Thanksgiving in Peru

Lotti, Carla, Me, and Vittoria

After only three weeks in Peru, I have made friends with a few fun and free spirited people that have also volunteered at the home.  We have become so close, in fact, that we have decided to follow each other around the world after our work in the Hogar.

I think the only bad part about my trip, that I care to admit, would be the loneliness that overcomes me when I don’t have anyone to talk with.  I thought that being an only child would prepare me for being lonely, but it doesn’t prepare you for being in a world where you don’t speak the language and don’t blend with the customs.  During my first 2 weeks at the Hogar, I was working alongside anywhere from 2-4 other volunteers but I became worried that, once they left the home, I would be completely alone.  I developed a great relationship with every one of the volunteers and I found that just like me, they truly appreciated the work that they were doing at the Hogar.  Although the children and the staff in the house are kind and caring, it is difficult to communicate with them and it would have been a completely different environment without the volunteers.  It’s much easier to relate to people who are your equals and it is also nice to have people to vent to after a long week of work.

When I am working and volunteering, I feel like I have some sort of temporary family that I form.  Volunteers always find the time to stick together.  We eat dinner together, go out to shops, grab cups of coffee together.  I think I find solace in these moments where I hang out in groups because of how much time I will be traveling on my own.  When I am traveling alone, I find myself simply missing people to talk to.  This is the opposite of social anxiety, it’s un-social anxiety.  Being alone takes a toll on you in a different way, which is why I was so excited to wake up this past weekend and find that another volunteer had arrived!  And she did so just in time, as the only other two volunteers with me were leaving in a mere 48 hours.  Those two days made me so grateful for not being “alone” in the house.  As I said goodbye to Carla and Lotti, who headed off to travel through Bolivia and Peru, I anticipated our nearing reunion in Germany.  In the short time that I got to know Carla and Lotti, they managed to convince me to extend my travels to Hamburg, Germany where they both live.

I have realized that no matter how much of a planner I am, I still have an appreciation for spur of the moment decisions.  I really want to become the person who takes advantage of every opportunity given to me because it may not present itself again, so when Carla and Lotti proposed that I come to Germany, I bought tickets the next day.  I told myself that I may regret not visiting Hamburg while I would already be in Europe.  In a very cliché way, I realize, as I look around at the people who live in Peru, that many people in the world would never have the opportunity to leave the country let alone travel to multiple of them.  While I may have just been lucky to be born into a world where I have the opportunity to pause my life for 6 months and fly around the world, I feel obligated to seize this opportunity.
 
Also, despite the limits of my communication abilities in South America, I feel like I got dealt a good hand being born in a country that speaks English.  With it being a universal language, it feels like learning English as my native language is practically cheating.  In Europe, it is mandatory to learn English in primary school and in third world countries it is advantageous to have spent time learning it in primary and secondary school.  I think Americans should appreciate that we are not forced to learn another language (which I think is b.s.) and turn that appreciation into effort to learn another language.  I don’t propose that we learn other languages just because it would help us in our travels, although that would be an added bonus.  I think we should use another language to completely immerse ourselves in another culture and let it take on another facet of our lives.

- Nicole