Life is Beautiful

Wow, I haven't written in two weeks- bad Ruth! Not only does this mean my family and friends haven't been able to hear from me about how things are going, but that also means this post will most likely take me longer to write than it took for me to hike the THREE mountains I have dragged myself up in the past two weeks (well, hopefully it won't take that long)!
So, a lot of things have changed since I last wrote. First of all, many prayers were answered, and I have traveled a lot! Two Mondays ago, I got home from my first day of work in a new country doing something I was hardly an expert at; needless to say, I felt slightly overwhelmed and unequipped for this month-long journey. But throughout these past 14 days, I have adjusted really well to things here-such as speaking Spanish with my students- and have learned that laughing at oneself is the best way to find joy in new situations. As far as teaching cello lessons in a different language goes, I have picked up many phrases and terms in my teaching that I just repeat over and over, and it always works! I have also learned that the over-said phrase of "music being a universal language" is actually true- I can play something on my cello for a student to make a point or to show them what I want from them instead of saying it. It's so great, and it has made me very grateful that verbal communication isn't the only way people interact! I have 10 awesome, unique cello students- some from the conservatory where I rehearse with the Trujillo Symphony and others from Universidad de Cesar Vallejo (UCV), where I help out with orchestra rehearsals. I love them! They are between 14 and 24 and are all varying levels. I am having a blast teaching and am discovering each time how rewarding and enjoyable it is for me. I had these two adorable sisters both come in for cello lessons at the same time, and they kept exclaiming, "We love you so much, Miss Ruth! We don't want you to ever leave!", after I would encourage them or make a silly noise (which I discovered is ALSO universal and very helpful when trying to cheer up frustrated kids! ;)). I will hold onto those types of things and will always look forward to spending an hour with a student like that. The thing I have discovered here is that most kids don't play music as a hobby. It's not common for a Peruvian couple to put their child through piano or violin lessons at an early age just because. So the kids who are playing instruments now are mostly doing it because they really want to learn whatever they are playing, and their passion for music is so refreshing. I love how the tiny things can brighten these kids' days! A student of mine was asking if I had ever played the concerto that the main actress in August Rush performs, and I said, "Oh yes! I played Elgar Concerto last year. Want to hear it?", and she stared at me with her gleeful and sparkling, young eyes and exclaimed, "SI!". Just with the opening chords, she and her friends she had gathered around were enamored. It was like I was offering them three wishes from my magic genie lamp (sorry, kids- I left that at home!!), and it was absolutely precious. So overall, things have been super rewarding and a lot easier with speaking Spanish and teaching and doing musical things here. :) I have also made some great Peruvian friends in the Trujillo Symphony, and I have become closer with some people in the VivePeru program, which has been wonderful! I especially love my roommates and am very grateful for who I have been placed with in my house.
So every weekend, most VivePeru volunteers travel outside Trujillo by bus to visit surrounding places. Last weekend, I went to Huaráz, a gorgeous city full of glaciers, unrealistically-blue lakes, and mountains. I had never seen anything like Huaráz! It was very, very cold, and none of us were equipped with clothing that could keep us warm in snow during our hikes both days, but we all survived. However, Huaráz is a very high elevation, sitting at over 10,000 feet, so we all suffered from altitude sickness. A group of 7 other volunteers and I took an overnight bus into Huaráz and arrived around 6 am on Saturday morning. After napping for a few hours, we all got up and hiked to Pastoruri, a huge and amazing glacier that sits over 15,000 feet above sea level! By the time we all stumbled down from the snowy hike, I felt completely dizzy, out-of-it, groggy, and breathless. I fell completely asleep on my friend's shoulder on the car ride back to our hostel. ;) The next morning, 4 out of the 8 of us dared to hike to Lake 69, a once-in-a-lifetime view of a lake that sits at the base of a glacier and is the most stunning shade of blue I have ever seen! All 8 of us had planned to hike this 9-mile trek, but the altitude had taken half of the group (rest in peace...just kidding! Although a couple of them literally did rest and sleep most of the day because they were so sick!), so they stayed around town in the lower elevation for the day. So at 6 am, my three friends and I met up to take a long bus ride to the base of the mountain we would hike. After a grueling 5-/ 6-hour hike, we all made it back...barely haha. One of my friends threw up, and another felt so terrible that it took him an hour longer than everyone else to get back down the mountain! We were all worried something tragic had happened to our friend after thirty minutes had passed and he still wasn't back, so I was relieved to see him when he crawled back to the bus another thirty minutes later. The moment he fell in his seat, we all asked, "What happened?!?", and he said, "Give me a minute to catch my breath." Well, three minutes later, he was in a comatose-state of sleep, and he remained "unconscious" for the next three hours or so. "A minute" never felt so long. So the other guy and I were the only ones from my group who didn't have a traumatic experience on that hike, although my head was splitting at the seams with a terrible headache once I collapsed on the bus! Even though the hike was over 17,000 feet above sea level and was very grueling, it was totally worth it and made me feel so accomplished, excited, and bewildered at the beauty of God's creation in this world. It was stunning.
