For the past 8 years or so I have watched as my dad prays over the Thanksgiving meal. Tears well in his eyes as he blesses the food, giving thanks for another year and for the friends and family present. As the years pass by, we remember the ones who use to be with us, while we celebrate the love and the life we have with new friends and new additions to the family. The holidays are a bittersweet time.
I love Thanksgiving. I love that it's a day of eating (one of my favorite activities), a day of fellowship, a day of simply enjoying each other. But my favorite part is before we actually start eating the food that we spent hours preparing. I love the part where we gather in a circle and share what we are each thankful for that year. By the end of the sharing, no eye is ever dry.
This year I am thankful for my family. For their joy and compassion, for their kindness and generosity. I am thankful for my friends. For the laughter and the smiles, the fun and for sharing life together. I am thankful for my job. For the honor of helping those who are in so much need as they try to rebuild, reshape and renew their lives in the face of stigma and illness. I am thankful for Nate and for his unwavering loyalty, for his support and love, for his always gently pushing me to be the woman he knows I am meant to be.
There are so many reasons to give thanks. I am glad that we have a holiday that reminds us to pause and to reflect upon those people and things for which we are grateful. May the thanks giving continue in our day to day lives.
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
A World Within My World
So two things. First, Nate bought me a guitar for my birthday, so I am checking off #14 on my bucket list as I struggle to learn how to play. Go me! Second, I started my new job and my world has been flipped upside down! Seriously. I am amazed at how sheltered I am from a subculture that exists within my own little bubble of the OC. It's crazy to have been born and raised in a predominately homogeneous culture: white, wealthy, college educated, church-going, OC-bubble living, and then thrown into a job where I am now a minority, where my language is hardly spoken, and where I am totally out of my comfort zone. The timing is oddly coincidental as lately I have been really pressing forward in discovering myself and really taking the time to figure out who I am, what I like, and how I feel about things. It's a strange and uncomfortable place to be if I am completely honest. Like, how did I go 28 years without even knowing this subculture existed? And would it have really made that much difference in who I am if I was aware of it before this week? I don't know.
On a lighter note, I have been attending a lot of weddings lately. No matter how many I go to, I am always humbled by the vows. I think that vowing your love to someone is one of the most beautiful thing we can do as humans. I love watching the groom as he sees his bride walk towards him down the aisle. I love seeing the moms cry (tears of joy or sadness?). I love the children who are dragging their feet as they bear the rings or throw the flowers with bribes of candy and toys within their reach. I love watching the first dance; the moment when the bride and groom can finally relax and enjoy their day. So off we go tomorrow to watch another beautiful wedding. This time we get to be a part of the ceremony as we stand in support and love of the couple.
Another day of love and celebration, of tears and laughter, of dancing and eating! Cheers to Stacey and Phil! =)
On a lighter note, I have been attending a lot of weddings lately. No matter how many I go to, I am always humbled by the vows. I think that vowing your love to someone is one of the most beautiful thing we can do as humans. I love watching the groom as he sees his bride walk towards him down the aisle. I love seeing the moms cry (tears of joy or sadness?). I love the children who are dragging their feet as they bear the rings or throw the flowers with bribes of candy and toys within their reach. I love watching the first dance; the moment when the bride and groom can finally relax and enjoy their day. So off we go tomorrow to watch another beautiful wedding. This time we get to be a part of the ceremony as we stand in support and love of the couple.
Another day of love and celebration, of tears and laughter, of dancing and eating! Cheers to Stacey and Phil! =)
Friday, September 16, 2011
Changing
It's so easy to fall back into the rhythm of mundane life. Wake up, work, exercise, eat dinner, go to bed. Repeat. It's easy to forget about the people around you, to make them as routine as each day. To go months without seeing a good friend, or days without really having a good conversation. But what is life without those friendships, without laughter, without spontaneity? Do we live to work or work to live? How do we break free of this repetitive cycle of sameness? How do we really live life? I have been so challenged by these questions these past few weeks, because for me, it's so much easier to live life on repeat. But I have realized that life on repeat is meaningless. That life with no challenges is boring. That life without love, without deep relationships, is not life at all. And so I will try to break free from this rhythm and start walking to another beat. A beat that is off and strange, that is foreign to my normal. A beat that makes me feel uncomfortable, a beat that challenges me to really live.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Being Home
It's been a month now since I returned home from my time in Peru and I can't believe how much things have changed. It seems that this time in my life is a time full of transitions and sorrow, of excitement and disappointment, a time for self-improvement.
