sad eyes

These past few days I often am overcome with the feeling that I am walking around constantly wearing those goggles we used to wear at basketball practice, the ones that had tape on the bottom so you could only look up and not look down.

I really don't know where I'm going here, or even where I'm stepping, but I am moving forward and maybe that's all I need to be doing here.

Peru is teaching me a lot. As cliche as it is, the saying 'the more I see the less I know' is ridiculously true. This leaves me feeling, at times, incredibly lost and sad and hopeless. This past weekend I went to Arequipa, here we met three young boys (age 12, 9 and 4) who lived on the street and sold little candies every day. Colleen and I decided to buy them dinner and had fun talking to them while they devoured their pizzas and made sure to package up every morsel they didn't eat. At a Much later hour, when we exited from a bar, there were the boys, still trying to sell their chocolates. As sad as this made me, I still wondered if the boys at the orphanage back home are better off than they are. I suppose they do have a bit of a community, as messed up as it is, but I don't know if they're happy. Little boys deserve to be happy, they deserve to have someone tuck them in at night and sing to them.

Last week I started volunteering at a temporary home for girls who were on the streets either for prostitution or because they had been sexually abused, or both. Some of us go there twice a week for about an hour. We dance with them and I always laugh, a lot, because the language barrier is just more hilarious with them. Sometimes we dance and this is even funnier because they have some serious moves and all of us are awkward white girls who can barely move our hips. But they hate it there. Whenever we ask them, they tell us how much they hate it. I wonder if this is because it's just not very nice there or because they miss their family or friends, or what. I know they all have the mental capacity to recognize that being on the streets isn't a great way to live, but I also know that they are all smart enough to realize when they have been stripped of their freedom.

There is so much confusion in my heart and my mind here. I have a feeling this is the sort of confusion that comes and never leaves. An, albeit small, realization about the way that the world works. Some of the things I'm learning make me sick to my stomach, others are some of the most beautiful realizations I've ever come to....more on this later. I'm off to buy a birthday gift.

And when you smile those sad eyes look sadder and sadder still
*bat for lashes