'll let the photos speak for themselves instead of trying to remember precise itineraries from a few months ago. We didn't take too many pictures of the stuff in Ancash because we'd seen most everything before, so most are of Iquitos.

Iquitos and More

Now, a few thoughts on leaving our home from the past two years. Food? We won't miss so much. After all, we have rice and potatoes here too. Constant miscommunication? We can probably do without it. Our host family? That's another story. It was really tough. Our host mom insisted on riding the combi down to Huaraz and walking us to the bus station (that we had navigated countless times on our own previously), and moments before the bus departed not only she but also a good friend of Amanda's and her very cute two year old daughter showed up to invite us to some snacks for the trip. Stuffing us with unneeded calories to the very end - that's Peruvian love. In two years I've maybe once seen a Peruvian cry, and even then I wasn't sure that I actually saw what I think I saw. The fact that there were tears at our departure speaks well to the connection we made over these two years. Needless to say, we will be keeping in touch with our Peruvian family.

I think that's about it. Thanks for reading these past two years, and if ever you have a question about Peru, feel free to get ahold of us.