To say that I have been overwhelmed would be an understatement. In the past month I have moved homes, moved jobs, and have been working through the painful process of facing the reality of relationships. I have been challenged in every area of my life. Most days I can say that I feel like I am becoming a better, more independent, stronger woman. That's most days. Those days also exist where I feel like I can't go on, that everything is too much, that I am not as strong as I thought I was. And yet, I take a deep breath and move forward. One step at a time.
Life is a strange thing, isn't it? The things that I thought were a curse turned out to be a blessing, and the things that I thought were going so smoothly have become rough. Nothing is going as planned. None of it has been easy. And yet we must persist.
So what's next? I wish I knew. For now, I just take it one day at a time, one foot in front of the other as I hold on to my friends and family for support.
On the brighter side, I must say it is nice to be home. It is nice to have the comforts of my own bed, to be able to drink tap water, and to throw TP in the toilet. Oh the luxuries!
To say that I have been overwhelmed would be an understatement. In the past month I have moved homes, moved jobs, and have been working through the painful process of facing the reality of relationships. I have been challenged in every area of my life. Most days I can say that I feel like I am becoming a better, more independent, stronger woman. That's most days. Those days also exist where I feel like I can't go on, that everything is too much, that I am not as strong as I thought I was. And yet, I take a deep breath and move forward. One step at a time.
Life is a strange thing, isn't it? The things that I thought were a curse turned out to be a blessing, and the things that I thought were going so smoothly have become rough. Nothing is going as planned. None of it has been easy. And yet we must persist.
So what's next? I wish I knew. For now, I just take it one day at a time, one foot in front of the other as I hold on to my friends and family for support.
On the brighter side, I must say it is nice to be home. It is nice to have the comforts of my own bed, to be able to drink tap water, and to throw TP in the toilet. Oh the luxuries!
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Pampas and Iquitos
Let me preface this with, it was not our intention to spend the night in the jungle with a tour guide and his machete.
Having said that, we survived our impromptu jungle adventure and returned safely to Lima with only a few dozen mosquito bites to show for.
My friend/former coworker, Sophia (the Dr. Tran from the great Cambodia escape...) and I spent the first part of her week in Lima listening in on meetings, going to Pampas of San Juan, drinking Starbucks, shopping, and listening to Cuban music at a local bar. We, without much thought, decided that a trip to the jungle was exactly what we needed to break up the week. We also wanted to see what kind of work was being done in Iquitos and used that as our excuse to spend 2 days in the jungle.
Before I start recounting the jungle tour, allow me to quickly explain Pampas. Pampas de San Juan is a shanty town of about 57,000 people. They settled in the outskirts of Lima after being driven out of the highlands by the terrorists years ago. Because there were so many of them, the Peruvian government allowed them to resettle and thus the community of Pampas began. Pampas is divided into 4 sections and each section becomes increasingly poorer as you go further up the hill. Some homes are surprisingly nice while others are hardly standing. Dogs are running wild everywhere, water is shared in communal wells where each family is assigned a time to retrieve their water, and garbage is scattered along all the streets. It's a very interesting community and because of the close proximity of the houses and thus the families living in the houses, the epidemiology of disease is mapped in various studies. So, we started working on a TB project where we are going to place skin tests on about 400 people to determine if the rates of TB infection have decreased over the past 15 years. Pampas is where I spent the remainder of my time in Lima.
Ok, back to the jungle. So, Sophia and I showed up in Iquitos on a Wednesday morning. We made our way to a very disappointing hotel (dirty, small, and expensive) and decided right away that we wanted to go on a single day jungle tour. By 10 am we had canceled our Iquitos hotel room and were getting on a "speed boat" to a jungle lodge 2 hours away (by boat) from Iquitos for an overnight jungle adventure.
We arrived at the jungle lodge, which was actually much nicer than our hotel room in Iquitos, and started our adventure with lunch and a walk through the jungle. With rubber boots and our guide Danny (equipped with a machete), we stared our walk through the dense jungle. Danny painted our faces with red stripes from a seed then created plant crowns to ward off mosquitoes (which didn't keep the mosquitoes away, but did make us look ridiculous). We swung from vines, trudged through muddy rivers, saw monkeys, birds and huge spiders.
