A Mega Post

So it has been a few months but the blog is back in business once again. I don´t know exactly what happened but I kind of just got overwhelmed with everything that was going on and because there was so much to write about I just kind of stopped writing altogether (which I know wasn´t the smartest thing to do because now I have 300 times as much to catch you guys up on)
Ok, well to get started I´ll go by months to do a little catch up.
February and my last post--
The month of February was fantastic, I spent it traveling with my sister and a friend and it was crazy. Just a few of the highlights were holding a baby croc, getting eaten by mosquitoes while sitting by the tumbes river and staying with a local family in their house with kitchen made of sticks on the reserve of “Rica Playa” (which in fact wasn´t playa at at (playa is beach), going to a giant bubbling hot/mud springs in the middle of the night, being at a restaurant with my sister and both of us ordering Cuy (Guinea Pig--the Peruvian delicacy) so she would try it for the first time, meeting a shaman from the Amazon, visiting and learning about the amazing ruins of Chan Chan (largest adobe city) and the museum of el señor de sipan and all of incredible treasures found with him in his tomb, trying ice cream in every city we stopped at to see who had the best (cajamarca definitely one as they are famous for their cows--they have a place where every afternoon they have the "cow calling" where a guy calls the cows each by name to come in to feed), being in Cajamarca...my favorite place so far in Peru..it was beautiful and finally spending a lot of time hanging out at the beach--especially the last weekend of Carnival in Camana (the beach closest to Arequipa), playing beach volleyball every afternoon with my friends that live there, hanging on in the plaza at night eating Chifa and dancing in the discos on the weekend.
February also means Carnival!! The excuse to have water fights with squirt guns, balloons and buckets at anytime, with anyone, at any given place. It may be it a hot day at the beach with friends, or in the plaza at night with total strangers who just happen to walk up next to you and your friend and douse you with a soapy spray somewhat like our silly string. The majority of the time the fights caught me off guard and sent me and whoever I was with running to look for ammo to defend ourselves but the best times were when we did the initiating.
March! How fast this year is going! I’m sitting here writing about this in May and I have a little more than a month left and I cannot believe it. My friend who went on exchange to the states last year told me that after Christmas my year would take off and be over before I knew it and so I needed to make sure to enjoy it (and I have) but I can not begin to tell you how fast these past few months have gone by.
Ok, so March. March meant the beginning of classes once again at the University. This time I got the permission to study medicine with the first years and it was probably one of my best choices I’ve made. I liked tourism and all but medicine is a lot more for me. The kids in my group are awesome, we hang out in and out of the university (which I didn’t really do with the kids from tourism) and I’m actually learning a lot in my classes. I’m taking anatomia humana, bioquímica, citología and inglés médico and it’s a lot different this semester because I actually study and take tests...booo :P Anatomy is the hardest class but by far the coolest because we learn by cutting up cadavers. Each group has their own body and we start on the outside and take turns dissecting and taking quizzes after each section until we get to the bones. The first part of the semester we did the arm and now that we are in the second part of the semester we are doing the leg...I get to dissect the bottom part of the foot :) Neat, huh? The way that careers work here is a lot different than in the states and really different for medicine and so I’m glad I got the opportunity to experience it this way, I’m definitley learning a lot. The group I am with is awesome and I love them. It’s really cool the way things are because you are with the same people in all of your classes and so you have the opportunity to form a super tight bond with all of them. They teach and help each other study..they help me study :) and I dunno, but the way they work together is a lot different from the way I worked and the majority of the people work back home. It´s hard to explain but I like the way they do it here. It also has helped affirm my desire to continue studying medicine back in the states which I´m excited about.
April meant more school and more classes. Fun times with the Cachimbos (what they call first year students in the university) and a few fiestas with them. I started playing basketball again for El Club Internacional and so it was fun seeing my basketball teammates again after a long summer break. I went to Cotahuasi Canyon with my sister Susy, her friend from Australia and Kevin and Anika. Cotahuasi was amazing. It is the deepest canyon in the world (Peru has the first and second deepest, the second being Colca) but because is was just recently discovered the road to get to it is more than twelve hours, nine of which are unpaved and extremely bumpy and so thankfully it hasn´t been hit much by tourism which was one of the coolest parts about it. Pure and beautiful nature, zero tourists, it was wonderful. We hiked to a waterfall, went to hot springs, had menú for three soles (a dollar), had a really fun bus adventure back from the waterfall with my friend Anika (Holland) as there were so many people and animals on the bus (there was actually a poor pig strapped to the top too) that the driver while crossing a small river running through the road told us that if we want to live half of us needed to get out and cross on foot or that we might tip over. Cotahuasi was probably one of my second favorite spots in Peru and I´m glad I got the opportunity to go see it.

