I got the chance to spend 10 days back in Peru in November.

I had a great time but I caught a little third-culture-kid-itis, again.

Here’s what I wrote the first day I was in Lima, the city where I was born, but which I hardly know:

I’m in Lima. I’m in the place where I was born. I’m from here, and yet so patently not. The last time I returned, two years ago, I sobbed as the plane landed, but this time I just feel a calm satisfaction as I hand my [Peruvian] passport to official.

“Returning, or do you live abroad?”he asks.

“I live in in Colombia,” I say.

“Welcome,” he says and I am in, as a citizen.

I think it’s high time I re-emerged from the swamp of busyness and tiredness that was threatening to overwhelm me, but by God’s grace is turning to solid ground beneath my feet with every day that passes.

Happy 1st December, which in Medellín marks the beginning of the Christmas period and is celebrated by a great deal of noise at midnight.

Below, one of the funniest things I’ve seen for a long time, taken in Lima, Peru.

Today is Peru’s Independence Day, celebrating the declaration of Peru’s

independence from Spain on 28th July 1821.

The declaration said:

From this moment, Peru is free and independent,

by the general will of its peoples and the justice

of its cause, which God defends.

Stirring stuff.

Looking back, the movement towards independence

in Latin America seems inevitable

but it’s worth remembering just how hard won

these fledgling republics’ liberty was.

Peru’s war of independence lasted from 1811 to 1824.

Please note, I am making no applications

to modern independence movements.