Sunday, June 10^th, 2012

    "So here I am, sitting on the floor of a house with yellow-flowered tile walls snuggled on a little street in Lima, Peru.  Strewn about me are eight suitcases and one backpack, half of whose contents have been dumped out as we try to re-pack for Iquitos.

Now, you're probably wondering what on earth a girl like me is doing on the other side of the equator.  To be honest, I have that same question, but I am very, very pleased to admit that it's because I have a daddy who doesn't allow books to pass as the best way to learn about this world.  And then adding the fact that he served an LDS mission in Peru, it didn't take long for dreams to become reality.
    Alright, maybe it did.  We've been waiting for this day for months, arranging flights and booking hotels and even gathering donations from various sources {which is my explanation for the behemothic amount of luggage- I swear, people are too nice for their own good.  Any day know the hinges on the door are just going to fall off from the amount of times we had to answer it for those dropping off clothing and toys, many of which still wore price tags and the smell of the rack.  There was so much that anyone who dared lift the suitcases carrying these generosities with have lifelong back problems.}.  Time dragged on forever with school, and by the time summer came I still had an online class to finish as well as Trek.  And then yesterday morning was Eric's baptism.

We watched him become pure as he stepped into the font and plunged beneath the water, then received the gift of the Holy Ghost.  That kid is so little {you should've seen the look on his face when he said, "That suitcase weighs more than me!} but he is filled with enough love and fun that it makes up for his size times a thousand.
    But anyway, the clock struck eleven thirty, and all of a sudden we were on our way to the airport.  Legitimately driving up to the biggest adventure of our lives.

It was an hour wait from Phoenix to LA, and then a nine-hour layover.
    One thing that I absolutely ♥ about summer is that a lack of school lends the time to read just about anything. So we purchased the whole Great and Terrible series, which is politically & religiously intelligent, beautifully written, thought-provocingly inspirational, and simply unputdownable.

But no matter how much of a bookworm you are, you just can't sit at an airport for nine hours.  So we rented a car drove to Venice Beach since Hollywood was too far {but hey!  We saw two celebrities that day anyway- Larry Fitzgerald and the actor of Grumpy in Once Upon a Time- or at least we think we did...}

  Dad said that he had been to Venice Beach one before when he was in high school, and we all agreed afterwards that going there again was not something on our bucket lists.  It was cool to see something different, with all the shops lined up on the ocean and people doing tricks for money.  But I didn't love the feel of being catcalled to by full-grown men, or the foul language and nude pictures that seemed attracted to the place like a magnet.  And you can only pass by so many "medical marijuana" stores before you want to say in the syrupy-sweetest voice to the next guy that tries to invite you in, "Oh, I'm sorry!  Did you look at me and think I wanted to ruin my life?" 
    We returned to the airport for an all-night flight.  Sleeping on a plane will never be an easy or enjoyable thing for me to do on a plane, but I've experienced worse, so there's no complaining.  {Oh, man, there's no complaining when you can cross great distances in such short time, especially after Trek.}  And then we stepped back onto land, and it finally hit me that we were no longer in the U.S.  We were foreigners!  Of course, everything was in Spanish, and I realized that even two years of studying the language is not a lot.  I'm just glad that Dad is fluent, and I'm often able to understand the gist of what's being said in a conversation.  Anyway, we got a taxi and then headed into the city.  It was much different than I expected, though I don't know what I expected.  Everywhere buildings lined up, old smothered in either U.S.-originated billboards or graffiti, and is it a surprise that people kept staring at us white people?  The minute the vehicle came to a stop because of traffic, and old man rushed into the street and started trying to clean the car windows for money.  We were dropped off at Brent's house in Mira Flores, the rich part of town.  Brent actually lives in San Fransisco and has known Dad since he was three.  He just goes to Lima a lot for work and stays here.  We aren't staying here right now, though, because we are going to Iquitos.  I've caught up to where I was at the beginning, packing just what I need for five days in the jungle.