also, talking about facebook, i loved 30 rock's gentle mocking last week. "on u-face, her relationship status, from "working on it" to "weirdsies."
ha ha. so good.

It poured rain in Philly and NJ today and it was surreal. Aside from a brief thunderstorm in Ayacucho, I haven't seen real rain since February. I took the bus from philly to nj after crashing with greg, diana, melissa and jorik for several days and crashing several parties. Not in a wild way, in more of a sit around and eat crackers and kick the dog when he comes over and force people to come over to me and talk. and they did. and it was nice.
It's kind of funny seeing acquaintances after a long absence. I have a huge circle of acquaintances from circle of hope. ha ha. circle of acquaintances. that was sort of my experience with circle anyway. ok, now i am getting too personal i think. i never know when i'm being too personal. i'll talk about almost anything with almost anyone. i make fun of people for putting very personal things on their facebook updates when they know that they count casual acquaintances among their facebook "friends." I suppose this isn't much different. Except it is slightly more difficult to get to than simply signing into facebook and being bombarded by status updates like "getting ready to cuddle and watch a movie and lick chocolate syrup off my boyfriend's face" and "i cried myself to sleep last night because my girlfriend dumped me" from people whom I've never been more than acquaintances with. Anyway. Running into casual acquaintances from circle with other circle people after 10 months or so is funny because i remember every face so I'm always like "hey how are you?" and kind of smile at them. And so after that no one wants to ask me who the heck I am, so they just kind of smile back and we chitchat but it's impossible for them to ask my name or where they know me from. I take no pleasure from this. I just observe it. I don't forget faces. I don't know how people can forget FACES. And I may be going way out on a limb here but are you aware of maybe not wanting to be the person who remembers someone if they forget you? Either their name or their face, or anything. It's like if you remember someone but they don't remember you than it's like they are more important or interesting than you? I don't really feel like that, and it doesn't describe the encounters I'm thinking of. (I've heard that I am now able to end my sentences with prepositions but I still feel guilty.) But I am vaguely aware of that sentiment in the back of my mind when someone doesn't recognize me. But I'm not complaining. It actually doesn't bother me. I don't even know why I'm writing about. I just enjoy overanalyzing things.

well, i'm back. and it is weird. My family was so cute to me and made me food and took good care of me and bought me slippers and pajamas for the wretched winter weather. I went grocery shopping with my mom and it was bizarre to hear people speaking so loudly in english. there are tons of latino people in my town and i just wanted to try to speak spanish with them. i am pretty tired but i did sleep on the plane. after a bus ride of 18 hours from arequipa to lima, no heat or airconditioning and i'm pretty sure no bathrooms, 7 1/2 hours on a plane with food and drinks and movies and fresh air circulating and people there to help me was lovely. we took off two hours late because of snow in newark the previous night and then customs and immigration and luggage pickup took forever. but none of my bags got searched for customs, either to or from peru, so that was awesome.
Jorge and I had such a nice last few days together. We ate enchiladas and ceviche and laid around and watched movies and went shopping and then he packed my suitcase for me and we took a cab to the airport and took pictures together and he bought me chocolate. so romantic. and the night before that i got to say goodbye to most of friends over over icecream.

last weekend we hiked down into colca canyon, some say the deepest canyon in the world. the mountains were amazing.

this is what we hiked down into. it took us four hours to hike down and five to hike back up. but at the bottom they had this lush valley with gorgeous pools and thatched-roof huts to sleep in.


here we are the next morning. we are exhausted after two hours, but still have 3 hours left to climb up to make an 11:00 bus. only to discover that the bus company has sold our tickets to another bus company whose bus didn't leave for three more hours. jorge missed his bus back to lima so we got another day together in arequipa :)




























I spent two weeks in arequipa teaching english and playing with these kids after school. they were really great.

















this is the apartment and the room where I lived for the last eight months.
and this is my room.