hospital

a few words of wisdom: don´t get salmonella in a foreign country unless a. you speak the language fluently or b. have time to kill and don´t mind slight discomfort. the only positive thing i have to say is that my hospital "suite" was slightly larger than the nicest hotel room i´ve stayed in since i´ve been here and libby came and stayed with me the whole time i was there..

it started saturday, libby and i were forced to eat lunch with he director of our kindergarten. this was of course after we stuffed our faces at Jack´s Cafe (only because we didn´t know about lunch at her house). she decided to cook us spicy sauce on top on green rice and potato balls with fried chicken. i thought i was goign to puke looking at it, but then i had to smile and act like i wanted to eat it. i could only get through half of it before i had a food baby in my stomach. not pleasant. ok, so i thought, this could create some issues later today.. i had no idea.

i started to get "sick" around 4 but it didn´t stop all day. i woke up in the middle of the night, decided to take a shower and threw up chunks while i was in there. not normal for me. so i went to the hospital at 3:30 in the morning. the doctor did a check up on me and said that i had a bacterial infection. i got hook up to an IV and put in what could be described as the hospital penthouse. i had to get blood taken, poop in a cup and lay in my bed for 36 hours watching peruvian television eating runny jello and chicken noodle soup. libby came in and thank goodness because i was going crazy in the room by myself. it´s kind of funny about the people who work there-- it felt like there were 5 or 6 groups of people who would come visit me once and hour. i never felt like i had a window of time for myself. even the lady who clean beds came in at 7:30 a.m., woke me up to tell me she was going to fix my sheets and basically straightened the sheets on my bed while i stood up half asleep. the cleaning lady came in and was mopping the floor that i had only been using for 10 hours and at one point even stopped to watch the TV show that was on. like, could you GET OUT?! i didn´t get it.

thankfully i got out alive and feel ok now. it ended up that i tested negative for all kinds of bacteria but my count for salmanella was really high so they gave me antibiotics through the IV and kept me overnight.. i was incredibly happy to get out.

now libby and i are thinking of stuff to buy the kids in the kindergarten. we´re having a going away party on Friday. our last days are quickly arriving :(

birthday

today was sally from australia´s 32nd birthday. we went to calca to have cake and eat dinner.. her host mom cooked lasagna and we had coke and wine and danced the night away.. haha, the host dad was the sweetest little man and he danced with all of the girls who came over.. it was hilarious to see him dancing to 50 cent. something you don´t see often for sure.

i realized tonight that i´m going to genuinely miss those girls when i leave here. only 3 more weeks to go but i feel like everything is speeding up and going by so fast. tomorrow sally and i are going to play volleyball and i can´t wait :)

long day of sunshine

yesterday was the anniversary of Pisac and in that tradition exists many activities in the sun. as fun as the day was i felt like i was in a microwave oven the entire time.

we started the day with fun in the plaza. all of the schools from neighboring communities were honored so there were approximately 34,567 kids in the plaza. it was a huge to-do. teams of dancers showed of their traditional dancing skills to the audience of pretty much every governing official in the sacred valley, all adorned in sashes specifically from their area. once the dancing had commenced a group of nine adults dressed up like Incas did what i thought was an interpretation of what those times were like and a lady sang a most interesting song in Quechua.

our kids were up next so we organized them in lines to march down the plaza. they all had their uniforms on which made them 198 times cuter. they went down one by one then it was the teachers´turn. by teachers i`m talking about myself as well, not that i knew that until 5 seconds before we started walking. the other teachers had on nice green tweed suit jackets and heels and of course i wore raggedy jeans and a gray wifebeater from Walmart that day. classy, i`m aware. i was surprised when they started calling out names and i heard "señorita Sarah"... it`s funny though how awkward it is when you aren`t looking at anything specific except the ground you`re about to walk on. i didn`t know where to look and scanning the audience was even more awkward. thank goodness it only took 20 seconds...

after, we found our host family in the plaza and waited while another family member was presented for her work in one of the community organizations. we ate lunch really late and took naps. around 5:30 we headed to the athletic complex for another party.. this time complete with crazy peruvian dances and costumes galore. it took forever for them to get the lights working but we had fun laughing and talking with our family. we ate CANDIED APPLES, dad, and had popcorn... i felt like i was at the circus.

libby and i slept till 11 today because we didn`t have school and watched Grey`s Anatomy in bed. ha, it was really nice to shake up the routine for once. i found out that i`m going to be home DECEMBER 12th for sure so everyone get ready to be harrassed!!! i`ll be bothering you until i`ve caught up from the last 3 months :)

so much to recap.

