It's over...

" 'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,

be it ever so humble,

there's no place like home."

 

Thanks for everything - for reading this little site, for thinking of me, and for praying for me. The grace of God and your prayers got me to Peru, through all the adventures in Peru, and back home again.  Thank you, and Dios te bendiga! 

The Last of the Lake

We spent the first day and a half boating to different islands and hiking around on them... we felt we'd earned a day on the boat to nap in the sun. 

For some reason all the women and girls in the vicinity of the lake combined the brightest, fullest skirts I'd seen yet in Peru with long black head covering cloths, supposedly to keep off the sun.

And of course, following the three hour nap in the sun, we had a picnic. Bread, avocado, fruit, and chocolate. Perfect!
A random pretty archway. 

Lake Titicaca and the Island Tequile

New York City: 6302 kilometers, 3915 miles, away from the Island Tequile on Lake Titicaca.

Some mountains in Bolivia

The water was so blue!

Fishing is the livelihood of the Urus.

What is a Floating Island?

One of the biggest tourist attractions of Lake Titicaca for once happens to correspond with a pretty genuine way of rural life for the locals - the Floating Islands. At first I thought that these Islands were all natural, and the locals had just decided one day to float around a big lake on a natural wonder as a way of life. But I was actually very surprised by the culture we found on these Urus Islands. 

About twenty minutes off shore by motorboat, we hit a huge shallow section of the lake that is filled with reeds and natural islands, and is "preserved" as a natural habitat for dozens of bird and fish species. It turns out that hundreds of years ago, the locals figured out that the roots of these plants produce a gas that keeps them afloat in the water, even under heavy weight and pressure. Because of the strength of the plant roots, the huge blocks of dirt that the plants grow in are not eroded by the water, nor does it weight the plant down whatsoever. No matter what, this plant, and anything attached to it, floats. With that knowledge, the people started building their own islands out of these things - they cut out huge bricks of mud and plant roots, group them together in bundles of four, put a stick in each block of dirt, and rope them all together with a piece of rope or string. They do this until they have built a floating platform able to house 8 to ten families, and then they cover this platform with cut reeds from the natural islands, layering these reeds until they're several feet thick and the dirt blocks underneath are completely submerged. On top of this sturdy little island they start building houses, kitchens, communal areas and fires, and all of a sudden, you have your own little isolated community!

The problem with floating islands is that, obviously, since they are floating, they tend to float away from each other. The prospect of always waking up in a new place may seem exciting, but in order to have any kind of consistently larger community, they started building several groups of little islands, loosely roping everything together under the water. The result? Urus, the large, thriving group of islands that we visited. They had an island for a market, an island for a school, an island for a restroom (which they periodically burnt and rebuilt), an island for a graveyard, and then a million little surrounding islands of small neighborhoods. Each people-group island had it's own name, with a large tower built which served as a means of communication - if you had anything to say to a neighboring island, you could shout from one island to another, wave your arms in hand signals, or use some type of smoke signals.

The funny thing about these islands was their adaptability. The houses were light and made out of reeds, with neither foundations nor any kind of weight to keep them down. If two families were especially close, they would face their kitchens and houses towards each other. If they got angry with each other, however, they would pick up their houses and turn them around, so that they were facing their backs to each other. And if the argument was really bad, you had two options: pick up your house, put it on a boat and float to a different island; or you could cut the island in two and float away from each other into two separate little islands. The second option was much more difficult, however, because cutting through four or five feet of reeds and then through another 3 and a half feet of solid dirt was pretty difficult. 

I finished enthusiastically explaining all this and much more to my Mom the other day while I was showing her some pictures, quite thrilled about this creative little people group who had built their own floating islands out of reeds for centuries, and she said,

"Huh. Why do they do that? Why do they build islands, instead of just living on the shore like everyone else?"

And I have no idea. 

The Floating Islands of Lake Titicaca

The base of a reed plant: they build their houses, their villages, their boats, and their islands out of this one plant... and it serves a major food staple.
One island = ten or so families.


A floating store

Random Daily Life

Courtyard/Laundry Room/Garden of my house.

Two of my sisters on the left, and my host Mom on the right; in my sister Veronica's (far left) house.
My house! My sister Tatiana owned and operated a dentists office from our home; hence the large blue sign on top.
Here's the llama I pass by every day on my way to school... he's usually just chillin' in the grassy area at the base of a statue in the middle of the road. I never really figured out why he was there... 
All of us girls, on the last day of school.

My Peruvian Family

These are some pictures from our Thanksgiving dinner that we celebrated at the ProPeru Office. It was a huge event, with every student (there are eight of us) and her entire family, usually including some extended family too. They cooked a turkey, we had mashed potatoes, and then a whole bunch of dishes that were some blend of Peruvian and American - usually including potatoes and rice. It was very delicious, and really good because I was pretty sad to miss the normal celebrations of Thanksgiving in the U.S. It made the day into something new and exciting, and now I treasure the experience of celebrating Thanksgiving in Peru. It made for a weird blend of emotions: Heightened gratitude for the things we enjoy in the U.S. which the rest of the world does not have; a strong sense of unworthiness for being born into that privilege when soooo many other are not; and homesickness. We have SO much to be thankful for. 

And I pray that you all had an absolutely wonderful Thanksgiving, full of blessings and relaxing and football and food!

The Kiarita! She is my Peruvian niece, turns 9 months old today, and is quite the bundle of energy. She spends every morning at our house while her Mom works, and for that entire time is doted upon like no other. She is going to be one spoiled child! But oh, is she cute. (Her name is actually Kiara... they just add diminutives onto everything.)

Sleeping Kiara...
This is my Spanish class - Emily, our professor Karina, me, and Allie. A very small class, but we spent so much time with our professor that we got to know her very well. And thanks to her patient and persistent guidance, we have grown leaps and bounds in our language capabilities.My host Dad, Atilio; and Lauren. Lauren is another international student that works out to be my niece, because she is living with Atilio and Nora's (my host parents) son and daughter-in-law.
I finally got them in one place, feeling dressed up enough for a picture. Left to right, Paula (in the corner) is my host sister who doesn't live at home anymore; she's Lauren's Mom. Then is Tatiana, my host sister who does live at home and runs a dentists office out of our house. She's really cool - she dotes on her nieces like I've never seen, and is a blast to hang out with. She loves volleyball (and is very good at it), so we play together on the weekends sometimes. Then is Carmen, also my niece. Next is Nora, my host Mom - I couldn't have asked for a better temporary mother. She is a sweetheart, and an incredible cook. Then me, then Atilio - my host Dad. He is absolutely hilarious, claims to speak about six languages but really only knows one, spends hours talking to me to improve my spanish, and knows how to say "I want drink beer" and "you are my queen" in english. lol We have fun. :)

All in all, God has blessed me tremendously with this Peruvian family to take me in when I'm so far from my own family. They send you all their greetings quite frequently, and want to know all about you. I wish, sometimes, that all the people I know in all the different little 'worlds' of my life, like Peru, Grand Junction, Fort Collins, and fire could all mix somehow so that I could be with them all at once. But that's asking a lot I guess.

I hope that this holiday season, you are all enjoying spending time with your own families, and counting the many  blessings that you have in them. I can't wait to see you all in a little over a week. God bless!

p.s. I realized halfway through the night that my camera was on the wrong setting, which is why most of them are rather blurry. Sorry if you got a headache or something while looking at them! Hopefully I'll have more clear ones later.