Getting ready to leave Huancayo

I've been meaning to write a new entry all this week. I was first planning on writing an entry on Monday about my trip to La Merced, a much more jungle-y area of Perú, to visit a couple of friends last weekend. I didn't get around to that, so then I was going to write about the farewell that my host parents and Hannah's host family had for us on Monday evening, complete with a cake and everything. But, once again, I didn't get around to that either.

This week is my last week here in Huancayo, and so far it's also been the busiest. First off, early this week I was dealing with trying to figure out what classes I am going to take next school year, and then signing up for them online before all the first-years are able to. That process was made all the more difficult by the fact that my only communication with Goshen, and my advisors, has been via email. Yet, after many trips to internet cafés checking for updates from Goshen, I got my schedule all worked out.

With just a few days remaining here in Huancayo, I've also be hurriedly finishing up last-minute things that I need to get done before I head back to Lima. I had to buy a bus ticket for Saturday to get back to Lima. I've been starting to pack up my bags - a task made a little more difficult by the gifts that I have purchased here in Huancayo for people back in the states. Today I also have one new, seemingly urgent, task - get a bunch of money and change it into Nuevo Soles before the exchange rate goes down even more. Since January I've watched the rate drop from 2.92 to about 2.73...and lately it seems that it's dropping almost daily. With Bernake's recent warning of a recession, I'm hoping that the exchange rate doesn't fall too much in my final couple of weeks here in Perú.

One of my biggest projects this week has been writing my paper for my final project, and beginning to prepare my presentation for retreat this weekend. I am scheduled to give my presentation first out of all the group on Sunday, so I'd better be ready.

With these various things going on, Hannah and I have also received another new project. This week we began teaching English classes at a school in a neighborhood called Saños Chaupi, about a 10 minute walk from the comedor in San Martin. After working at the comedor in the mornings, we head over to Saños Chaupi to teach English lessons from 2-3:30. We each have our own group of kids, I'm working with 4th-6th graders, and since it is actually in a school there is a little bit more structure to our lessons than in the comedor. However, only teaching one week of lessons means that we haven't been able to do much - I'm just trying to get my students to learn numbers, days of the week, months of the year, and some basic introduction phrases. One really positive thing is that the kids have a lot of energy, sometimes too much, and really want to study English. So I've been having a good time with them in class, yesterday we played a few games which made the session a lot of fun. I just wish we could have started this teaching project at the beginning of our service time, but a little bit here at the end is better than none.

So, as you can see, I've been pretty busy here this last week. I still can't believe that I'll be back in Lima and Callao on Saturday...and with all the activity I've been up to this week I haven't quite been able to comprehend the fact that I'll be leaving so soon. I've just been trying to spend some quality time with my host family - as I said they had a little farewell get together on Monday with cake and everything, and I've also gone out to eat a couple of times this week with my host parents. Today Hannah and I are going to here host family's house for lunch, where her mom his preparing a special meal for us. And tomorrow evening, our last in Huancayo, Hannah and I are taking both of our host family's out for a thank you/farewell dinner. I'm glad that our host families are giving us such a great goodbye, I can tell they'll miss us, and I know that I'll miss them. But until I leave, I still have some other things to keep me occupied, so I better get working.