Everything has been really busy. On the work side of things, I finished up my time in the parasitology lab this week, so Monday I will be starting in tuberculosis! I am a bit sad to be leaving parasitology, but I met with the TB doctor on Thursday to discuss what I’ll be working on in that lab and it sounds really great. So, I am looking forward to that! Besides, the TB lab is only about a two minute walk from the parasitology lab, so the people I worked with in parasitology said I have to come back to visit them often.
Yesterday was a feriado (holiday), so we didn’t work. A couple volunteers from Australia arrived at my house late Wednesday night and will be staying with us for three weeks. I spent most of yesterday showing them around Lima. Then, last night I met up with my work friends because we wanted to show the two students from México that just arrived to work at Cayetano around Barranco, which is the district of Lima in which I live. Neither of the them speak any English, which is actually a good thing because it forces me to use only Spanish without replying on English when I’m having a hard time explaining something complicated in Spanish.
A couple weekends ago, I traveled to Lunahuaná with three friends from work (one from Argentina, one from India, and one from Switzerland). Lunahuaná is a very small town about two and a half hours south of Lima. We went white water rafting and 4-wheeling. Both were a lot of fun!
Lima is located right on the western coast of South America, so it has beaches on the shore of the Pacific Ocean.
A couple of my friends wanted to try their hands at surfing, so on Saturday we took a trip down to the beach.
They seemed to have a lot of fun while another friend and I watched from the shore!
One other bit of culture: the title of this post, translated “Two suns can’t shine together in the same sky,” is a quote from a movie call Las Malas Intenciones (Bad Intentions). This film takes place in Perú in the early 1980s and is told from the perspective a little girl who finds herself growing up in a time of great turmoil, both personal and national. During that time, Perú was suffering from terrorist acts by groups such as El Sendero Luminoso (The Shining Path). Anyways, it’s a great film that gives some really good perspectives of Peruvian history, life, and culture, so if you have a chance to watch it, I highly recommend doing so! Nos vemos!
