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.