The month of May
Life has been a little hectic this last month. It started off with my birthday celebration which included tacos, margaritas, and some hiking in Acobamba (a PC site about 10 minutes from me). I felt the love from my other volunteers and the people I work with. Soon after the evacuated volunteers from the coast made their way back to Peru and Junín gained 3 wonderful volunteers, two were sent up to the high selva and the other is my new neighbor. Surprisingly, to myself and the other volunteers, I went on a getaway to San Ramon and got to relax by the pool. San Ramon is the central jungle, only an hour and a half from my site, and luckily the home of one of my closest friends Trent. We enjoyed ourselves and I can’t wait to go back.
Not all of May has been spent relaxing and having fun, it has probably been my most successful month work wise. I am currently teaching four days out of the week- I am teaching two English classes (one for people in the community and the other is an official class with the English teachers in my province) and a business entrepreneurship class. Also, this upcoming weekend I am starting an income generating workshop with a group of women, where I will teach them business basics and hopefully empower them to start their own mini-businesses.
I also checked off a big bucket list item this past weekend when I ran my first real race, the Lima half marathon. Things were going great until my knee started acting up around mile 3, but I suffered through the remaining 10 miles. I managed to finish in my goal time, which really wasn’t a challenge BUT I still did it. After finishing, I cheered on two Junín volunteers that were doing the full marathon. We celebrated after by going to get tacos and margaritas, followed by a few hours of rest until we hit the streets again. Our next stop was my favorite Lima brewery Barbarian, where I got myself a sour beer. (Don’t worry 3Taverns, you still my fav).