Entry #2, Day 2 in Ayacucho

Here I am in Ayacucho, Peru and it couldn´t be more beautiful. I´m at this internet cafe where the computers and speed are from 1980 but that´s fine because I don´t plan on spending much time here. Anyway, getting here was in itself an adventure. I spend the night in the airport, so I can check that off my list! I had emailed with my group before and we agreed to meet in the food court, which wasn´t hard to find, but I was the first to arrive and everyone was getting in to Lima almost 3 hours after me. . . awesome. So there I was sitting in the Starbucks, trying to get by in my broken spanish. I order an iced tea only to remember halfway through that I wasn´t supposed to order anything with ice, so mistake #1 check. Then I had the whole Lima Airport Starbucks staff calling me ´New York´ which was funny until all the paying customers joined in as well.

But by 1:30 am I´m was worried I was in the wrong place because the rest of my group was no where to be found. around 2 I did find them and we all click so well!! There are 8 of us total, and one guy, named Jon. Poor Jon, I told him to write a book or something after speinding 2 full weeks staight with just girl! There were 3 other girls who will overlap with us one week, then go home for the holidays. Our group has decided to do a secret santa for xmas which should be fun!ç

Okay about Ayacucho! So we left Lima at 6 am, so I had be awake for about 24 hours at that point, but we took this small plane through the Andes at sunrise and it was amazing, the clouds were low but the peaks were exposed it was so beautiful. Our landing was a bit sketchy, it was at the beginning of a clif so if the pilot had been a little off, SPLAT, into the side of the mountain, but we were lucky. we´re going down the runway which is the so bumpy it makes one of the oxygen masks launch out of the ceiling onto a passanger. we´re in baggage claim and i realize that i´ve forgotten something from the plane, I take off running back through the doors only to be chased down by the policia because they thought I was trying to do something dangerous. it was a rough morning to say the lease.

But Ayacucho is just amazing. It is surrounded completely by mountains and we´re a good 9000 feet up, which didn´t effect me at all but made a bunch of ppl really sick when we got here. the town is small but very poverished. the older women wear traditional peruvian clothes. the homebase is acually very nice. there are some 12 rooms with 2 bunks in each, I´m rooming with Mimi, whose from England and Kathryn whose from South Carolina, they´re wonderful, but so is everyone else in the group!! Yesterday we went exploring in the afternoon and after about 2 hours we went to this cafe to get a drink and it downpoured on us. . . i have never seen rain like this. we should have brough a boat with us because it would have been easier than a car to get back to the home base. the waitress Anna, who´s english was amazing, kept asking us if we were scared and that the rain would probably last a few hours!! we were expecting her to say a few mins or something but nope 4 hours later it was dinner time!!

Today we went around to the volunteer locations which was really awesome to see where almost everyone was going to be. One place we went, the children´s house the three boys had locked the ´mama´out and drank the biggest bottle of cocacola to them selves and were so freaking cute. the mama had been locked out for an hour! haha those three boys were going to be trouble for our volunteer. Then we went to a clinic where a woman was actually having a baby, but with one doctor and one nurse we were hoping for the best for her. last we visited the outside of the prison. apparently it is the most rewarding place to work because most of the women are tricked into drug trafficking or wrongfully accused. I am actually really pumped to be working with them because the three other girls who we´re over laping with, 2 of them work there are cried today about leaving! tomorrow is day 1 in the prison.

this computer is so old and the connection is so slow that i need to get off to insure that this will go through! hope you, again who ever reads this, enjoyed reading about my first day.

until next time
heath