First Impressions

So, while I have my first minute online, I figure I will knock off a quick update.

It is really deserty down here, and I have no idea why that surprised me as much as it did. It is super hot and sunny during the day and chilly at night. The terrain - and I promise I will get some photos up soon - is very flat, big sand dunes in the not to distant landscape, lots of rocks and sand and garbage everywhere. Our community house is in this little bizarre suburb that is about five minutes from downtown Tacna. It is a bit of a strange place - maybe five blocks by six blocks in area, and then around it is just the sand, rocks, and garbage, with a few of these invasiones - or impromptue huts of brick and straw that people build on government land and take over as essentially squatters.

The area where I will be teaching is a whole neighborhood of these invasiones and the school itself is actually half real buildings and about half of these huts made of estera (as it is called en espanol). They have a plan to make all the classrooms real buildings by next year (when they will also have their first graduating class) and generally seem like they are well on their way to making the school more established and official.

The politics are super interesting as well down here and we are right now in a cease-fire between the government and these strikers in the city who actually burned out the national government building in the middle of the city last week. The whole back story is complicated and I will detail more as I learn it, but basically apparently we are waiting right now to see what happens today to know whether or not it will start up tomorrow. If it does, school will be canceled probably and each day canceled has to be made up at the end of the year in late December. So much exciting drama.