April also meant the Rotary District Conference. Oh how I love RYE! The conference this year was in Ica and I went up with Kevin (Canada) and some Rotarians from both of our clubs. We left on a Wednesday night and got into Ica early Thursday morning. It was fun because since we were traveling with adults we had to take the more expensive comfortable bus and boy was it luxury compared to what we were used to traveling in. It was like being in a plane, they give you food, you have big comfy seats that lay back and little footrests, they have safety instructions and you get to play a game of bingo for a free return ticket (Kevin and I were close to winning both times but sadly we didnt). So after arriving Thursday morning really early we had a few minutes to put down our bags and then we were off to Pisco and Paracas where we hopped on the last boat to go see Las Islas Ballestas which are know for their bird poop (seriously. they export it), birds of course, sea lions (little ones are so cute and the big machos are so huge) and penguins (my favorite). From there we took a tour of the national reserve, just Kevin, I and a Rotarian from my club and it was awesome. We ended up having a private tour and so could basically spend as much time we wanted in the spots we wanted. The reserve was crazy, it never rains there and the ground was pure salt, the road we went on was I don’t remember exactly, I’ll have to look but x number of km of salt. We stopped at some cool beaches, had a good lunch on the water and had a lot of fun time goofing off the car singing and rocking out to my mp3. How I am going to miss my crazy Kevin! Thursday night we escaped the Rotarians (with permission of course) to go to the plaza for pizza and then we caught 30 minutes of dancing in a disco we just happened to find before having to go back to the hotel. Friday was fun as the conference started and I met some of my new favorite exchangers. One guy from Ilo named Eric (US) and then I got to know my beautiful Brazilian girls, Gabi and Mari, from Arequipa better and I met one more guy from Brasil, Bruno, that I didn´t know before and we all had ourselves quite a time. We hooked up with the local Ica Rotaract Club (which is like Rotary for young people) and they showed us around Ica. We went to Huacachina which is an oasis surround by pure sand dunes in the desert which was incredible. It is the only oasis in all of South America. And probably one of the funnest things was racing around in the dunes in a giant sand buggy called a Tuber made for 8 people and stopping on the edges of huge dunes and sand boarding down them. It was suuuch and incredible experience, such a rush in the crazy dune buggy and the dunes are amazing. You are out in the middle of nowhere, in the dessert, there are zero plants--everything is just pure hills of sand as far as the eye can see and you just zoom up and down and over this dunes and get yanked and jerked around. It was like extreme rollercoaster riding. And then we made our way to the top of a dune and watched the sunset and then road back to the lagoon in the darkness with just the light from our buggy. We had to stop once to help someone change out tire and so I hopped out, plopped down and made a giant sand angel and then we laid there talking in the sand, stars above us, lights of the city within view...it was awesome. I swear I still have sand in my shoes those. We were covered from head to toe, ears, pockets and socks (jajaja I think it might have been from the brilliant idea Eric and I had of ditching the sand board on one dune and just rolling down without anything like little kids do on big grassy hills). Ica is also famous for their wine and pisco and so we went and took a tour a bodega with the kids from Rotaract. Also very cool. After that we went back to the hotel had the welcoming speech with the Rotarians and then later that night went dancing together in the discoteca that our hotel just happened to have. Saturday was wonderful, went swimming outside (Ica has beautiful weather even though we are in fall), played pool, ate lunch with the Rotarians, said a few words about our exchange in front of the Rotarians, made displays with a bunch of stuff from our countries, and in the night we had the big dinner party where we had to go dressed up and there was a band and everything. It was a lot of fun and later we went to the dicso again and were joined really late in the night by the some of the Rotarians who danced with us until really really late. Fun times. Sunday was good, relaxing. We finished up the conference stuff and the majority of the Rotarians took off. Kevin, Eric, Kris and I stayed back with two of our Rotarians and spent the night, heading off early in the morning to Nazca to see the famous Nazca lines. Nazca was also incredible, if you dont know what the Nazca lines are you should look them up, I´ll post some pictures with more of and explanation later but I’m running out of time right now. We got to go in a little four person plane to see them from up high and I got to steer and make everyone sick for a minute which was really fun :) After that we got to hang out in Nazca together until Kevin and I´s bus took off for Arequipa and had to say our goodbyes to our new friends. Hopefully Eric will be coming to Arequipa soon for a visit. The bus ride back was good, lots of sleeping, more bingo and then we were back in Arequipa after what was a really long and fun weekend.

That was the end of April and now we are into the month of May!

May! How insane!!! This month has been super fun in the university. We started los juegos de intercachimbos which are like mini olympics in between careers for the first year students. It all kicked off with a big opening ceremony where we all had matching t-shirts and I painted everyone’s faces from and we had balloons, signs, streamers and more than a kilo of confetti. Let’s just say we won. It was great fun (painting faces reminded me of football and Ike/Davis games which brought back a lot of good memories) and I think it really good for the med kids. They got to loosen up and have some fun since they do spend a ton of time studying.
And that my friends and family has been pretty much it. I basically just have been going to school, hanging out with my friends in between classes, going out for ceviche, hanging out downtown, dancing on the weekends, had two of my sisters birthday (Lucia in April, Mari this last Friday and mothers day yesterday). I’m enjoying being with my family and I’m super sad that I’m going to have to say goodbye to them, my friends and all the exchangers in a short while. My return tickets are set for June 26th so I’ll be arriving in Seattle on the 27th. I miss you guys all tons and I’m sorry that I haven’t really kept this thing as updated as I should have. Hope everyone is doing wonderful!
Love you all! Take care! And I’ll be posting pictures soon!
Chau chau
Un fuerte abrazo
Courtney