A Midsummer Night

Yesterday morning, thousands of people gathered at the ancient site of Stonehenge to celebrate the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year, which in the northern hemisphere is the 21st of June.  Although I should probably be getting some rest before I set off on a new adventure, the sun has gone down and is now creeping back in through the windows, and outside the birds are starting to tweet.  I’ve been reading through all of the posts I made here in 2007/2008 whilst I was living in Japan, and thinking about the trip ahead of me.  Only a day after celebrating the height of Summer in England and the longest day of the year, I’m about to embark on the longest journey of my life.

I’d planned on keeping my blog updated after returning from Japan, but quickly lost motivation.  After all, compared to life in far away countries, my day-to-day existence here seems pretty mundane, and writing about it and publishing it online all seems a bit conceited.  Regardless, I’ve had a fun and exciting first year at medical school in London, going to lots of fancy dress parties, nursing lots of hangovers and even doing a bit of study from time to time.  Compared to many other courses, the medicine curriculum is quite unforgiving and I’ve found that the free time which I used to have in abundance is now much harder to come by.  But now, Summer is here and I’m determined to make the most of it.  At midday tomorrow (well later today now), I board a train down to London, from where I’ll be flying to Lima, Peru; via Sao Paolo airport in Brazil.  Including waiting for the change, the flight is going to take 21 hours, but that’s only half of the journey!  My final destination is a city called Cuzco, which can be reached in little over an hour by an Andes-hopping aeroplane, but by the much more affordable bus takes over twenty hours.

All in all, from when I set off tomorrow afternoon, I’ll be travelling in some form or another for over fifty hours.  Good job I don’t get travel sick!

As for what I’m going to be doing once I arrive, I’m going to be doing volunteer work again, only this time it’s at an orphanage.  Compared to the very organised system I was part of when in Japan, where I knew what was going to be in my room four months before even arriving; I’m not entirely sure of what to expect from arrangements in Peru.  I understand everyone is a lot more laid back and I should just go with the flow and be as adaptable as I can.  In a nutshell, I’ll be living in an apartment above the orphanage, looking after the kids staying there, entertaining them, cooking, taking them on trips and whatever else I can think of!  I won’t be on my own, at least I doubt I will be as the volunteer company usually has at least a few volunteers active there.  It’s up to us to find things to amuse the children, other than some old gameboys I’ve managed to dig up, once they get bored of them maybe I’ll be able to transfer some of the useful skills I got whilst over on the other side of the world – by teaching them how to make origami!

I’m going to be in Peru for ten weeks all in all, and I’ll be working at the orphanage and living in Cuzco for the first four to six weeks.  After that I’ll be travelling around, as it’s an amazingly diverse country, which has everything from a lively surfing community to some of the largest sand dunes on the planet – not to mention Machu Picchu, one of the most incredible wonders of the world.

I’m hoping to learn a fair bit of Spanish as well.  Although I’m only going to be in Peru for a fraction of the time I was staying in Japan, I’m armed with some Spanish books and textbooks and have already learnt some rudimentary phrases!  I’m using a book called ‘Assimil: Spanish with Ease‘ which aims to teach by showing you natural sentences, with a translation into English on the adjacent page and notes on the difficult to grasp grammar.  It seems like a great system, and the sentences have been sticking in my head; although some of the phrases are of questionable use (do I really need to be able to say, “The blonde tobacco, in Spain, is expensive”??).  I might have to make a bit more effort than I did whilst living in Japan as well, for unlike in Japan where it was a real challenge to find a competent English-speaker, Cuzco is Peru’s backpacking capital.  At least I won’t have any trouble meeting new friends!

As I mentioned at the start of this – the longest day of the year has just been celebrated over here.  I’ll be arriving in Cuzco on the 24th of June, a date which marks a festival celebrating the shortest day of their year.  I guess it’s goodbye Summer already.

Anyway, keep checking as I’ll be updating regularly whilst I’m out there, with pictures!  Now I’m going to try and catch a little bit of sleep before I set off on my journey.

Adiós, Inglaterra!