Te Veo Diferente

"¡Te veo diferente!"  (or, "You look different!").  That's what I heard from a couple people in my municipality today, my first full day back in site since my trip to America for Christmas and New Years.  Well, Milagros actually said something like "¡Te veo mas gordita!" (or, "I see you got fatter!") but we'll pretend that never happened.

I did cut my hair, paint my nails, and the skirt that today's heat necessitated is pretty unflattering to my figure (and ok, I ate a lot of Christmas cookies!) but maybe they were seeing something less superficial.  Adolfo went so far as to say that I had looked tired before I left, but that I look much better now.  My trip home was not only really fun, but very refreshing.

First, that whole Greg-meeting-my-family part was not only NOT a disaster, it was barely even stressful.  Victory!  That left me free to enjoy seeing my parents and brothers and other family and friends (finally!).  Even though I had plenty of time to sleep in and several days to just relax, I feel like the time flew by and I don't know that I have fully processed being back in Peru just yet, but I think the vacation "worked".  Going into it, I tried not to have expectations that just seeing my family again would magically "fix" all that has been wrong with my Peace Corps service, and I don't think I did.  But I was hoping to come back with more ganas to get myself out there and accomplish things, and I'm hopeful that expectation was fulfilled.

Just today, my trip to the municipality ended with me talking (briefly) on the radio about vacaciones utiles (summer school, they're on break now) and agreeing to teach a basic computer class to High School kids Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.  Well, really I should give Kaysi (my super-awesome new sitemate) credit for both of those, as they were both her ideas—go Kaysi!  I also spent lots of time on the phone trying to plan a trip for other volunteers to Viru's reputedly kick-ass waterfall, and made plans to go to San Jose tomorrow with the trash collection—although no one at the community-wide meeting before I left volunteered to be on the new Comite de Limpieza Publica that needs to be elected ASAP, apparently since then a few shy people have spoken up and said that they would like to help, so cross your fingers! 

And Wednesday, I'm going to Puente Morin, also with the trash collection peeps, to see about cleaning up the beach front.  I'm most likely going to be picking up garbage, but how awesome would it be to do a project that requires frequent trips to the ocean?  I have never actually been to this particular beach, but it's close-ish to my site, and Kaysi went last weekend and tells me that while it is really beautiful, there is a lot of pretty gross trash (well crap Kaysi, I just can't take credit for any of the progress I made today, can I?! hehe).

All in all, today was much more productive than I expected, and while I still secretly want to steal Greg's super-awesome job at WindAid, I'm feeling pretty good about being back.  Maybe I'm not entirely cut out for this Peace Corps business, but I'm wiggling into that space anyway.

Maybe I'll fit better if I work out more.  Time for some sit-ups!  Peace!