Why Peru?

“Make your choice, adventurous Stranger,

Strike the bell and bide the danger,

Or wonder, till it drives you mad,

What would have followed if you had.”

C.S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew 

So, many people have asked me "Why Peru?" and maybe were even thinking "why travel for two and a half months at all?" so I will answer that here, and give you all the back story. 

I wanted to travel pretty much ever since we moved to Utah from Pittsburgh and Brett worked from home and was therefore (in my mind) "untethered." I remember talking to him one day at the temple and trying to tell him how great it is for your mind to travel. How you see things in a new perspective and time actually seems to slow down because so many more things are new and different so your mind "takes time" noticing them all, etc. etc. And the reason I wanted to go for a longer trip, instead of just a vacation, 2-week-type time frame, is that I had learned in Switzerland that you really can't get a sense of the place and the people and the culture in only that amount of time. It's too fleeting. So, originally I would have loved to do even longer, like a year even, but Brett wasn't into that idea. So when he came around and was willing to talk about going, I was happy to compromise with 2.5 months. Was that the best idea?... I'll tell you what I think later. Also, I did for sure waffle back and forth quite a bit as to whether I even wanted to do this. It was a big risk-- we could get sick, someone could get hurt where it's harder to get good care, we could hate it, the extra stress could make Brett and I fight a bunch, etc... I didn't know if the value would be worth the cost. One never knows that. 

I think a major part of the reason I wanted to go to Peru was that I had never been to South America before and Peru seemed like a good place to see South America. :) It also has a lot to offer- history/archeology; lots of different types of landscapes- jungle, mountains, beach; and I felt like we might be able to do something useful and helpful in Peru, or that Hazel and Jethro could volunteer some of their time since they weren't in school (that turned out to be a little trickier than I thought, because while there are lots of volunteer opportunities, most seem to be the kind where you pay a lot of money and go for several weeks and live with the group, etc). Other pros for Peru were that it's cheaper to live and eat than many other parts of the world (there's no way we could have afforded a place in Switzerland for 2.5 months, for example), it's in the same time zone as Pittsburgh, so Brett wouldn't have to be up for meetings in the middle of the night. Kami and Leo had also gone to Peru and visited Machu Picchu and all that, and when I was reading about their visit it made me want to go too. It was extremely handy that Jethro learned fluent Spanish on his mission, and honestly I can't remember now if I had already decided I wanted to go to Peru before his mission or not, or if that helped me to decide on it.  Anyway, those are some of the reasons.

It takes all kinds of hours of time and energy to plan a trip like this. The itinerary planning, the money earning and saving, we had to figure out what to do with our house, what to do with the kids' school, and just figuring out how to hack it. I talked to many people, some online who I didn't know who had lived in Peru, someone who lives in Hyrum who is from Peru who knew someone in my ward, someone else who had taken a trip to Peru, other people who like to travel (Alisha and Jeff) and helped support the idea and told me it would be worth it, etc. MOST of the energy was spent trying to get Brett on board, though. haha

As for money, I started going to donate plasma religiously, and saved all that. I also started working cleaning houses for Amy a couple days a week (which means that honestly most of the time, when Navy came home from kindergarten it was Brett who picked her up from the bus stop and took her home and got her lunch), and saved all of that. She paid me well, so I am super grateful she let me work for her and was very flexible. (Which is hard to find in the part-time world. I got a job at Jenson Books, then decided against it, but then they called me back to see if I wanted to work at ATAT, which I also decided against, but instead, Hazel went and worked there and loved it, and now Ethne and Talmage work there too, so that was a good thing to have found.) We also saved almost all our money from our litter of puppies from Moki and I think most of it from Gremlin? So that was quite a bit to put toward Peru. Then I stopped the boys from taking piano lessons from a lady in Mendon and taught them myself instead, to save $100 each month. I had a quite sparse Christmas last year (I didn't make any chocolate, I didn't send out Christmas cards, smaller gifts and some of the pajamas were from the D.I.), and then this year (after Peru) we had a VERY sparse Christmas (everyone only got a small present from Santa and that was it). We didn't take a summer vacation that summer, so we saved that toward Peru. I had it all written down (well, as far as I could estimate how much we might have saved by not going on a vacation or by slimming down Christmas, which is not a very exact thing since I don't really know how much we usually spend on them, especially because I think it's very variable). By the end I was writing down little things like,  "won't buy Halloween costumes - $xx, no rodeo this summer - $150)" and "sold the treadmill for $30"). But it in the end, we had enough money to buy plane tickets to Peru, get us all our travel shots, all the kids (except Hazel and Jethro who already had them) their passports, pay for our airbnb, our hotel in Huaraz, our bus tickets to and from Huaraz, our plane tickets from Lima to Cusco and back, and our major excursions - Huaraz, Machu Picchu, Ausangate, and Lake Titicaca. I didn't set aside money for food there because I figured it would about even out with how much we would spend on food if we weren't in Peru (we didn't go out to eat very often, and even when we did it is VERY cheap to eat out in Peru). 

