CUSCO, PERU - Well, I've been meaning to write an update to my travel blog for the many months that I've been back in New York City, but I never put it at the top of my list. Since I'm now back in Cusco, Peru to spend a few weeks with my father in his homeland, I figured I should bring the story up-to-date.

NYC: THE RETURN
I actually returned to NYC back at the beginning of August of last year and moved into my new apartment - for one night. The next day I jumped into an SUV with some of my UCLA/NYC friends to head up to Maine for the weekend to attend the wedding of my friends Karl and Margaret. Returning to NYC, I set about settling into my new life. I was fortunate to find a room with the Jeff Israel, the twin brother of my friend Jimmy. He and I seem to get along really well and I even assisted with the redecoration of his apartment.

The next few months were rather uneventful - I started temping at Merrill Lynch again and editing the travel doc about the train trip from Cusco to Machu Picchu. I also began to plan for my return to South America for 4 months to visit Peru and continue on to Argentina. However, in January, just a few weeks before my return, I ran out of work at the temp agency. This really threw me for a loop because I had decided to leave on Feb. 1st instead of Jan. 1st so that I could earn more money for the trip. After not being called for a few days by the temp agency, I decided to send an email over to Nautica, the apparel company I had worked for on-and-off for the last 7 years, to see if they had any extra graphic design work. Within a few hours I received a phone call from my friend Rodrigo asking me to come in and help out.

Nautica had just reformed the Creative Services division as part of the marketing department, a change that occurred after the company was bought 15 months ago by a larger apparel company called Vanity Fair Corporation, or VFC. They're rolling out all this new advertising under the new slogan for Nautica, "Navigate Life". It became obvious after a few days that there would be a lot of work in the future and that I could continue to work there as a permanent freelancer, in the same capacity I had worked for them years before.

Working at Nautica had a strange effect on me that I had not felt for 3 years in a vocational capacity: confidence. Working again in a field where I am skilled (as opposed to temping, which doesn't really take many skills), I started feeling good about my future, which seemed to be more open with possibility. While I am thankful that I've had the freedom to travel and discover my Peruvian family, it became more obvious the sacrifices I've made with this vagabond lifestyle. Namely, it takes me away from being a daily part of my friends and family in the States. It wasn't until I started working for Nautica that I realized I was finally "home" and that I still love living in New York City. Basically, I started to commit myself again to my life in the U.S.

The only problem was that I still had a 4 month South American adventure ahead of me! Realizing that this work opportunity probably wouldn't stick around for the next 4 months, I needed to make a decision and think outside the "box" that I had created. My thinking was that the only part of the trip that was non-negotiable was being in Peru for 3 weeks with my father, the accomplishment of a life-long dream of mine. So, I approached Rodrigo with a proposition: I would still leave, as scheduled, on the 31st of January for Peru, but I would return in 3 weeks instead of 4 months to continue working for Nautica. He agreed and here I am!

LESSONS FROM MY LIFE IN PERU
I would highly recommend that everyone spend some time living in a developing nation - especially with a regular family, like mine in Peru. I've been fortunate to see daily life here, with all its difficulties, but also its wonderful moments. There were many aspects of my life in Peru that I wanted apply to my life in the States. Here's some thoughts:

Health. I have to say that I felt healthier with my lifestyle in Cusco than in the States. This mainly had to do with the different eating habits and amount of exercise you get on a daily basis here. I really like that we would eat the largest meal of in the middle of the day, around 1pm. We would then have dinner relatively early as well, around 6pm. As the portion size was generally smaller than in the States (consisting of simple carbohydrates like rice, potatoes, and corn with a bit of protein, chicken or beef) and you have to exert yourself physically so much more in Cusco (walking around at 11,000 ft can be tiring), you generally would burn off all of the energy you take in (and then some). I would sometimes chuckle, knowing that so many people in the States were resorting to fad diets like Atkins to decrease the amount of carbohydrates they were eating, when the typical diet in Peru consists of mostly of them. I've tried to keep the whole 'big meal in the middle of the day' thing in NYC, but it is difficult, since our culture is so much more oriented around dinner. But I think I've generally been good about reducing my portion size and taking the opportunity to walk more. It's a good thing I live in NYC, since we have more of a walking culture. In fact, when I was working in the financial district and the weather was good, I would walk 40 minutes to and from work almost every day.

Difficulty and Meaning. What I've also discovered by living in Peru is that many times things that are more difficult to do often have more meaning. Here in Peru people don't have the option to buy as many things to make their life easier, so you just have to do it the simplest way. It may not be quite as efficient, but efficiency often seems to take the meaning out of doing even mundane things. So when I returned I found myself thinking about if there was a way that I could do things in a less efficient way, without having to spend money on gadgets and tools. The first manifestation of this was moving items from my storage space to my new apartment. As luck would have it, the bus that stops at the corner near my apartment also stops at the corner where my storage space is, a half hour away. So, over the course of a few days I would go to my storage space, load up my backpack with as much as I could carry, and jump on the bus to my apartment. I ended up having to take about 8 trips, but I didn't spend any extra money on a moving van, only on an unlimited MetroCard pass that I would have to buy to get around in NYC anyways. When I moved a chair that was too big to take on the bus, I strapped it to a hand cart and rolled it to my apartment over an hour-and-a-half. It was more difficult, but even moving into my apartment seemed to have more meaning.

Consumerism. Like I mentioned before, here in Peru most people can't really buy a lot of things because they simply don't have the money. In the past, I've had my share of consumerist tendencies, like most Americans. For me, it was buying DVDs, CDs, or electronic gadgets. When I returned to the States, I looked at all the DVDs I owned and thought 'geez, what a waste of money!' It was crazy to think that my entire CD and DVD collections cost more than some members of my family in Peru can make in a few years! So, I've been trying to add a new habit to my daily consumerist tendencies: trying to think 'is this something I can do without?' or 'is there a cheaper option that results in a similar function?' So, instead of buying DVDs, I subscribed to Netflix, a company that rents and sends you DVDs in mail, which you then send back when you've watched them and they send you more. I have no cable or satellite since, as an aspiring filmmaker, I should be watching movies anyway. I've started being less of a consumer in small ways and I think this is a mindset that will stick.

Well, that's it for now, I'll let you know what's going on with my return to Cusco in the next edition.