Ok, don´t be mad....

... but I may have run away from Lima.

It was quite a bad week really. Monday - I dislocated my jaw, Tuesday - realised I have ringworm, Friday - some tramp masturbated next to me in the street at 2am in the morning (eeeww!), and THEN my landlady emailed me on Sunday (3 days before I was due to move in) to say that I couldn´t have the flat because her sister was homeless and needed somewhere to live. Even though I´d signed a contract and paid a deposit##. Bitch! That was the last straw. I contemplated returning to the hellish routine of circling newspaper ads and scouring Lima for a cheap but livable flat, and just couldn´t face it. I realised that Peru probably had much prettier places than Lima, yet here I was languishing in high-rise, pollution ridden, ridiculously cloudy hell.
So, it just so happened that a guy I vaguely knew in the hostel was catching a bus to Huancayo to take a week´s Spanish lessons here. He hadn´t booked a ticket or anything, was just going to turn up and hope for the best. I was still very angry at the landlady, which is not the best emotion for rational decision making, but there you go, I ran around packing my bags and found myself in Huancayo at 6am Monday.
To cut a long story short, I´m no longer working in Peru, I am now travelling in Peru. Which is really just a return to the original plan, via a long stay in Lima in which I realised that I don´t want to work in Lima for a year. If I´m going to stay somewhere for a year (which I still intend to do after Christmas) then I should find somewhere beautiful, I think.
So at the moment I´m in Huancayo, on Friday I´m hading to Cusco where I´ll get the train to Machu Piccu (I would love to hike the trail but you have to book it months in advance), then to Puno where I´ll see Lake Titicaca, then maybe in the Bolivian jungle or back to the Northern coast of Peru. I haven´t decided yet, but I´m having lots of fun thinking about it!

## Don´t worry - I got my deposit back

Also, yes, I did sort of run away from my job and leave them in the lurch with many lessons and no teacher. And yes, I did only alert my boss to this fact on Monday afternoon, when he had about 4 hours to sort it out. Umm.... I am quite ashamed about this, as it was irresponsible, selfish and cowardly. But in many ways, they were hoisted on their own petard - I mean, the reason I could leave without saying anything is because I don´t have a contract. The reason I don´t have a contract is because they can´t be bothered to sort out work visas so a lot of teachers get paid in cash and work illegally. So it´s partially their own blaggardly fault for trying to swindle the Peruvian government.

And I was in an emotionally precarious state, due to the reasons stated at the beginning. So don´t think too badly of me!!

xoxo