It´s true. Both the sun and soul type. There are eight of us here- Alyse, Ian, Greg, Isha, Anne, Sarah, Robyn and myself. We are a good group. We all have strong personalities and by the grace of God, we all click (most of the time at least). The month of October made me finally realize how amazingly lucky I am to have such a good group of friends supporting me here throughout my journey (don’t worry Kris, Chris, Babs, Annie and Katie you´re all included too- you just don’t live up here).
So yeah September and October were crazy months. Most notably, I was robbed in a moderately ugly way. I have been robbed before- and I´m not talking about being pick-pocketed. But for some reason this robbery two Sundays ago left me very shaken. Maybe it was because I was robbed in plain sight of ten of my townspeople and not ONE stepped in to help me. Maybe it was because four men jumped me completely out of the blue. Maybe it’s just because I felt so alone crying on the sidewalk and asked a man with 7 cents in my hand to take me home. Either way, the day afterwards I was down in the dumps and almost wishing a giant natural diaster would wipe out Tumbes and all of the chorros with it. I was lacking a cell phone, so calling someone wasn´t really possible. However I did manage to send an email via to the closest volunteer to my site. Within HOURS I got a surprise from both Robyn and Alyse, with Robyn bringing her boyfriend Ryan along and an awesome package of sour patch kids and Alyse bringing me a bouquet of flowers. It only got better with time and while I won’t go into details, I ended up with so many check up phone calls, a loaf of banana bread, a machete, and a Tumbes departamental flag. Talk about a support network. Thanks to them, I never once thought about going home at that point and I still don’t now. (P.S. anyone reading this blog just know that I am FINE and okay and not hurt). This unfortunately happens.
So yeah that was great and after I managed to devour the pack of sour patch kids, it was the end of October and we had to think about Halloween and saying goodbye to Robyn and Sarah (they are finishing their two years of service). While I like Halloween, I hadn’t really given a lot of thought to how I would spend Sunday night. Fortunately for me, Alyse was on it. We all spent the night in a hostel that Alyse decorated with cotton spider webs, black plastic spiders and black and orange balloons ( I have no idea where she found all of this considering Peru doesn’t really celebrate Halloween). We made a bonfire, roasted stuffed green peppers, made s´mores, ate popcorn balls and worms in dirt (you know, gummy worms, pudding and Oreos) and had a genuinely great time. Well at least, I did.
Basically what I´m trying to say is that while Robyn and Sarah are leaving this week, I will be really sad to see them go. They have both been such an inspiration to me throughout my time here. I have gotten very comfortable with our group and I can only hope that the new volunteers that will be arriving here in the end of November will be just as awesome. Long live Doombes!
No comments:
Post a Comment