As for our house, I thought it would be great if we could rent it out or airbnb it, but the problem was our animals. Our chickens and dogs would need taken care of, and if we had to move them somewhere and pay for their care, it might negate the benefits of renting it out. We ended up with a great solution of our neighbors, Leslie and Dave, who have been living in an RV for a couple years while they build their house, said they would stay in it and take care of our animals for us, and we called it even. So that was very nice for us, and hopefully for them.

School turned out well in the end, but it took some stress and worry getting there. Jethro would still be deferred from his mission, so he was good. Here is a little bit of a journal entry I wrote almost one year ago, on February 24, 2022:

So, a couple months ago our trip to Peru that I had been planning and wishing and researching and fretting and wavering and hoping for finally came to be talked about as a "WHEN we go to Peru" rather than "IF we go to Peru."  I'm not sure what the turning point was, but it was a good sign. 

Brett talked to his boss maybe a month or so ago, and he (Branko) gave him a thumbs up, but said he needed to double check with the next boss up. So that was good.  Then the next thing we were waiting for was to hear back about BYU for  Hazel.  She already had dozens of acceptance letters and full-ride scholarships to many Utah schools, but she had her heart set on BYU, and BYU, of course, was the school that takes forever to give results back.  

That was the next hinge point because BYU doesn't let students defer their very first semester, so we would need Hazel to get accepted, get a good enough scholarship that it makes sense for her to even go there when she had full-tuition scholarships other places, and then change to go to summer semester so that she can defer Fall semester.  

Well, the exciting day came, and Hazel got her email that she was accepted to BYU which was so great! and then we were kind of sitting there twiddling our thumbs to see if she got any scholarship offer.  I couldn't remember for sure if Jethro's scholarship had been offered the same exact day/time that his acceptance had come, but I thought it had, so I was worried that maybe she wasn't going to get offered a scholarship. ...very nerve wracking!  But the next day, she texted me a screenshot of the email that said she was offered a full-tuition 2-semester scholarship (and then she can reapply for the following year, and so on). Hooray!!!!!!!!

So then the NEXT thing was finding out about changing to summer, and seeing if the scholarship could change to summer. I called and talked to someone at BYU and they told her to send a Ymessage to the scholarship folks, so she did. And the next day she got a message back saying she wasn't allowed to change the scholarship to a different semester, but that she could still use the second semester scholarship if she didn't take it the first semester.  So I was all upset wondering what to do now. (We actually went to dinner at my mom and dad's new house and Derek and Brooke were there, and I was telling them about the plan, and how this new development threw a monkey wrench in the plan, and my mom actually said, "Well at some point you have to let your kids do their thing even though you'd like them to do your thing." and I was thinking, Ummmmm no. That is EXACTLY, FUNDAMENTALLY what this trip is all about--taking my kids away from their things one last final time all together, so that I can have them all to myself, out of the world, away from obligations, away from people and time and all of that!) 

All day long today I stewed about it and stewed about it, thinking about the different possibilities, what options we now had, thinking even that of course things wouldn't all work out just as easily as I hoped-- so should I just pay for her summer tuition (ouch, that is a HEAVY added expense to this already expensive trip), should we try to go after Fall semester, so she can defer Spring semester instead? What OTHER conflicts would come up in that case? etc. etc. 

