A day in the life of...me.

So I want to take some time to really explain all that I'm doing here in Peru. A lot of the photos I've posted on here and Facebook are of my adventures during free time on the weekends, but there is a whole lot more that I do than just have fun. Being a volunteer is super exhausting, but so rewarding at the same time. A typical timeline of my day looks like this:

7:00 - Wake up and go running (lets be real, I've only been running like twice)
8:00 - Breakfast
8:30/9:00 - Work
2:00 - Lunch
3:00 - Work
6:00 - Dinner
7:00 - Work (Tuesday/Thursday)

Typically we have one project in the morning, and a different one in the evening. On Tuesday/Thursday we teach English, Piano, and Zumba in the evenings from 7-9. Those are the hardest days because they are the longest.

Here is a list of all that we have done up to this point:

• Piano / English / Zumba Classes

• We have roughly 25 students in both our English and Piano classes and around 50 for Zumba. I personally teach Piano and it has been one of my favorite projects. I'm not even close to being an awesome teacher, and I am not even the most amazing pianist either, but the people are so appreciative and it makes me feel like I have legitimately made a difference in their lives when I teach them. Most of the students had no experience in music, and now, after just 6 classes, we are already able to play simple songs on the piano. They are picking it up so quickly, and will be such a good skill to have to be able to play in church and maybe become a famous musician one day. 
• Health Clinic



Our mosquitos and larva.

• I love working at the Health Clinic. It is not something I would really ever be able to do in the US because 1. Im studying Business. 2. It's not as easy to just walk into a Health Clinic, say you're a volunteer and start taking blood pressure and weight. It doesn't work that way in the US. We also went mosquito and larva hunting last week. Yes. Let me explain. So we had a glass tube with a rubber tube connected to it. We went to some houses hear the Clinic and in order to catch the mosquitos, we had to breathe in with the rubber tube to capture the mosquito in the class tube and then stick the tube in a container/cup, breathe out, and the mosquito launches into the container. Its pretty cool, not gonna lie. The purpose of catching them is to examine them to see if they carry Malaria or Dengue fever. This is also the reason for searching for larva. We walked around a cemetery searching bottles of water for larva. We have done some interesting things. Today at the clinic was a little crazy. It put the medical world into perspective for me, and I now have even more respect for the people that work in this field. First I saw a man trying to heal from an accident where he lost a toe, then a woman comes in screaming because her baby wasn't breathing, then another man comes in because he was outside walking and stopped breathing. It seemed like it was one thing after another. SHOUT OUT TO MY BROTHER WHO IS IN MEDICAL SCHOOL. Love you bro, you're going to be an amazing doctor, and I look up to you so much! You're a brave dude.
• Marketing Class
• A couple of us have been teaching a Marketing class at the University down the road. I think it is so neat that we are able to do such a wide variety of things. I love that we are trusted enough to teach a college class! Students are learning a lot and are very interested in the class. They always show up with enthusiasm.
• ICPNA
• ICPNA is an English institute here where we have gone a few times to have conversations with the students to help them learn English! Something I've realized with my Spanish is that the best way to learn is talking one on one with a native. 
• Aldea San Miguel
• Aldea is one of the orphanages here. I honestly love being able to volunteer here because I know that I am helping. The children are so adorable and is so sad to know that they have no families. After hearing some of their stories, it makes me want to go back more and more so they feel loved. On of the little boys was found in the trash when he was 2 days old, and another family of four kids watched their dad kill their mom while holding them. Most of the time when we go there, we go to help with their PE classes because they only have it 2 times a week and half the time the teacher doesn't show up. I wish I had photos to show from Aldea, but I will get some soon!
• Park

• In Peru, there are literally parks on every corner. Or at least it feels that way. These parks never get used and so we teamed up with a professor from Spain to see if we could try to encourage people to use them. Last week we had an event at El Parque Ecológico de la Urba. The purpose of the park is to provide an area physical exercise as well as inform people about the plants and animals they have their. We held an event to show people the park and introduce it to them so they would use it! We had a craft for the little kids (making birdhouses...thank you pinterest) and the others learned about the rest of the park. It was a fun event and we even made the Peruvian newspaper!
• Soccer
• We are putting together a girls soccer team for teenagers ages 14-16. Sports are not offered to girls here so we want them to have that same opportunity. There are going to be 8 schools involved. We are going to hold practices, games, and tournaments, with uniforms, trophies and everything! Im really excited for this project to get going. I think Im going to get super involved with it.

These are just a few of the projects we've done. I've already mentioned some, like volunteering in Noe where we played with kids and also painted their school, the Liahona Foundation, and the Red Cross.

I think one of my favorite parts about being here and volunteering is that even though the things we are doing are simple, the little things we do to help these people could turn their lives around. These people could be future big time musicians or professional athletes. Cheesy, I know, but there is so much potential in everyone we meet. Sometimes people just need to see that and get a push in the right direction.

Vamos a la playa.

