End of the month, Leymebamba
Our activity has been winding down as we enjoy the stability of a home for a month. We haven’t been doing much except teaching, eating, reading, and (for me) plenty of cooking and crocheting. The weather has changed a bit and I think we are full into the rainy season. The sun is out at least every other day, but the temperature has dropped and we’ve had plenty of rain. At least the weather is cooperating with our lack of adventure. The classes are going well. Matt has lost most of his adult basic class, but his basic children’s class has doubled (due to our advertising at the school). My classes are pretty stable and we’re getting into more technical stuff in the advanced class (sentence structure, prepositions, irregular verbs…I had to relearn my 8th grade English class all over again.
Last week we were struck with a strong homesickness that was paired with both of us getting sick. Everyone in town is also sick, and they chalk it up to the change in climate, but I believe we’re all sick because after a big rainstorm, we lost running water for almost 2 days, and then randomly the water got shut off for hours while the main plaza was getting torn up to replace the water pipes. So being without water for over 24 hours is not fun (especially when we lost electricity a few times as well). You can’t flush the toilet, you can’t wash your hands, you can’t wash your produce. Did I ever mention there’s no hot water faucet? Forget about washing your dishes in hot, soapy water, ever. If I learned anything in my Safety and Sanitation class at school, it’s about the rampant spreading of fecal material that happens when ONE person doesn’t wash their hands. So I think we’re all sick because of hygiene and maybe a little bit because it got cold and rainy. But, I’ll happily take having a little head cold and stuffy nose over what I was experiencing in Huanchaco.
But we are definitely homesick and miss you all. The holidays will be hard this year, our first one away from any family except each other. I’m happy that at least we have a pseudo-family here to celebrate the holidays with and we are part of a community in this town. It would be a lot harder if we were on the road, totally alone.