I was almost surreal when I hoped on the plane heading for Lima to go meet them. It had been 10 months since I had seen them. Although we get to talk all the time, I have never been seperated from my family for that long. At first when I got to Peru all I wanted was for them to be with me. However, after 10 months I have established a life here, and it just felt really strange that in a short amount of time they were about to see it and be apart of it.
I got to Lima much earlier then them, so I checked into the hotel and enjoyed a nice hot shower and some pizza hut while I waited to go back to the airport to pick them up. Once at the airport I realized it would probably take them awhile to get off the plan and out of customs, it just ended up being much more time then I anticipated. I was so anxious, and there were so many crowds in the airport waiting for their loved ones too. Finally after getting pushed further and further away from the ropes, I went to the second floor so I would get a better look when they came through. The first person I saw was Alex, he had anticipated I would be up there looking down, so I ran to give him a huge hug. Then my parents came out a few minutes later. That was a moment I had long awaited for. Very emotional, but happy emotional. We had talked about that moment for a really long time. Then, I noticed the ridiculous amount of luggage they brought. My Dad had been telling me for weeks how they were planning on packing light. From what I saw, it was just the opposite!!!! I knew they brought some things for me, and some things for my host family. But WOW!
After so much preparing and planning it all seemed to go really well. I tried to take it easy on them, because I knew there would be point that it became a little more difficult (my site!). So we spent the first few days at a really nice hotel sitting on a cliff overlooking the ocean. Lima has become a place I look forward to going too because it's like being back in a little mini-america. There we are in a city that resembles any other city I have ever visited, with American restaurants, stylish people and all the other small things I sometimes miss about home. We did lots of shopping in the artesians market, and Mom bought everyone she knows a gift. But I realized, once I was sitting in Chilis with my family eating a hamburger that they didn't come to Peru to do everything they did in America, so after a few days there seeing the sites, I and them were ready to move on. Plus, Lima is really ugly and cold this time of year, like London, and they didn't come on vacation to wear jackets.
The next part of our big adventure was going to be the overnight bus trip to Piura, this trip can usually be anywhere from 14-16 hours. I don't have to do it often, but I have become acustomed to traveling this way. I was really worried about my family doing it, just because I knew they probably wouldn't like it. So I bought the best seats the bus line had to offer in hopes I could make them as comfortable as possible. Fortunately, it worked! They all absolutely loved the bus ride, they thought it was really cool and much nicer then they expected. Even more so, my Dad liked that it meant no paying for a hotel or meals for the night because we also got dinner and breakfast on the bus.
The other part, that I knew would happen was in that overnight bus ride we would quickly leave my little America part of Peru and head out to a place that looked drastically different then they were used to, this part I was most excited for. In the morning when we woke up, there were no more city buildings, instead we were in Chiclayo, a town in Northern Peru, about 6 hours south of where I live. The first thing Alex said was how it reminded him of Ramadi, one of the places he visited during his deployments to Iraq. He said the buildings and the sandy dirty town was identical.
Once we arrived in Piura after the 16 hour trip, everyone was excited to get off the bus, mostly because after a night of traveling the bathrooms had become really disgusting and my Mom and Dad were grossed out and ready to move on. The bus station is located on a strip in Piura where there is nothing but bus stations and the market, it is not the safest part of town, and it is definitely farthest from the prettiest part of town. They said how it reminded them of something they would see on a travel show. Just pure craziness. My Mom took lots of pictures while we piled into two tiny taxis headed or our hotel. All of this was making me nervous. I am so used to doing all of these exact same things alone. I have gotten accostumed to making sure I keep a close eye on my things and I know the language and feel comfortable enought to get around. But doing it with people who don't know a word of Spanish and weren't taking me seriously enough on some of the safey issues made me a little nervous. Same with splitting up in taxi's...I just hoped my Dad and Alex ended up at the same place. They did, however, they said they believed their taxi driver was yelling about the constuction or something the whole time.
Our stay in Piura city was only for the night, we went and got laundry done, relaxed by the pool, went to one of my favorite spots for dinner. I even took them to the market, which I think was the most stressful part of the trip for me. The market is a disgusting dirty place filled with tons and tons of vendors. At the market you can buy almost anything you could ever even think of. However the market is dangerous. I have witnessed a friend get robbed a foot away from me and have had more friends get robbed there, one even had her earrings stolen right out of her ears. For those reasons, as well as the crowds I just hate being there. On the other hand, my family loved it! They loved seeing how it all works and just the craziness of it. I was able to get them out of there after I took them to the meat section and they saw the many many animals that were gutted and hung all over the place, the smells the flies and all of that made them ready to leave.
The next morning I knew the "real adventure" was about to begin. I was going to be taking my family to my site. Every part of the visiting my site experience is truely an experience. We first headed over to the bus station. Normally I might pass on one of the really really nasty buses, especially in the summer when it's really hot, because normally the seats are really small and it's hard to get comfortable when you are crammed into the seat with someone else, and it is kind of a long ride. But on this particular day, with all of our luggage, there wasn't room to be picky, we took the bus that was waiting. It was kind of fun, it added more to the experience. We sat in the back. My parents were actually in the seat behind Alex and I that fits 5 people because it goes across the entire back of the bus. My Mom unfortunately was on the end that meant she had to sit next to someone else, and with her luck it was a smelly person. Alex and I were smooshed into the seat in front of them. Depending on the day, it can be a 3 hour ride. However, my family saw how quickly the city of Piura faded into rural towns that all look exactly alike. Once we reached Las Lomas, we switched all of our luggage into a taxi. I found a taxi driver who agreed to take the 4 of us an no one else because normally that means one of us would have to share the front seat with someone else, and I don't think anyone was willing to do that.
The trip to my site is about a 30-45 minute ride, and it's a really really bumpy rocky road. It was so hilarious having them make the trip with me. I have gotten so used to it, at points I even fall asleep. But seeing their expressions reminded me of the first times I had made that trip. There are parts where the car goes through water and sometimes it even gets into the car, and they worried about it the same way I did my first time around. Fortunately in all the parts that are the most interesting people were out putting on their usual show. At the part where the water gets in the car, there was a guy cleaning out his truck engine in his underwear, it was a beautiful day so when we got to the lake it looked amazing, and the taxi drivers always drive like maniacs so they got to experience that too.
At one point, when we were getting closer into my town, my brother said "Jillian...Iraq has got it going on compared to here", I think that was the most surprising statement of the entire trip. His deployments in Iraq sounded absolutely horrible. But he said they had it more together over there. He said my town looked like it was poorly built and people just throw things together. He said it looked really really rough. I was shocked!
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