So, along with the rest of the volunteers from my training group, we all met in Lima for a week of medical appointments, meetings, trainings, and presentations. It had been nearly nine months since I've seen most of these folks, and it was a great pleasure to play catchup.
Thinking back, one year ago, we were all still in training, we had so many questions, and were filled with curiosities. Now, at the one-year marker, we were approaching veteran status...and some of us were looking awfully grizzled.
So, together again, we celebrated. We sat through the meetings, the presentations, and we all had our check-ups. It was really nice to see so many familiar faces again. More so, it was a pleasure to hear about how everybody else is doing in their own respective parts of the country.
Even though we are all serving in Peace Corps in the same country, our experiences differ immensely. Our living arrangements and environments vary greatly, we steer different projects, and we cope with distinct successes and failures. Nonetheless, we've all made it to the one-year marker in our service. And, unfortunately, the next time (and most likely the last time) we will all be together again sharing experiences won't be until the end of May of 2009 when we have our Close of Service Conferences.
I stuck around Lima a day later than the rest of my group so that I could meet up with a friend who had come to visit all the way from Germany. Will is a good friend of mine who I met in college. We've shared some great adventures in the past; and this was another to add to the list. About a month before I left for the Peace Corps, I flew to Germany to visit with him for a couple weeks and travel around a bit. Now, it was my turn to play the ex-patriot host for an old friend.
I was thrilled not only to hangout and catchup with a good friend, but also to share my life down here with somebody from back home. Often times, home feels farther away than the map conveys. It's like I have a past life floating around somewhere out there, lingering. However, the visit from Will kind of brought the two lives together. His vist brought my past to present; as well as a sense of being home.
His only objective while in Peru was to see what I'm up to down here. So, that's what we did. I quickly showed him around Lima a bit before we caught the overnight bus to my department's capital. Since the city rests at just under two miles above sea level, we reserved a couple of days to let him acclimate. Then, we were up and moving. We went out to the pre-Incan ruins of Chavin, crawling through caverns and watching the llamas. We spent a few days in my site where he got a taste of my life, my projects, and what it's like to be a Peace Corps Volunteer in Peru's sierra. It was quite amusing to see my friend so engaged in the oddities to which I have become so accustom. Of course, one of his ambitions was to eat some cuy (guinea pig), which, fortunately for him, is a traditional dish in these parts.
We successfully accomplished this undertaking in a way that few visitors to Peru could. After a couple days of hiking and camping in the high altitudes just bellow the glaciers, we hiked to the house of a fellow volunteer in the area where his Quechua speaking host-mother cooked up a cuy she had raised herself over a eucalyptus wood fire. Honestly, it doesn't get much more traditional...or delicious than that.
In the end, I have no doubt that my buddy enjoyed himself. However, I'm quite sure that I rhapsodize about his visit more than he does. That visit meant a great deal to me. It was very refreshing to get be in contact with somebody from my past. In fact, I'm quite certain that anybody would appreciate a cordial visit from an old friend; no matter their current whereabouts, happenings, or living conditions. That said, I strongly urge you to send that email, or make that phone call you've been procrastinating on. Whoever may be on the receiving end will surely appreciate it. It's only too late when you no longer have the chance to do it.
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