Hi, Yes, I am fine.

This is not a normal post, it was written at different times and cobbled together.

Living on the I-95 corridor and being 22, its hard to imagine a world without cell phone signal.  A world were people swear they called you, and no missed calls appearing on your list.  Claim they left messages but they don´t seem to make it into your box.  Being away from site for the last two and a half weeks, I came home to angry host parents on why I didn´t call more.  I did call more, I just couldn't always get them.  They claim they left messages, I didn't get them.  Why don't you check your email? I plead with them.  I already know the answer though, they only have the addresses for kicks.  The internet is for things you used the internet for instant messenger and candyland games; hi5 is the Spanish MySpace.  I'm not judging, but Lexus Nexus and nytimes.com, haven't yet peaked anyone's interest here.  Anyway, I am now back at site.  The road between Cochan to LLapa is closed due to impassible mud and cliffs that will own you in a car (without seatbelts, with 4 people in your row).  Not knowing the road was cut off, I went to Cochan on Monday.  Now I had just been in Lima forever, not knowing when I left my site that I'd be gone for more than a night so I didn't have any stuff with me.  I had one pair of shoes, flip flops.  This is a mud road.  I did it barefoot, the flip flops were getting lost in the mud. 2 steps forward, 1 step sideways.  Down the mountain, up the mountain.  Welcome home.  Best shower ever.

I'm sorry for not posting more.  I haven't done any development work in what seems like forever, and all my programming got lost when I got lost to Lima.   I've been set back with work because of all the women's scheduling.

More troubling for me than the fact that it is possible to get robbed in a foreign country is that Its looking like Brandeis is down big. Seriously, I hope my degree is worth the paper its on.  Why else sell the Rose Art Museum's collection during an assets influx.  Buyer's market.  I mean, if the markets flooded with stuff from rich people's foreclosed homes, one could possibly get some pretty sweet art, at probably a huge discount (they gotta get rid of all of it? WTF?.  Is it really that bad?)  Anyway, its pretty maddening.  I dunno, it's a liberal arts college, plenty potential students like art.  We should be buying art for the collection now its a buyers market!  So anyway, at first I said, "cut every male sport", but I since then apologize to you gentleman.  College is a place to follow whatever dream you have; if thats crew, so be it.  I dunno, tennis. Great!  If you ask me, admin should lease out the library to the public for whatever it can negotiate with the city; the problem being that no one would use it in Waltham (although word on the street is the governments buying).  It's a pretty nice library (just don't park anywhere near it), free information for everybody, how Liberal!  That wouldn't cut it financially though, because as it turns out, a bigger than you can imagine deficit probably looms.  The truth is, I dunno what they should cut.  So options.  What goes... before the priceless art.  For starters, the kosher kitchen definitely is not an option.  What's the point of keeping the building projects going?  Not sure.  Every freshman has to live in a forced triple in their choice of  Shapiro, co-ed or singlesex floors, in a class of 1300 students!  Probably not.  They might as well start a war with Waltham police and off-campus housing.  No options?  Was all our money in art? Was there ever a rest of the money and if so where is it?  I remember a great teacher pulling a painting out of a vertical shelf in the vault and making me guess by whom it was painted.  She just so happened to be my recommendation to Peace Corps.

Lima was stressing me out.  There's many movie theaters, and I saw as many as possible.  The food is incredible.  The night scene isn't quite like my site.  For me, Lima's expensive..  Therefore, I'm glad to be back at site.  On Thursday, back at site, I went on a hike for 13 hours up a mountain and down a mountain in pouring rain all day over mud "roads" and secret pathways with my host brother and father.  That was free,  We caught lots of fish, ate said fish, and spoke a lot of Spanish.  I stammered through a discussion about overfishing and common goods without referencing one technical term when they caught little tiny fish that should have been thrown back.  Being that I probably said it wrong in Spanish, this was hilarious, and all the little fish died just like the rest of them.  Next time, I'll get it right.  I also wasn't barefoot.  Highlight form this trip was warming up in a random house (one every 2 miles) along the path.  The fire briefly warmed our wet clothes.  we were deep in the campo the ruralist of the rural here.  Equidistant from LLapa and Santa Rosa.  Anyway, I am fine.

The artisans weave more when its raining and the fields are doing nothing but growing.  

Mateo