Two months! what?!

I love Lima.

Period.

I love it in all of it's craziness, 'ugliness', beauty, weird smells, unbreathable air, foggy mornings, life threatening micro rides.

It's always so hard writing this dang blog, because I never know how to justify my experiences with words. I wish I could just send yall a telepathic email.

Ok, so my host family is pretty much the bomb.com. My friends and I here are coming our with an episode of MTV Cribs: Amelia's Host Family, cause my house is that crazy cool. I can't believe I live here sometimes. Besides the fact that this house is amazingly beautiful, I absolutely love this family! Kika, my host mom, has been so much inspiration to me. She knows everything a person could possibly know about culture, history, art, music, poetry...and she loves to talk about it, and I love listening to her! I love that she loves beautiful things. She is so free-spirited and loving. She just genuinely lives and loves and enjoys life.

I love coming home from school because i never know what to expect. Maybe I'll walk in the door and she'll be singing along to celtic music, or I might come home and there is a 'lonche'(or tea, coffee and snacks) set up because a Brazilian nun who works with dying AIDS patients is coming over to visit. Ha. What!? Or perhaps I might meet the mother of the guitarist in Cobra starship, who is apparently colombian? Yeah, that happened last night. lol. This house is always filled with people. I love it. They know what it's likes to live in community and simply be with people. Last night after the guests went home, we sat around listening to a bunch of different beautiful music...folk music from Peru, Argentina, Chile..criolla limena music, some opera, andean music..i don't even know what else. It was such a nice time :)

There's so many beautiful moments here, and I still don't understand how this came to be. It's funny looking back over the past two and a half years and seeing how God has blessed and confirmed this trip. He's definitely romancing me, and it's definitely working.
I'm learning a lot about myself. Who I am and who I'm not. The fears that I've been living in, and how strong of a hold they've had on my life. Where the heck did they come from? It's ridiculous the depth of fear, shame, and intimidation I've been walking in and how much that is affecting me, and the freedom that I have been given in Christ. What does it really look like to be free? On a day to day basis? One of my goals here is to learn how to offer my beauty to others...instead of hiding myself, my thoughts, my passions, my heart...or being convinced that I have nothing to offer. I mean I never thought it was severe, but when I compare it to the freedom that I could be living in, it's pretty bad.
Like I mentioned, my family here has been a lot of inspiration to me concerning this. I see the freedom that they live in and it's beautiful.

Ok random thoughts:

I also started running two weeks ago. And i love it! I've never been a runner. But the whole weight gain thing was buggin me so I decided that physical activity was necessary in my life. So I've been running three times a week, and these endorphins are amazing! Maybe I'll be a pro by the time I leave this place. Marathon? :D

I'm actually average height here...and sometimes i even feel tall. jaja. yay! People are tiny here, like me!

Speaking of measurements. I really need to get this metric system down. Why do we even use something else in the US? How many meters tall am I? And how much do I weight in kilos? If I buy 5 kilos of mangos, is that too many mangos for me to handle?

My school here has a guinea pig farm. haha.

I never realized how important it is to learn the slang and colloquialisms of a place. No matter how much I study proper Spanish, there's still so much that I won't understand unless I learn the slang and such.

I have really weird tan lines, and more freckles.

BUT

It's getting cold here. I had to break out the jacket this week for the first time since i've been here.

I should put more pics up, shouldn't I? Spice things up a bit. Ok fine, i'll take more pics this week. So demanding.

I miss you guys :)
Hows life up there going?