safe

We´ve arrived safely in Iquitos, Peru after a long night spent curled up in soft chairs at the Lima airport Starbucks. Thank God for the nice people there who let us purchase a few minutes of sleep for nothing more than the price of a frappucino. We stumbled onto the flight this morning, bleary-eyed and not quite ready for the adventure that awaits us.

Ready or not, it has begun.

I´m sitting in an internet cafe somewhere downtown and the sweat is already starting to trickle down my back. This is familiar and comforting, as was the fact that the driver of the mototaxi that brought us here tried his darndest to charge us three times the going rate. I just smiled and let him hose me only slightly, deeming the extra half sole sufficient price for feeling so at home.

We are close to the Amazon River, close enough that everything is green, which provides a beautiful backdrop for the ridiculously bright mototaxis that swarm the streets like rainbow bees. Iquitos is connected to only one other city by road, one much smaller and miles away, and so cars here are almost nonexistant. It´s slightly strange, actually, seeing only mototaxis (same concept as Indian autorickshaws or Thai tuk-tuks, if you have any experience with either) and zemidjahns (although I´m sure they aren´t called that here...) mixed in with the very occasional pickup and minibus.

The sky is blue and the clouds are piled up on the horizon over the palms, reminder that it rains most days for at least a little while. We´re hoping to get back to the base before that happens this afternoon.

The class is diverse enough that I feel almost like being on the ship, since the first couple of questions are from our standard repertoire there. Where are you from? What do you do? Since we´re all here for the same purpose, we can stop there and start to share stories. We´ve got Peruvians and Canadians and Columbians and Americans and Dutchies and even a Kiwi, and I think we´re all going to get along just fine.

Class starts tomorrow with a six AM wake-up call, and I´m itching to get started. I´ve perused the list of readings and books we´ll be studying, and I get this feeling all over again that God´s got something big planned for me during these months.

Photos to follow once I take some. I´ve been so dazed by the unpacking and meeting and getting my bearings that I haven´t yet pulled out my camera.

I plan to remedy that very soon, because this place is beautiful.

(Just as a note: my schedule for the next five months is going to be rather rigorous, and as far as I can tell, the only free time for coming into town will be on the weekends. Expect posting no more than once a week, and I promise I´ll try and make it worth your wait.)