singing songs.

for the last two days 15 of the volunteers and i have been going around to kindergartens in the sacred valley to sing kid´s songs. i´ve sung such classics as mary had a little lamb, twinkle twinkle little star (spanish and eng) and old mcdonald had a farm.. it´s been really fun. today i told someone that i thought my heart got a little bigger watching some of the kids sing songs. it was amazing to see such little people get excited about hearing music, even though most of it was in different languages that they couldn´t understand. just to see smiling faces...

now i´m going to some hot springs in calca to relax and swim. i don´t have a bathingsuit so that should be interesting.. sunday is the day of paragliding. i´ll let you know the second i get to a computer how that went.

healed.

so to preface this post i would like to revert back to some previous thoughts that i had sitting in the travel doctor´s office a week before i left... "oh i´ll never get THAT one, i´m stronger than most people" and "ew. sick who gets THAT?" or "seriously... he just said that." and even "i´m going to be fine"... WELL, if you´re familiar with the saying "pride comes before the fall," you must know that i just tripped and fell on the biggest stone, scraping my whole body on the roughest, rockiest concrete you could ever imagine. i´ve never been so sick or felt so close to death. why does it have to get people in such a bad way. i don´t understand.

it started friday.. i knew i was about to get the gnarliest sore throat. i just knew. i wasn´t the biggest faker when i was little, although i can´t lie that i loved staying home from school-- i´m not going to make something out of nothing just to get a day off..but yeah, i knew it was coming. i went to cusco (mistake #1) and didn´t sleep much friday night. mcdonalds calls so late at night it´s ridiculous. learn some manners :)

ok so saturday we just hung around. didn´t really do anything (including not drinking water--mistake #2) and so i became insanely dehydrated and then decided to stay out late yet again. around 2am i realized that my skin hurt, knew i should leave, but pushed through until lib was ready to go(4:00, mistake #3). you can imagine that when i woke up sunday morning and LITERALLY couldn´t move without gasping for air from the pain, i wasn´t surprised.

so yeah, couldn´t move, FEVER LIKE WHOA and i was throwing up on both ends. ok.. the sheets hurt my body. taking a shower was the equivalent to not wearing sunscreen at the big kahuna on the hottest, sunniest day of the summer and then asking your mom to scratch your back while she pours hot wax all over it. i wish that i could say that i´m having one of an awesome exaggerating moment. i´m not.

so we were supposed to check out at 9am but i was not available for motion until around 7 pm. my sister and my dear friend Kathleen brought me things throughout the day and made sure that no one at the desk bothered me. we finally headed home and i slept a ton for the next couple of days, missing work, meals and time with the family and other volunteers who came to pisac. it was kinda tragic in a way.. i watched every episode of "curb your enthusiasm" that exists.

so now i´m better and super excited to be out of my dark cave of a room. now people think i´m on something. just life, people. i´m going to urubamba tonight for the pub quiz, which thank goodness i don´t have to do, and i´m going to eat some amazing food. so excited.

so this is why i´ve been a huge email sketch, but i promise i´m working on those. i just want to be thorough with yall and sometime i don´t have as much time as i want to say it all (i just said that in my stuart´s mom voice, btw, much funnier)...

peace.

healing heart

i have had the most amazing two days. i started to read "Captivating" and already God is mending my heart. there is so much that i want to write but my time is limited, but for now i just wanted to record that i almost feel like a different person. it helps to be surrounded by His beautiful creation, something i still haven not gotten over. i had a fun day in the market with Lilo and Anka from Holland, Sally from Australia, and Robyn from Canada. i have found a family in those girls and i´m so excited to get to spend more time with them while i´m here. i bought way too many bracelets in the market--they go halfway up one of my forearms--and i bought a really hippie/chic fake silver ring with a green stone in the middle. in addition, i bought so many house decorations (Suzie i hope you like them!) that i had to create tunnel vision for myself on the way out so i would quit spending. it´s so addicting. i´m ready to see my kids again and i really feel like this next week is going to be one of the best yet...

relaxing..

so this weekend i decided to chill out. libby and i went last night to Urubamba for a going-away dinner for Kirstie from England and Leslie from California. it was at a really nice restaurant in the city. very swanky. i ate so much food....pasta with green olives, sun-dried tomatoes, mushrooms and a cheesy sauce, a truffle desert with chocolate and some kind of rum sauce, and a glass of red wine.. for mine and libby´s meal it was $30. ha! i can´t get over the exchange rate. it´s fabulous.

today some of the volunteers came to Pisac to shop in the market here. we ate at Ulrike´s and then walked around. i read a magazine while they shopped (i´m still not ready to start the spending..) and got a little sun until it started raining on me suddenly. libby and the volunteers went to cusco afterwards to hang out for the night and go white-water rafting tomorrow. i don´t know why but i just felt like i needed to stay in town. we´ve done smoething every free moment we have here. i have yet to go on a walk or get any excercise at all and i haven´t played volleyball with Pati yet. today i´m going to go to Calca to have a few drinks with Kirstie´s family and tomorrow i might take the bus to Urubamba (my favorite thing to do here) and take pictures of anything and everything and then gradually make my way back home. i´m excited to get a break. for the last couple of days i´ve felt like i´ve needed to re-evaluate my intentions for being here. lately i´ve not liked work because i´m always so tired (because i go to cusco every chance i get) and i haven´t spend much time just living. i´ve just been doing a lot. i think it´s important for me to remember that i am a volunteer first, and then when i´m wholeheartedly doing my job, i can travel and play. i have decided that in the next two weeks i´m going paragliding off one of these gigantuous mountains, so stay posted about that...

