San Juan in Style

I´m still alive despite some popular disbelief! I wasn´t sure how well I´d take the seperation from Steph, my bolivian sister and compañera, but so far, 2 days later Í´m still kicking and I´ll bet she is too.

Ive been transitioning into FSD-life since Friday at 12 noon. I packed up my room after my last language lesson at Runawasi and Jaime, my 17 year old brother, called me a cab. I was saddened that he was the only one i got the chance to properly say goodbye to, since i had to leave before anyone had returned for lunch. I shared lunch together with the other FSD participants and we have since spent more time getting to know one another. We´ve begun orientation talks and yesterday we went out to the country until today to celebrate the holiday, San Juan.

It was lovely, and naturally out of my ability for comprehension...walking through a forest and seeing old rock walls, hearing donkeys brea, and spotting lovely old women kneeling in the midst of fields of flowers, picking delicately and with purpose.

i´m finally going to be putting up pictures for you to see, however of course, this will take my jump drive cooperating with me, and things will be delayed until i can discover the root of the problem.

I´m experienceing a resurgence of culture shock in this group of mostly Americans, strugglying to reconfigure my needs and expectations as i unconciously measure my Spanish abilities with each persons. We´re all incredibly different people and I´m intrigued to see how things continue to progress for each one of us as we ask ourselves, "What is development?" and "Why am I here?"

in hope, chau,
amy