What comes next?

In a few short days, I will be boarding a flight from Lima to Los Angeles via Mexico City. My sisters Megan and Martha will pick me up at LAX and the three of us will share the last leg of my journey. To ensure that the journey comes full circle, we will make at least one stop at In 'n Out burger as we did when the three of us went to SFO on August 15, 2007.

For now, I am enjoying the thin air of beautiful Cuzco. I spent my first night here at Loki Backpackers Hostel, a place recommended by a guide book. This place is pretty wild! If one wants to feel as though they are back in college and not in a Spanish speaking country, this is the place. The first night had pub trivia, one of my favorite ways to combine beer and brains. The next morning, I thought I would save a bit of money and energy by moving down the road to a cheaper, slower paced hostel.

Though Loki is as touristy as can be, it has the best assortment of volunteer opportunities of any hostel I´ve come across so far. Though not staying there, I was able to sign up for a day of manual labor in the sacred valley. Many people pay for tours of this valley, I paid for transport and to lug adobe bricks onto and off of a truck. Last year, hundreds of families lost their homes and livelihoods when Cuzco was ravaged by a flood. I am embarrassed to say that I didn´t make the connection between Macchu Picchu´s flood based closure to flooding around the area.

Eight volunteers signed up for the day and we took a ninety minute ride into the beautiful sacred valley. We were told that we would be helping to build a guinea pig enclosure as a way to offer income generating activities to the community. We didn´t know that the bricks were at least 30 lbs. each and we would fill and empty a large flatbed truck three times. I was one of four men to volunteer and two of the others suffer from lower back troubles. Taking one for the team, I was either standing behind the truck, holding bricks at shoulder height for people to easily load the truck or I was on the truck, bent over, receiving the bricks and stacking them in place. At least 800 bricks later, we were all dust covered and exhausted. My lower back muscles and hamstrings are still screaming at me but also letting my know that I was using muscles rather than vertebrae for the work.

Yesterday, I volunteered again, this time at a school for disadvantaged children. I was the only volunteer this time (late nights and early morning volunteering don´t always agree) and joined the two volunteer coordinators. We went to the greatest playground I have ever seen and I was immediately paired up with a little gordito. The playground was equiped with several slides of at least 50 feet, mini-carousels, swings, a trampoline and more. My little guy Fabricio was all about the slide so I spent much of the time climbing stairs and pulling myself down the slide (jeans and a little guy on the lap didn´t allow for fast sliding). Fabricio spent at least thirty minutes longer with his lunch and only got a few minutes of kneeling on the trampoline before the day was over. He had a huge smile on his face when slowly sliding and while kneeling on the trampoline so I felt like a successful play partner.

When I got back from volunteering, I had an e-mail from my waitlist manager at Michigan. Her message said that she tried calling me earlier in the week but couldn´t get through so could I please e-mail her back so we could talk about a few things.

Two days prior, about twenty people posted messages to an MBA board about being admitted off the waitlist at Ross (the name of Michigan´s business school). I was confident about my chances but after getting no news felt sure that I was out of luck.

Having a San Francisco phone number as my contact information definitely didn´t help matters but after three pay phone calls and a few e-mails I was able to get in touch with the member of admissions. After ten minutes of answering questions about why I want to attend Ross, where it stands on my list of prospective schools and other questions similar to those I answered during my Mumbai interview, I was invited to join the class of 2012. I happily accepted and will be headed to Ann Arbor this fall. What a relief after applying from the road, piecing together my application and speculating endlessly, I am in!! I withdrew from Duke´s waitlist and now will head home with the next chapter sorted. Tomorrow, I will head up to Macchu Picchu!

Love to all!