Right now its about 9:30 pm and I have a flight tomorrow morning at 6 AM, which means I have to get up at 3 to get to the airport on time. I should be packing seeing as my clothes are sprawling across the couch and my air mattress that has been my home for the last few nights, but instead I choose to write my first blog post of my new adventures in Peru. Why did it take me so long to write my first post? Lets just say that I've regretfully become a bit jaded, and frankly haven't felt the desire to broadcast my life on the world wide web. But tonight is the night that I finally got the upper hand...
It all started on my plane flight from DFW to Lima. I'm working with Liahona Children's Foundation again, but this time there are BYU interns that are also helping with the projects. I'm in sort of a accessory position to the interns because I know the area and the foundation, so I help them with their respective projects. But I digress, It all started on the flight. After we board the plane we were told that the fuel gage wasn't working properly, so we would need to wait to take another plane. That was all fine and dandy, I actually enjoyed the chance to eat some decent Texas BBQ. But that also meant that we would arrive in Lima around 4:00 AM, and we had to work the next afternoon.
Thats how it started. The following events included my debit card being eaten by the ATM machine with no possible way to get it back, almost following through a tin roof (that one was my fault for sure), missing busses because of schedules and not booking in advance, missing a screening entirely (that happened today, but is a story for another time), having my passport stolen, and sitting through endless hours of Lima traffic just hoping to get somewhere eventually.
My list is not exhaustive, but in all honesty none of the individual events really were that big of a mental/psychological blow. Most of the time it didn't really effect me that much. But I think a combination of the stress of setting up screenings, taking care of interns, and all of these events was creating somewhat of a dark cloud hovering over me. Not the good kind that keeps Moses from sweating too much in the desert, but the gloomy one that looks like its always going to rain. But tonight the tables have turned.
The last couple of nights I have been sleeping on my air mattress on the floor of a lady in Lima's living room. I prefer to be here than in the cramped bedroom of the interns, but there is this pestering clock that every hour on the hour plays a song then chimes bells for the number of hours that were completed. Its not the classy grandfather clocks, but rather a cheap K-Mart throwaway that has shrieking speakers and a song that is longer than anyone would care to listen to. The last few nights the clock woke me up every hour. Needless to say I don't appreciate Latin home decorations. Well, as I was packing up my stuff the clock did its thing again. My frustration plumed and I decided to take a look at the thing. I had never examined it before, but upon casual examination I noticed how easy it would be to take a battery out, thus putting the clock out of its misery until its owner noticed that the time was no longer accurate. By the time she noticed that I would be hundreds of miles away. My plan was flawless.
I looked around, and finding no one in sight I lowered the clock and tried to dislodge a battery just enough to stop the current. I ended up pulling the battery all the way out and it fell to the floor. For a moment I considered picking it up and trying to lodge it back into the clock in order to hide any evidence that it had been tampered with. Then I realized that I really didn't care if they knew that I tampered with it. I left the battery where it was and hung the clock back up, feeling for the first time in a month that I had come out on top, I was a champion.