The rest of our time was spent in good conversation, dolphin watching, piranha catching, jungle village exploring, and sunrise and bird watching. Yes, there are dolphins in the Amazon River (pink and gray ones!). We went piranha fishing and Danny caught a piranha which we ate it for breakfast (it was delicious!). We woke up at 5:30 am, got in a boat with holes in it, in which Danny and the boat driver had to constantly scoop water out to keep from sinking, and watched the sunrise over the Amazon River. We saw sloths, monkeys, iguanas, tarantulas, and every bird alive in the jungle (turns out Danny is an avid bird watcher and insisted on pointing out, naming and imitating their calls).
Somehow we made it back to Iquitos, had our little meeting with Sophia's old friend who is working in Iquitos, and made it back to Lima by 10 pm. I must admit that the jungle adventure was one of the highlights of my Peru trip. It was beautiful. However, on a side note, in speaking with Sophia's friend, we found out that under the beauty of the jungle is a major drug and sex trafficking industry. The jungle is an ideal spot for drug trafficking due to the inability to detect boats covered by the rain forest. But thankfully (in a way), because of the drug trafficking, the sex trafficking has decreased. The sex trafficking started out as something called "child gifting". The jungle people would "gift" children to other villages if the child's mother was unable to care for the baby. Usually this worked very well and the children were brought up in loving homes. But somewhere between the mother and the village receiving the baby, people began taking the children and trafficking them for sex. It's disgusting and something that should never happen to a child, but according to Sophia's friend (who has lived in Iquitos for 10 years), if you try to interfere with the sex industry, you not only risk your own life but also the lives of those around you.
This has been constantly on my mind since I heard about it and I can't seem to think of a solution or a way to put a stop to the trafficking of children. It's hidden under "child gifting" which in theory is good, and yet there are children being trafficked. But where do we draw the line? Do we risk our lives and the lives of our families and friends to save these children? Do we just ignore it? How do we bring justice to Iquitos?
Thanks again for all your support. Nate joined me in Lima two weeks ago and we are slowly winding down our trip to Cusco and Machu Picchu. Will write more about Cusco, Machu Picchu and the 100th anniversary celebration soon! Thanks for reading!
Having said that, we survived our impromptu jungle adventure and returned safely to Lima with only a few dozen mosquito bites to show for.
My friend/former coworker, Sophia (the Dr. Tran from the great Cambodia escape...) and I spent the first part of her week in Lima listening in on meetings, going to Pampas of San Juan, drinking Starbucks, shopping, and listening to Cuban music at a local bar. We, without much thought, decided that a trip to the jungle was exactly what we needed to break up the week. We also wanted to see what kind of work was being done in Iquitos and used that as our excuse to spend 2 days in the jungle.
Before I start recounting the jungle tour, allow me to quickly explain Pampas. Pampas de San Juan is a shanty town of about 57,000 people. They settled in the outskirts of Lima after being driven out of the highlands by the terrorists years ago. Because there were so many of them, the Peruvian government allowed them to resettle and thus the community of Pampas began. Pampas is divided into 4 sections and each section becomes increasingly poorer as you go further up the hill. Some homes are surprisingly nice while others are hardly standing. Dogs are running wild everywhere, water is shared in communal wells where each family is assigned a time to retrieve their water, and garbage is scattered along all the streets. It's a very interesting community and because of the close proximity of the houses and thus the families living in the houses, the epidemiology of disease is mapped in various studies. So, we started working on a TB project where we are going to place skin tests on about 400 people to determine if the rates of TB infection have decreased over the past 15 years. Pampas is where I spent the remainder of my time in Lima.
Ok, back to the jungle. So, Sophia and I showed up in Iquitos on a Wednesday morning. We made our way to a very disappointing hotel (dirty, small, and expensive) and decided right away that we wanted to go on a single day jungle tour. By 10 am we had canceled our Iquitos hotel room and were getting on a "speed boat" to a jungle lodge 2 hours away (by boat) from Iquitos for an overnight jungle adventure.
