My advice to anyone going on a Rotary Group Study Exchange? Be ready to give up your life.
For the past month I have, in all seriousness, made close to zero decisions about my life. I don{t decide when to eat, when to sleep, or when to get up. People tell me when to get in cars, where we are going, and what I am going to eat for lunch. I don{t even make decisions about what to wear in the morning, as we all wear the same color on the same day (today was a green day, but I missed that piece of information because someone told me to get into a car, I did, and I left before I was informed of the next day{s color choice). I ask my host family what time I should get up in the morning and what time we are going to have breakfast. Someone comes to pick me up and we head off for whatever the host Rotarians want us to do for the day… visit an orphanage? Great! A school for students with disabilities? No problem. Back to the university again? Wonderful. More pisco sour? Okay!
“Be content with what you have;
Rejoice in the way things are;
When you realize there is nothing lacking;
The whole world belongs to you.”
-Lao Tzu
My sister has this on the bottom of her email, and I think it speaks for what all of us have learned in the past month. Though I have had to hand my life over to whomever seems to know what is going on at the moment, the whole world has been handed to us. We leave Piura tomorrow on a 16 hour overnight bus to Lima, where we will fly to Iquitos, in the Amazon rainforest. Each day we are handed more and more amazing experiences…