a change.

life as i know it will be different from now on. being here and not having such common luxuries as my really soft pillows (if you know me, you know it´s a huge deal that i don´t have those) my favorite kind of gum, the office every thursday, a cell phone, etc. has made me realized what´s actually important. i have such a different view of what i want out of life. i´m not saying that it´s wrong to want to have a job and a career, but i can´t imagine not living somewhere besides the U.S. again. maybe i´ll try to team up with angelina jolie and adopt a bunch of cambodian babies. haha. i think my next destination will be Ireland. now more than ever bartending seems to be a smart decision because that´s a universal talent that i could take with me wherever i go. these are only thoughts though, we´ll see once i get home.

my parents are going to visit in a few weeks and i´m so excited to see them and to be able to show them around my new home. it´s funny how much pride that can stir up. hopefully they´ll get as rich an experience as i have gotten and then can help tell my stories..

today on the way home from spanish class i almost ran straight into a cow. he wasn´t watching where he was going, obviously, and almost stepped on my toe.. i wasn´t mad of course :) speaking of animals, i´m falling more in love with the cats that live at our house. unfortunately the mom cat hissed at me today and it kinda hurt my feelings, but we´re not in a fight anymore.they´re so cute! i´m going to post pictures soon and you´ll fall in love too.

lastly, i just wanted to say thanks to everyone who´s been contacting me. i really appreciate that you take the time to write. your emails and comments make my day :)

bartender...

libby and i finished out the weekend strong... 8 more volunteers joined us in cusco, all of which i love. most of them are new, and i´m glad they´re here because they are all similar to us personality-wise. we have the best time when we´re together. we all went to a place called Roots and danced and met tons of people from the U.S... always an interesting exchange when everyone realizes that they all speak english. we also met some bartenders that worked there and they let us go behind the bar and work with them. i grabbed beers out of the fridge when popped the top off and gave it to the customer. it was really funny that they let us do that. i felt special for an hour.

our McDonald´s count has increased substantially. we just can´t help it. it´s sooo good here. and the restaurant is really cute and decorated. there are chandeliers and exposed brick and all the people there wear the same thing....they have mcdonald´s jeans! it´s so cute. everyone there likes working there too and is really nice.

now i´m just really exhausted and can´t wait to sleep. libby and i have some time off because there´s a strike and a holiday this week so we don´t have to work. i think we´re going to go to a beach resort and chill for a couple of days. i really want to rent mo-peds or soething. i think that´s too dangerous though. on thursday we will have been here for one MONTH! so crazy how fast time has flown by. i´ll be home before i know it...

mortified.

so i´ve been successfully avoiding the topic of washing underwear...i brought enough to not have to do it for 3 weeks, but that time is up. so yesterday libby and i buckled down and washed our undergarments, our cute, sometimes flowery undies (sorry if this is too much information, but it´s my life here, so yeah...) it took me literally 8 minutes for me to get up enough courage to put the first pair up on the family line. it was truly embarrassing and i´m almost positive they were talking about us.

we came to cusco to play for a couple of days. i´m in the hostel now. this morning was fun because we spent an hour hysterically laughing about last night.... from libby´s necklace from the jungle to the creepy blue-glasses guy who wouldn´t leave anyone alone and the people who ate my McDonald´s. i love this place. i miss my mom and dad a lot though.

we´re about to head to a dessert cafe to get some grub. libby and i have spanish today at our teacher´s house, which is the cutest little apartment flat i´ve seen. she told us stories about her daughter and i learned that "el poopoo" is an accepted word. thought that was interesting. libby and i have some time to travel and i think we´re going to go see the figures in the sand. you have to rent a mini plane to see them. kinda cool! i´ll let you know how it goes. i´m posting pictures later too if you´d like a better look into this world.

an off day.

today was an off day on the colored-pencils front. it was as if every pencil wanted to get sharp but once it realized that it was ready for coloring, it would break and the broken part would wedge itself into the sharpener making it nearly impossible to stay sane. oh well, sad day when all you have to complain about is a stupid colored-pencil war, right?

yesterday was extremely interesting as well, great and bad. my teacher was really sick, so while she layed down on the ground behind her desk on a cot, i got to manage 25 crazy, spanish-speaking children. i´m not going to lie and say that i could handle it because i definitely had to get the other teacher to come there and yell at them. they don´t listen to people who can´t communicate with them.. go figure.

then libby got bit by a spider so i waited with her in the health clinic for an entire hour while no one did anything. sooo frustrated. but then the winds changed...

the irish brothers that we met on the train came to visit us. we walked around the market and ate at Ulrike´s for a while and then i got to ride on the bike with Colin. we drove for a while and even stopped and hung out in a local town for a little bit. i´m sad they´re gone.

i headed to urubamba after spanish lessons but made the mistake of getting in a mini bus with only two other men who were driving it. it was really scary and i was literally praying the whole time that they wouldn´t pull over to kill me. i got there safely and had the most fun i´ve had yet at a pub quiz. there´s a new german boy who´s precious and some awesome girls. when we´re all together we can´t stop laughing. it´s really entertaining.

now i´m going to go watch grey´s anatomy with Kathleen. i´m super excited because it´s been a while since i´ve done that. i´m pretty sure i´m going to go to the doctor soon for my stomach issues. they´re even less funny than they were FIVE DAYS ago. pray for me.