          This weekend we finally got to be tourists! It was a fun change! It started kind of rocky. We took a van to Tumbes which is about 4 hours North of Piura. The ride was tight and not super comfortable but the people made it enjoyable. We've got a great group of volunteers that make every moment of this trip so fun. Once we got to Tumbes, we took a moto taxi to the random house that we stayed at. Im not really sure what the connection was, but I think it was our landlords brothers friend? Anywho, we stayed there for a night and let me tell you, I have never seen a more strange place in my life. When we first arrived it was a relief to walk into a house that looked super nice, but then I started looking around and realized how strange and odd the place really was. It seems oddly nice for the area we were in and nothing really worked together. Maybe that was their style but the decorations were different. I have a joke with myself (sad, I know) that they just found/stole everything and put it all in a house together. There was a random life size Santa Clause just chillin in the family room. The even crazier thing is that I totally had dejavu in that house (not about Santa). I don't know how to put my thoughts about this house into words but just trust that it was an interesting experience. They only run the water in the morning so if we had to go to the bathroom we just dumped a bucket of water in the toilet and it would all go down. Not sure how that works, its a mystery and a funny memory. Moving on...so we got settled in and then went out to get food. We stopped at a random restaurant, and it ended up being the worst food experience since we arrived in Peru. The food was pretty bad. All the meat was cold like it had been sitting out all day and it all just seemed kinda dirty. Luckily no one got sick *knock on wood*. After dinner we set out for the main street/square where they were celebrating the 30th year of something. They had some performances (all cultural dance) and music. We hung around for a while, avoided creepy people, and killed mosquitos before they attacked us. 

Mangroves near the border of Ecuador.

          The next morning we woke up and took a bus to a place where we got on a boat to explore some mangroves near the border of Ecuador! It was so beautiful, and felt like we were in a movie! On the boat ride we stopped on an island that had a bunch of caged crocodiles, and yes, you better believe I jumped in there and touched one of them. I didn't tell my parents until after. My mom nearly had a heart attack. In the end though, I still have all 10 fingers and toes. After that we got back on the boat and went to a different "island" called bird island. It was insane. You could see it from pretty far off in the distance. There are 6000 birds on this island and I have a photo below. These birds were literally everywhere, and was one of the coolest things I have ever seen. It's not exactly an island that you can walk around but we perched out boat right up on one of the bushes/trees so that we could just sit in amazement for a moment.

          After bird island, we went to another island where we got off and beached it for a couple hours! It was so surreal. In that moment, I could only think about how blessed I am to be able to have this experience. I feel lucky to even be here in Peru, but to be able to live here for 3 months helping the people and serving them, on top of having weekends to travel and be a tourist?! I don't know how I got so lucky. It sounds so cheesy and cliche but I couldn't have done it without a lot of people. I'm only 3 weeks in and we've done so much! The island was so beautiful and I love the beach more than anything. On top of this, the whole experience only cost me like $10. Holla! We ate lunch on the island and ordered some fried shrimp. Soo good. After that, I took about with Cecilia and we walked around the island looking for seashells, taking photos, and exploring. The only downside was that I realized that the material on my swimsuit was basically gone so I had to stay covered up. Its literally a mystery. So I need to find a new swimsuit while I'm here. 

          After the whole boat tour, half of us decided to take off to Ecuador since the border was only 30 minutes away and a couple people had to renew their visas. For some reason the airport only gave them like 30 days, but Im cool with that because it gave us an excuse to go to a different country! So it turned out that the bus we needed left about an hour before we got to the bus station and the next one didn't leave till the morning. That wasn't going to happen. We got a taxi (which turned out to be some random man that just got off of work and decided to be a taxi driver for an hour) and he drove us to the border. I didn't think we would be able to find someone because taxi drivers only do short distances here. The only thing was that he wasn't allowed to drive across the border so he had to drop us off and we walked across the border because he kinda took us to the street. Im pretty sure what we did was illegal because technically you cant really cross the border unless you go through the security first so they can check your passport. Long story short we got our passports stamped, drove past the giant statue of Jesus, got a bus to Machala (the closets tourist town to the border) and found a place to stay. The hotel was nice! It even had a WARM shower! Not sure I'll get another one of those for a couple months. We got settled in, found a place to eat and then walked around the park in front of our hotel for a bit. Ecuadorians are super nice! The people at the hotel loved talking to us because we knew Spanish and even ended up making us breakfast for free the next morning! They thought we were funny because we were asking questions like "Wait, there are 4 beds? and a shower? like in the room? and a toilet with toilet paper?" Im sure they thought we were crazy but it was better than we were expecting and only $12/person (they use American dollars in Ecuador). In the end, Ecuador was fun. We walked around the market, explored, went to church, renewed our visas, and took a bus back to Peru. One of the funnier moments in Ecuador was when we were in the market getting ready to leave and I called my friend Sean's name so that he knew we were leaving. Once I yelled it, some random guy on the street starting saying his name too, except he didn't pronounce it right and it sounded like Chan. Two seconds later, the entire market started saying "Chan! Chan! Chan!" Needless to say, he finally hear us and we headed out. It was a short trip, but very worth it.

          On the way back to Piura, we stopped at Mancora beach which is a super touristy area. There were so many white people it blew my mind. It made me want to come back to South America and backpack for a month or something. We ate dinner, walked around the beach, shopped a little, then took a bus back home. We were greeted right when we got home but the cute little family that lives below us. I love them so much. It is so nice to be back and it truly feels like home to me now. I loved being welcomed back and loved by the little boys.

Pre-boat tour.

My dudes.

Risking my life to touch a croc. Please note the awesome farmers tan. Love it.

Bird island. The red ones are male, white are female.

Walking across the border.

Dinner in Ecuador!

Plantain trees for days in Ecuador.

Mancora

And of course, photos purely for the eye:

Hope you enjoyed this post! Keep following for an update on this weeks projects! P.S. I may or may not have gone mosquito hunting. Makes you want to read my next post, eh? Ill be back soon!