Trujillo

Well, I have some good and bad news. First off, thanks Grandma for the card, I did get it- my first piece of mail! I was pretty excited. My birthday is coming up and my host family (and a goodly portion of the community) is abuzz about what to do for it. I´ll probably have my trainee friends and some folks from the community come over, do a bit of dancing and imbibing, and eat some cake and good home-cooked food. At least, that´s how it´s gone with other trainees that have had birthdays so far. I´m not used to a lot of fuss over birthdays, so this is all kind of amusing, but it´s also kind of nice to be the center of attention once in awhile. I guess I had better get used to it because apparently at site I will always be under the microscope.
As for the bad news, I tore up my knee pretty bad at the beach on Saturday. "Tore up" might be a little intense, but it´s definitely swollen to twice its size and is difficult to get around on. I´m going to a specialist in Lima tomorrow and may get an MRI to make absolute sure what´s up. I´m rooting against anything being torn as that could potentially keep me out of the game for awhile, and the last thing I want at this point is to be medevac´d to Panama or the U.S. I´ll try and post something small tomorrow when I find out what the deal is exactly. I also got my camera messed up at the beach because I made the mistake of trusting females to make sure my stuff didn´t get lapped by the waves while I was in the water. Every single item of their´s made it out o.k., but somehow every single item of mine, while right next to theirs, on the same towel, got left behind (yes I´m a little bitter, but I don´t hate all womankind because of this- o.k., maybe a bit). The moral of the story is I´ll get over it soon enough, and I may be able to get a camera shop to clean out the sand that is impeding the lense from opening. So all may be well fairly quickly, although it may take a little more time for the knee.
As for Trujillo, the city after which I titled my post, it was awesome. It is a bit touristy because of the beautiful beach of Huanchaco and the extensive pre-Incan ruins of Chan Chan that are near, but it is nice nonetheless. I got to see the ruins and do the beach on successive days, as well as got to a place that brewed its own beer, making it automatically the best in Peru I´ve yet partaken of (in careful moderation, of course). Outside of the last hour at the beach, I enjoyed it a lot, and pictures of the entire trip are forthcoming. Well, the family´s calling me to eat, so I had better run. Adios,

Zach