We arrived at the jungle lodge, which was actually much nicer than our hotel room in Iquitos, and started our adventure with lunch and a walk through the jungle. With rubber boots and our guide Danny (equipped with a machete), we stared our walk through the dense jungle. Danny painted our faces with red stripes from a seed then created plant crowns to ward off mosquitoes (which didn't keep the mosquitoes away, but did make us look ridiculous). We swung from vines, trudged through muddy rivers, saw monkeys, birds and huge spiders.
The rest of our time was spent in good conversation, dolphin watching, piranha catching, jungle village exploring, and sunrise and bird watching. Yes, there are dolphins in the Amazon River (pink and gray ones!). We went piranha fishing and Danny caught a piranha which we ate it for breakfast (it was delicious!). We woke up at 5:30 am, got in a boat with holes in it, in which Danny and the boat driver had to constantly scoop water out to keep from sinking, and watched the sunrise over the Amazon River. We saw sloths, monkeys, iguanas, tarantulas, and every bird alive in the jungle (turns out Danny is an avid bird watcher and insisted on pointing out, naming and imitating their calls).
Somehow we made it back to Iquitos, had our little meeting with Sophia's old friend who is working in Iquitos, and made it back to Lima by 10 pm. I must admit that the jungle adventure was one of the highlights of my Peru trip. It was beautiful. However, on a side note, in speaking with Sophia's friend, we found out that under the beauty of the jungle is a major drug and sex trafficking industry. The jungle is an ideal spot for drug trafficking due to the inability to detect boats covered by the rain forest. But thankfully (in a way), because of the drug trafficking, the sex trafficking has decreased. The sex trafficking started out as something called "child gifting". The jungle people would "gift" children to other villages if the child's mother was unable to care for the baby. Usually this worked very well and the children were brought up in loving homes. But somewhere between the mother and the village receiving the baby, people began taking the children and trafficking them for sex. It's disgusting and something that should never happen to a child, but according to Sophia's friend (who has lived in Iquitos for 10 years), if you try to interfere with the sex industry, you not only risk your own life but also the lives of those around you.
This has been constantly on my mind since I heard about it and I can't seem to think of a solution or a way to put a stop to the trafficking of children. It's hidden under "child gifting" which in theory is good, and yet there are children being trafficked. But where do we draw the line? Do we risk our lives and the lives of our families and friends to save these children? Do we just ignore it? How do we bring justice to Iquitos?
Thanks again for all your support. Nate joined me in Lima two weeks ago and we are slowly winding down our trip to Cusco and Machu Picchu. Will write more about Cusco, Machu Picchu and the 100th anniversary celebration soon! Thanks for reading!
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Sand, Discos and Friends
Hola mis amigos!
Since last time, I have fallen even more in love with Peru! I am now a combi expert and I think I have tried just about all the traditional Peruvian food! I frequent the outdoor market, eating two course meals for 5 soles (about 2 dollars), drinking surtidos (mixed fruit juices), and eating every interesting looking fruit and vegetable in sight! If only I could speak Spanish better, I think I would be like the locals!
My personal life has been a bet hectic lately, super emotional, with a lot of confusion and little clarity. Without going into detail (because who actually wants to hear a sob story?!), I think this minor (or major) bump in my life has put things into perspective. I think that it's good to have a little jolt that makes you realize what is important in life, what relationships are worth pursuing, and what kind of life I would really like to live. I guess what it comes down to is that, like most people, I just want a life full of love and laughter. A life that doesn't take things so seriously but enjoys the simple moments, a life in community with others, a life serving those in need, and a life full of joy.
With that said, I must admit that I have embracing the beauty that Peru has to offer. Last weekend I went to Huacachina, a desert oasis about 5 hours south of Lima. The actual oasis is murky, green, and smells a bit like sewage, but the sand dunes surrounding the oasis are amazing! It felt like I was in Egypt or somewhere, definitely not Peru! I took a dune buggy for a 2 hour excursion around the sand dunes. It was both frightening and exhilarating! I felt like a child, screaming and laughing (mostly at the older Japanese couple in front of me who were giggling like school girls)! The driver stopped 4 times, handed us each a snowboard, and one by one we laid on our bellies, with our arms tucked under us and our feet in the air, and were pushed down huge slopes of sand. It was terrifying! About halfway down each slope, I thought, wow, one bad bump and I might actually die! Luckily there were only a few minor injuries and a lot of sand in the face.