And then she texted me and said, "They switched the scholarship over for me" and I was like WWHHHAAAAAAAAAAAT??????!!!!!!!  I said, "I thought they said no?!" And she said, "They changed their mind I guess."

So that was so awesome.

And it was funny because I came home and told the news to Brett and told him how my mind had been working on the problem all day, trying to come up with alternative solutions, etc., and he said, "me too!" and I said, "Oh, you mean, we don't go?" and he said, "No, I was thinking of other options. Not going is one option, I guess, though." So that was cool.

For the highschoolers, Ethne and Talmage, I had called their school last year and talked to the attendance secretary. I asked her what would need to happen if they were to leave on vacation for 2 and a half months, and maybe I accidentally said "weeks" instead of "months" or she just assumed I meant weeks because that's what made sense in her head, or what, but anyway, we miscommunicated and I thought she was answering for months and she thought she was telling me for weeks, but she said, "Oh, that's no problem--we just set them as on vacation, and then their teachers will put their work on Canvas and they can do it from there." and I thought Great! It didn't seem weird to me because when the schools had closed for Covid and everyone had done online school, they had done it through Canvas just like that. So, I never called back or checked with anyone else to make sure. Then come the beginning of this school year, when it was time to register for classes, I called to see if I could make an appointment with the counselor, because since we have this break coming up we might need to look extra carefully at classes, etc. Well, when they realized what I was thinking, they told me, uhhh no- you can't just do school through Canvas. And I was like, why not--all the homework assignments are always there and Ethne says a lot of teachers still upload their daily lectures. But they said it's against policy for someone who is gone that amount of time to be able to still be enrolled. So. I was really mad that I had tried to be on top of things, and called so early in the game, but still ended up seeming like I hadn't thought it through, or planned well. Anyway, they talked to the school district and said no. I talked to the superintendent himself-- I begged him to reconsider. I told him my kids are smart and wouldn't have a problem keeping their grades up, and wouldn't make it more difficult on the teachers. (Because that was his main argument, that it's more work for the teachers to put things on Canvas and have to work with the student long-distance.) I said, "what if we talk to each of their teachers individually for the trimesters and see what they say." And he said, "No, because the thing about teachers is they want to help, they want to do things for you, so they'll say yes, but then they get stressed and burnt out, and then we hear about it." So, I was mad, but there really wasn't anything more I could do. So, I asked what other options I had, and they told me that what I could do was to take the exact same classes (same portion of same class) the first trimester and the second trimester (that's one of the reasons it was extra tricky, was that our dates crossed two trimesters, so affected more classes), and they would get the first half of the trimester before they left, and then come back and get the second half of the trimester after, with a little bit of overlap. (When Ethne came in to talk to the counselor and finalize her classes, and things of course had to be changed around from what she had planned, she cried and was sad and it was really rough.) While they were gone, they could enroll as homeschoolers in an online program to take some classes so they wouldn't get too far behind since they would lose time. They also said that they were maybe going to be making an arrangement with the BYU Online Highschool program, to be able to work together, but they didn't know for sure if it would happen or if it did, when it would go through. So, we decided to wait to hear about the BYU option, because if they did make that partnership, then we wouldn't even have to unenroll them--they could just stay enrolled through that. So we waited, and waited, and waited. And a few weeks before we left, I emailed their counselor and was like... soooo- any word? And she's like, "we should know soon." So finally, just in the nick of time, they made the partnership and we were able to enroll them in some classes that they could do online from Peru. Which was really awesome.

And, for the elementary schoolers, it was easy. The principal (who I love so so much) said it was awesome that we were taking this trip, and told me he thought they would gain so much. So they had to be unenrolled, then I had to sign them up as being homeschooled (got the form notarized and all that jazz. Actually, no jazz. Just the one form was it. Very easy.). Then I spoke with their teachers before I left, they told me where they expected to be in math by the time we came back, and we said we would try to get them to that point. Also, they said, "Well, technically we're not allowed to let you take this math book with you, but if I don't knowwww that you're taking it, what can I do?" which was super awesome. Navy actually had the most to do every day, because she had coding (which I had to learn how to do- terrible stuff) like coding how to read words--I've never seen anyone teach that anywhere else; math; reading; math facts to memorize; etc.