Bradley Aronson's Archive

Today is the 3rd of August, and I will be going home on the 9th, so my time here is just about done. Today I am pretty excited; I will be traveling to Oxapampa, Peru with Justin and Mark. We are going to check on a new member of the church who went to Oxapampa three or four months ago and seeing how he is doing there. I am a little nervous about going because in order to get there we have to go over a mountain, and the last time I was on a mountain I got altitude sickness really bad. Also, the roads are very narrow and we will be going on a double decker bus. While that doesn’t scream safety to me, these drivers have been doing this for a long time and I am sure that they know what they are doing. I am not really sure what we will be doing in Oxapampa, I know that we will be talking with Luis, but other than that, I have no idea.
There will be four new interns arriving on Saturday, so my bed will be gone after today. It is going back to the apartment it came from while I am at Spanish class today. I have really been enjoying the one on one Spanish lessons I have been getting at Ele Latina Spanish school. I feel like I have been learning better because where I struggle we can spend more time than if there were more people in the class. It’s just been good.
Gotta go, my laundry is getting done and I need to get packed for the trip.

I have really been enjoying my time here in Lima, and I have been slacking in the posting part of the summer. Well I have about 12 days left here and leaving will be sad and joyful at the same time. I have missed my friends in the states so much over the summer, and them asking me all the time when I was coming home did not make it any easier to be here. Having said that, I wouldn’t change this summer for the world. I have had a great time here and have learned a lot of things that I would never have learned in the U.S.
I think one of the biggest things I will take away from here is how to treat new people, or people new to the area. (Be that new to Abilene or Katy, or new to the United States.) I have been greeted with smiles by everyone here, and they have all been gracious to me, inviting me to go eat or see movies or to do a great number of different things.
There is though, one man who I have a tough time being around. I speak to him and he does not listen, I believe he thinks I cannot possibly know what he is trying to express because my Spanish is not as good as his. It is really frustrating when he tells me the same thing over and over after I tell him I understand. I explain it back to him and he says yes, then proceeds to tell me again, and usually it is over trivial stuff. (Something like that he has no spouse, or that he goes to a Pentecostal church.) I don’t say these things to rag on him, but to say that I know how it feels for people to assume you don’t know anything because you are new or foreign. I hope to never treat others poorly because they are not normally around me or don’t speak the same language as me.
I have been going to a Spanish school here for the past few weeks, 5 x’s a week, except this week was only for the first 3 days. The 28th of July is the Peruvian Independence Day, so there was no school Thursday, the 28th. I surely wasn’t complaining about that. It has been really interesting to live here, and observe/help the team that is here. There are Bible studies or times of Prayer just about every day here, and it’s been great to be involved in those, even with the language barrier.
Next week we will be traveling to Oxapampa to see a young man who I believe a year ago was baptized. His grandfather passed away a few months ago and he has not come back after the funeral, and has almost cut off all communication. The team is worried because he told them while in Lima that if he were to go back to Oxapampa that it would most likely lead to a poor life style, and him running with his old friends who didn’t appear to support the new life that he had chosen. I am excited to go and meet him, I’ve heard a lot about him, and I am also excited to see some other parts of Peru.
Sorry about the delay between posts, I’ll try and get another post or two in before I leave talking about some of the other stuff that we have done here.

On June the 13, I flew out to Lima, Peru for a 9 week internship and now 2 days later, I am extremely happy that I did. I have only been here for a few days, and cannot speak very well, but I am enjoying looking and listening to everything around me. Yesterday some of the interns who are leaving next week took me to a Spanish school that they went to and introduced me to the lady who ran it. She (in Spanish) that her name was Maria, and that it was a pleasure to meet me. I responded with a blank stare and a lack of how to get the words “It is nice to meet you too,” out in Spanish. So she introduced herself in English and we moved on from my inability to articulate the words that are stuck in my head. Oh well, I guess that is how things go from time to time.