Kinda over it

Warning: I'm going to complain a lot.

Ok, I've had enough now.  I'm definitely ready to come home. Peru is an amazing country, and now that I've seen most of it, I feel satisfied.  I just can't wait to have my life back...my organized, on-time life.  This week has gone by incredibly slowly.  I don't know how I'm going to make it through 3 more weeks.

Complaint #1: traffic.  It's INSANE.  There are apparently no laws.  If there is a stop sign, I guess that means you don't stop, but drive by really fast honking your horn?  But there normally aren't stop signs at intersections, so you just go when you see the slightest space in between two cars. On larger roads there are no lanes, so cars are all over the place constantly beeping their horns.  Every once in a while there's a stoplight, and people actually obey those.  And blinkers....what's a blinker? (I can say the same thing in LA actually).  I walk to and from school every day 4 times a day, 1.5 miles each way, both ways up-hill half the time.  Trying to cross streets is literally like playing Frogger.  Pedestrians do not have the right of way.  Our host mom just told us to run as fast as we can across the street when we see a small gap or we'll never get to cross.  We usually just wait for a local to start crossing, then we follow.  The exhaust is crazy here.  I may come back with black lungs.  I guarantee that 90% of the cars here would not pass California's smog test.  Which brings up a little side story...

During our big tour, one of our guides was talking about how big countries like the US, Brazil, and China are ruining Peru's environment along with being the only culprits for ruining the entire world's environment/causing global warming.  Ummmm....obviously she's never been to Arequipa.  Geeze, talk about rose colored glasses.

Complaint #2: I don't like being late.  My host mom offered to drive me to my 8:00 class in the mornings because it's on the way to her work.  That was so nice of her.  The only thing is...I've been late all but 1 day.  Today I arrived 15 minutes late to class.  We left the house like 12 minutes later than normal, and we have to drop her son off at school first. Of course traffic is always horrible, and today there was a road blocked off that we needed to use.  The funny thing is...my professor for that class has always come in after me...even today.  He's a local, so that explains it.  Still, I hate the feeling of thinking I'll have to walk in late. It's just so rude.  I think I'll just do the 27 min.walk in the mornings by myself.  I'll feel a little awkward telling my host mom that, but I don't want to ask her to adjust her morning routine to fit mine.

Complaint #3: I hate literature with a passion.  I would love to burn all poetry and classic novels.  Ok, some are alright, but the majority suck.  All they do is make me feel stupid.  I'm easily the dumbest student in my lit. classes.  I never have an opinion, and I have a hard time finding the deeper meaning.  I only see what's on the surface.  I feel like an idiot in my class with 5 students when we read a poem and then he asks each of us our opinions and what we think it was about.  Everybody else goes on analyzing the poem pretty much, and then it gets to me and I'm like..."Uhhh, it was good?  Yeah, he uhh described nature in great detail, and he used colors a lot...and yeah."  Luckily for that class we aren't having any tests, just a presentation. At least that's what we all understood, but it's still a little unclear.

A lot of people in the program seem very unhappy and depressed right now actually.  I don't know what's going on.  Everybody just keeps saying, "I wanna go home."  That wasn't the vibe I got the last two years from the group, so it's a little weird this year.  It's not that we don't like Peru.  It's a great place to visit.  I just think it's the classes that are putting everybody over the edge.

Other than all of this, everything's going great!