Another week of work flew by, and I taught some more wonderful lessons, got cat-called at by many Peruvian men (I'm still not used to, or am okay with that!), heard many interesting car alarms that go through cycles and last for a long while, participated in VivePeru's El Progreso (a really neat workshop where we go into a very underdeveloped part of Trujillo and play with the kids and teach them important life lessons!), ate a lot of amazing pastries with manjar (basically caramel and sugar) in it, played bananagrams, and took hundreds- and I mean hundreds- of pictures! Then this past weekend, I went to a city called Chachapoyas (affectionately called Chachas by all) in another group of 8 people. After attempting to translate the Spanish movies while the loud group of Peruvian college students next to us were attempting to party it up the whole 14-hour bus ride, I fell asleep and woke up to find myself in this beautiful, green, full-of-life city. On Saturday we visited the ruins of Kuelap and learned many interesting facts from our great tour guide. I saw many cows, some llamas (YAY!), and a lot of dogs! Our group sang songs and played "hot seat" (where someone is in the hot seat and we all ask them questions about themselves) to pass away the time in the long car rides. We became friends with a woman from Brazil who was also visiting Chachas, and she ended up taking the same tour with us to Gocta, the world's third-largest waterfall, the next day! So on Sunday we hiked for 2 hours each way to go see the lovely and awe-inspiring Gocta waterfall. A few of us- including me!- took mules up to the waterfall, which was perfect for me because I was feeling hiked-out from Huaráz the weekend before. :P I had the same exact feeling seeing the waterfall as I did seeing Lake 69: complete and utter shock over something being so beautiful...and actually being real! I could not believe I was standing at the base of this gigantic, misty, wonderful body of water. It was unreal. It was also pretty cold after a while! But we all enjoyed taking pictures and snacking there before we made the walk back from the waterfall. It was also amazing to walk through the edge of the Amazon as we were making it to and from the waterfall. The scents, the moisture, and the sounds were so crazy-cool. I kept thinking, "This is SO much cooler than walking through those rainforest buildings at the zoo!". It was unbelievable! I am still completely shocked that I have seen so much beauty in the past few weeks. I can't contain it all in my head or comprehend how gorgeous all of it was. But good thing I took over 1,000 pictures during my two weekend trips to relive it all. ;) Oh dear. Although one memory I will never forget is this morning, when my group and I got off the bus for 30 minutes in a city four hours from Trujillo at 4 in the morning. After having already been asleep for 10 hours on the bus, we all stumbled off the bus, toilet paper rolls in hand (most public bathrooms don't have toilet paper or soap, remember!), all sporting different 80's-inspired hairdo's that could only have been styled so attractively from the precision of tossing and turning on a bus. Once we all used the restrooms and attempted to get back on the bus, a Peruvian bus guard man kept exclaiming something in a slurred Spanish accent none of us could even comprehend and kept shooing us away. We all stood with wide, tired eyes- some of us without shoes!- in front of a large seated crowd of natives who probably thought we were all insane and very strange for trying to keep getting past the guard and onto the bus. Finally, he let us back on, but we will never know why our group was not allowed to get back on the bus after using the restrooms at 4 a.m.!
I came on this trip to Peru looking for some adventure, while also hoping to help people and wanting to explore my musical interests from a different angle. So far I have been so deeply surprised by how fantastic my experience has been. Honestly, when I am usually in a place, like a new music camp or even school or anywhere else, I usually begin to realize after a while that that specific place is not home and is not where I want to be long-term. Besides wherever my family is/ will be, Peru is the one place that feels like home to me. This is the first time I have been somewhere new and haven't been partly wishing I could be somewhere else or with someone else. And of course, I am excited to be back in Detroit in a couple weeks and see family and friends and then return to Chicago for school, but I just feel unbelievably happy here! And I am just feeling so thankful for the fantastic people in my program and for the people of Peru I have been meeting. If I could find somewhere in the U.S. that is like Peru where there are so many adventures to be had and so much beauty to see AND there are students willing to learn and be passionate about music, I would move there in an instant! And if there isn't a place like that in North America, hmm..well, I've already got a good idea of where I'd want to go! :)