hi!

There is a beautiful scene around me:

We all sit at our corresponding portion of desk working on our corresponding portion of good, and through the doorway behind me, one I barely pay attention to, light streams and so does music from an old megaphone posted above a street market concretely organized behind our office, made of shacks and stands cemented by hot and cold, and dirty and clean food. And blaring from this megaphone is the beautiful "criollo" music of Peru, melancholic and always proud of the motherland, sounding first within a small circular metal space that aggressively expands into air leading the sound, the voices, sometimes unclear, but always strong, to reach me and move my heart. What an experience!

I never imagined being in Peru—to hear the guitars and the "caja" make melody and harmony with voice—to sweat below the ecuator, under clouds that bless the land. I've flown over that silky, silver cover, broken at times by magnificent and jagged mountains, products of strong and fearsome quakes.

This work is hard but also beautiful. I've been on the edge of drunkenness with Paul Farmer; delighted in a genius cuisine, too often eclipsed by rice and potatoes; learned some of the orthographic rules of Castellano; contracted diarrhea; done research; pissed people off; made others laugh; given more hugs than ever before; given my blood to fleas, my sweat to the polluted sky, and my tears to Elaine. I've fallen in love with a land that poses a tremendously stubborn problem but a wonderful invitation to engage and dance along the many rhythms of the southern hemisphere.

And so how do I conclude this impromptu post, written in an office, on a street, in a place far away from you? By making you feel that I am close, much closer to you all than I have ever been.