I have also been salsa dancing as often as possible. I was lucky in Huacachina where there were plenty of gay men eager to teach a gringa how to dance salsa. I was tossed from gay man to gay man, each outdoing the other in moving their hips, in dipping, and fancy footwork. Turns out I LOVE Salsa dancing!
I feel like I finally am making friends with the people at the hospital. While the language barrier is still very present, I feel like I am at least understanding them better and am able to laugh with them when they joke. Today we celebrated Father's Day and our friend Danni's birthday. We got very little work done because like any day of celebration, we spent the morning preparing! It's so funny when they sing Happy Birthday because they start out singing in English all slow and boring and then start clapping and singing lively in Spanish. It's fantastic!
Tomorrow my friend Dr. Tran comes to Peru! I am so excited to have a friend to share the city with! First thing on our agenda: Salsa dancing of course!! Nate is coming in a week and then we are off to Cuzco and maybe Arequipas...so much fun ahead!
Thanks for all of your support and love. I miss you all very much and can't wait to be with you again state side! Besitos!
Since last time, I have fallen even more in love with Peru! I am now a combi expert and I think I have tried just about all the traditional Peruvian food! I frequent the outdoor market, eating two course meals for 5 soles (about 2 dollars), drinking surtidos (mixed fruit juices), and eating every interesting looking fruit and vegetable in sight! If only I could speak Spanish better, I think I would be like the locals!
My personal life has been a bet hectic lately, super emotional, with a lot of confusion and little clarity. Without going into detail (because who actually wants to hear a sob story?!), I think this minor (or major) bump in my life has put things into perspective. I think that it's good to have a little jolt that makes you realize what is important in life, what relationships are worth pursuing, and what kind of life I would really like to live. I guess what it comes down to is that, like most people, I just want a life full of love and laughter. A life that doesn't take things so seriously but enjoys the simple moments, a life in community with others, a life serving those in need, and a life full of joy.
With that said, I must admit that I have embracing the beauty that Peru has to offer. Last weekend I went to Huacachina, a desert oasis about 5 hours south of Lima. The actual oasis is murky, green, and smells a bit like sewage, but the sand dunes surrounding the oasis are amazing! It felt like I was in Egypt or somewhere, definitely not Peru! I took a dune buggy for a 2 hour excursion around the sand dunes. It was both frightening and exhilarating! I felt like a child, screaming and laughing (mostly at the older Japanese couple in front of me who were giggling like school girls)! The driver stopped 4 times, handed us each a snowboard, and one by one we laid on our bellies, with our arms tucked under us and our feet in the air, and were pushed down huge slopes of sand. It was terrifying! About halfway down each slope, I thought, wow, one bad bump and I might actually die! Luckily there were only a few minor injuries and a lot of sand in the face.
I have also been salsa dancing as often as possible. I was lucky in Huacachina where there were plenty of gay men eager to teach a gringa how to dance salsa. I was tossed from gay man to gay man, each outdoing the other in moving their hips, in dipping, and fancy footwork. Turns out I LOVE Salsa dancing!
I feel like I finally am making friends with the people at the hospital. While the language barrier is still very present, I feel like I am at least understanding them better and am able to laugh with them when they joke. Today we celebrated Father's Day and our friend Danni's birthday. We got very little work done because like any day of celebration, we spent the morning preparing! It's so funny when they sing Happy Birthday because they start out singing in English all slow and boring and then start clapping and singing lively in Spanish. It's fantastic!
Tomorrow my friend Dr. Tran comes to Peru! I am so excited to have a friend to share the city with! First thing on our agenda: Salsa dancing of course!! Nate is coming in a week and then we are off to Cuzco and maybe Arequipas...so much fun ahead!
Thanks for all of your support and love. I miss you all very much and can't wait to be with you again state side! Besitos!
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Curry and Combis
This week has been way more exciting than last week now that I am working at Hospital 2 de Mayo. For now I am just shadowing the nurses working on the Cough Project (a project that measures both of frequency of cough and the bacterial load in a cough as a TB patient progresses through treatment), but hopefully I will start to get to do a little bit more hands-on work. The project actually reminds me a lot of what I am doing in my regular job in the states, but with a lot more paperwork! The project uses incentives like money and food to recruit participants for the study and offers patients free doctor visits, x-rays, sputum collections, and blood draws. It's a pretty good deal for the patient except for the fact that the study requires them to wear a device that captures the frequency of their cough (basically a fanny-pack with a microphone and recording device) 24 hours a day for the first 2 weeks. It is so interesting watching the nurses interact with the patients. They are so kind, so smart and so good at convincing the patients to participate in the study. Nurses in Peru go to nursing school for 5 years and then an additional 2 years if they want to specialize. For the first year out of nursing school it is a requirement for all nurses to work for next to nothing usually in one of the outlying provinces. It's quite the sacrifice to be a nurse and they don't even make that much money! It's so apparent that the nurses are nurses because they love what they do.
