Hello all, I'm sitting at work here and can't focus so I guess I'll write a little entry. Work has been so far so good still, except they don't really have enough for Talitha (the other public security intern) and I to work on. We have been working on a project thoroughly researching firearms prevalence and use in Latin American schools, in order to prepare a preliminary report on the issue and what countries have done to combat it. It is really interesting because everyone has the impression that only the US has that problem, however, it really exists a lot down here, just in a really different sense. More in the sense that they are often in an insecure environment and have guns to protect themselves on their way home from school or use them to get their way with other kids. Anyway, it's also really depressing, and I can't sit and research incidents and policies on this issue for more than 2 hours a day without being tired of it. What I'm slowly starting to learn is that I think I need a job in which I can interact with people...and not just in terms of a partner who I can do research with. I'm also excited for them to actually get us involved in more than just research...and I think we'll get to sit in on our center's training courses for public security sectors of Peru on the illicit trafficking of firearms in November.

Fortunately, I start tomorrow volunteering, and will go every weekend I am available, in the community of Huaycán, a pueblo joven in Ate-Vitarte. Here is a nice little article that briefly mentions it. I am really looking forward to teaching English and interacting with some children there! It will take me about an hour and a half on two separate combis, but yes, it's still in Lima metropolitano.

Maybe it will give me something to bring my mind present to the here and now in Peru. Unfortunately, after moving from Arizona and feeling detached from my friendships there, and then further being away from everyone I know down here, I feel like I would be a lot happier somewhere in a more supportive environment. I am here absolutely on my own and living and working mostly with people a bit older than me, but I didn't do the best job finding connections with other students to hang out with here, and it definitely makes me a bit lonely. That in combination with my total detachment from Lima itself and my bubble life in the places I live/work (Miraflores/San Isidro, a very, very small part of the vast expanse of Lima), it's easy to say I'm really excited for tomorrow. Anyway, I don't want to complain anymore, but I guess I'm in a lot of ways really looking forward to Chile, where I'll be in a university environment and also more directed and supported for meaningful interaction with the locals and the society. Unfortunately it's kind of dangerous to seek that out here when I am in an office in the entirety of the daylight hours.

And besides everything else, including all the learning potential there is when you enter a society that is so different than what you know, either way I simply just don't really like Lima. It is a disorganized, dirty mess with a decent amount of really rich people and tons of really poor people. It makes you numb to poverty because if you gave your money to everyone trying to sell portable toothbrushes on the buses, you would be broke. It is a typical modern third world megacity that within the last 70 years has undergone absurdly rapid population growth while trying to develop in the wake of the world's economic powers. As some business and wealth moves in, the few at the top see most of the benefits, and immigrants flood the metropolitan area because of marginal opportunity increase, making it impossible to distribute resources to so many people. Some pueblos jóvenes developed in a more organized manner, and their quality of life is now higher, but none have realistic opportunity to easily develop on their own, as the money and education continues to flow to the preset power structures. I hear Universidad de Lima costs 2000 US a month, which sets out a small group who have the ability to attend, and yes, most of them are much whiter than those at the limited public institutions.

Anyway, my frustration is all because this was a really last-minute judgment, but hey, through all the bad and hard times here, I know I'll come out of it at least having learned a few things. We'll just have to wait and see. I just really need to try my best to bring myself to the here and now to get the most out of it I can, including my job, because right now, the fact that it's hard has really made my mind drift back home.