Me vuelvo!

i'm back in my site now and successfully mastered 2 Peruvian bus rides totaling 20 hours with my broken arm. success!

because i finished my grant application for the soup kitchen while i was on bed rest in lima, i was able to present it to my community partners right after i got back. we're going to meet next week to finalize it and then submit it. i don't want to count my chickens before they hatch, but everything seems to be going well with the project.

the next step after submitting the grant application is to put a committee together. i have a good idea who i want on my committee and while i was in lima, my community partner made contact w/ some key leaders, including the governor of the town. if we can get him on board on the project, then we have a good chance of gaining the municipality's support (and possibly getting them to write the project into their budget). so we hope to have our committee together and meet with the municipality sometime next month, because may is when budgeting starts. it's nerve wrecking b/c so much rides on the municipality meeting, but i feel as though we've gathered enough data and information to make a strong case.

i've also resumed my work at the local all girls school. don't laugh but i feel like i'm a pretty good role model there. in the end, i hope that my work eventually will help lessen the high teen pregnancy rate. i've also resumed my work with kids in the campo (rural areas) and picked up some work at the local trade school. i know it's odd, but i really do try to get across that a person with limited means can still achieve sucess.

so my passion right now lies in the soup kitchen project (as always) and creating programs at the schools so that the youths have a better chance of succeeding in life.

anyways, as for me, i am slowly adjusting to a one-armed life. but i will admit that i've been thinking a lot about what happened. weirdly, i'm more scared now than i was before. it wasn't a fall that could kill me, but more likely it was a fall that could have paralyzed me or cause head trauma. i've thought about this everyday since the accident. i know that i'll get past these thoughts, but eventually, it'll just take time.

i really thank you for everybody's support and good wishes. i'm really going to try hard to be more careful from now on.