Before I get to combis and curry, I just wanted to share one more thing about my experience at Hospital 2 de Mayo. Tuesday was my first day working at the Hospital and we made a trip into the heart of Lima to find a patient. We drove right into the slums of Lima (which are like these tiny houses stacked on top of each other on the hills) to a small clinic. As we were driving down the street filled with dirty children, people selling fruit and vegetables, and piles of garbage, the driver, Jorge, proudly says, "Ah, this Lima! Isn't it beautiful!". I have to admit I was a little surprised by his comment since I had to look away a few times because the sites were so overwhelming. Marilyn, one of the nurses, always says that Jorge is Lima's biggest fan, and all joking aside, I think Jorge really does see the beauty in the slums. I think that Jorge really is proud of his city and despite the enormous amounts of poverty, the filthy streets, the traffic, the trash, I think that he is right, that that is Lima and it is beautiful.
On a lighter note...
I successfully took a combi by myself today! A combi is one of the craziest forms of transportation in Lima. It's a minivan or small bus with a caller who yells the destination as the driver swerves around traffic. You have to wave down the combi (hoping you are waving down the correct one since the signs posted on the combis are never actually where they are really going), then it barely stops in time for you to hop on and hold on tight! It's insane, but somehow I got to the hospital!
And curry! Oh my did we have a feast last night! Some of the guys staying at my hostel decided that they wanted to make curry so they gathered up all the people in the hostel and we had a nice family style meal! It was so nice to have home cooked, familiar, and delicious food! I was so grateful for their culinary skills! It was really nice to sit down, laugh, talk, and enjoy the company of other travelers.
I feel like I am starting to find my place here but still struggling greatly with the language. It's so frustrating to have language as such a barrier. I just hope that I can start to communicate with everyone better and soon! I am feeling less and less lonely and more and more excited to be in such a great city!
Miss you all and thank you for reading...
Before I get to combis and curry, I just wanted to share one more thing about my experience at Hospital 2 de Mayo. Tuesday was my first day working at the Hospital and we made a trip into the heart of Lima to find a patient. We drove right into the slums of Lima (which are like these tiny houses stacked on top of each other on the hills) to a small clinic. As we were driving down the street filled with dirty children, people selling fruit and vegetables, and piles of garbage, the driver, Jorge, proudly says, "Ah, this Lima! Isn't it beautiful!". I have to admit I was a little surprised by his comment since I had to look away a few times because the sites were so overwhelming. Marilyn, one of the nurses, always says that Jorge is Lima's biggest fan, and all joking aside, I think Jorge really does see the beauty in the slums. I think that Jorge really is proud of his city and despite the enormous amounts of poverty, the filthy streets, the traffic, the trash, I think that he is right, that that is Lima and it is beautiful.
On a lighter note...
I successfully took a combi by myself today! A combi is one of the craziest forms of transportation in Lima. It's a minivan or small bus with a caller who yells the destination as the driver swerves around traffic. You have to wave down the combi (hoping you are waving down the correct one since the signs posted on the combis are never actually where they are really going), then it barely stops in time for you to hop on and hold on tight! It's insane, but somehow I got to the hospital!
And curry! Oh my did we have a feast last night! Some of the guys staying at my hostel decided that they wanted to make curry so they gathered up all the people in the hostel and we had a nice family style meal! It was so nice to have home cooked, familiar, and delicious food! I was so grateful for their culinary skills! It was really nice to sit down, laugh, talk, and enjoy the company of other travelers.
I feel like I am starting to find my place here but still struggling greatly with the language. It's so frustrating to have language as such a barrier. I just hope that I can start to communicate with everyone better and soon! I am feeling less and less lonely and more and more excited to be in such a great city!
Miss you all and thank you for reading...
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