i don´t even know where to start....

my parents came last week and it was amazing.. my dad was a huge hit with the kids, teaching them science terms and just hugging all over them. they loved him. my mom was shocked the whole time because she was amazed that we had survived as far as we did. it helped me put the whole experience into perspective which has been amazing. we all went to cusco for 4 days and went to museums and ate at our favorite restaurants. one night we saw a show about the history of the incas. interesting to say the least.

there were no lights last night in the whole city. i haven´t been able to check any emails until today so sorry everybody who tried. libby and i went on an hour and a half walk today along the urubamba river and it was one of the most breathtaking walks ever.. not because i´m out of shape either...

i´m really excited about coming home. my estimated return date as of now is December 15th. i hope that everyone will be home because i want to have a party at my house! i miss everyone so much.. counting down the days...

parentals

they´re here! finally. libby and i were told that the flight was at 9:30 a.m. sunday so we headed to the airport after a fabulous night´s sleep in cusco. little did we know that the flight got cancelled, and we ended up waiting at the airport for 5 hours. i have no idea why we didn´t ask someone what was going on after the 8th plane arrived without our parents...

we took a taxi with the nicest driver i´ve had so far and drove home to pisac, taking lots of pictures along the way. we were such tourists. they were so excited to get to see everything that we have been living around. we went straight to Ulrike´s and had hawaiian and vegge pizzas, complete with a brownie and ice cream, and then walked around the market. my mom bought a lot of stuff after being in the town for 30 min. it was funny.

we dropped their stuff off and received our presents from home. i have to give the biggest shoutout to Mrs. Mackle´s spanish class.... ya´ll are the sweetest things ever. i almost cried reading a few of your letters. (my little brother Clay´s spanish class wrote Libby and me letters in spanish and english telling us to be strong and courageous and that they were praying for us.)it was the most amazing gift and pleasant surprise ever. i´ll going to keep those forever.. ya´ll rock my face off... later, our parents met the family and walked to the school to look around. because the hotel closed at 9 we parted ways, and libby and i played with our new dvd player. yay!

today we went to work. mom and dad came to hang out and look around. the kids were especially precious today and i´m pretty sure my mom took 4,453 pictures. they left to do the pisac ruins while we worked and then we met them at the bus station to head to Ollantaytambo. their first bus ride! they loved it. the skies were blue today so that added alot to our trip. we had a fun lunch in Ollantaytambo and saw them off to Aguas Calientes for their trek to Macchu Picchu. i think they have to get up at 4 in the morning so pray for them..

well, this has been an interesting week for sure..

first, i must sadly admit that paragliding fell through, for the time being. i think it was miscommunication among everyone going about who was organizing the whole deal. maybe next weekend... it WILL happen.

we finished singing for the kindergartens on tuesday..they saved the best for last too.. we went to a special needs school where there were the most precious kids ever. it made me sad though to think that they are so neglected in this society--only 2 teachers for more than 15 kids who ranged from ages 6 to 19, all with different ability levels. the volunteer who works there expressed her extreme frustration about that because it´s hard to teach them all anything that will improve each of them.

in other news, you may have seen on my facebook that i was going to be in a fashion show... i need to clarify that this wasn´t America´s Next Top Model (so you can stop being jealous :) ) but it was enough to allow for a fun day of shopping in a local cusco market. one of the volunteers Mia lives with a host family who was in charge of putting on a fair. they needed "white girls" to wear some of the traditional clothes so that it would give the market that they support some good business. wednesday, libby, mia and i went shopping with the woman in charge so we could pick out outfits for the show. i apparently i looked russian that day and tryed on tons of big white furry hats. maybe because i dyed my hair...? i almost had to wear the ugliest, most unflattering puke yellow matching skirt outfit. even though i´ll never see those people again it was mortifying. but i ended up picking out a lot of fun outfits, mixing in the most insanely cute hats with huge ponchos like the one that Pacha wears in The Emperor´s New Groove. the outfit was made complete with a J-Lo hat and some peruvian sandals. you can imagine my disappointment when libby and i arrived at the bus station the day of the show to find out that we weren´t going to be in the show because the market venders didn´t want their clothes to be bought off the runway. i could be wrong, but i thought that would have been great business.. which was kinda the point. sad day. and there won´t be others so i´m not even going to say something optimistic.

because the show got canceled, it freed up my friday. school was short because the kids made signs saying they had rights so that we could walk around pisac yelling "¡tenemos derechos!" while blowing on whistles and holding the signs. it was really fun to be on the local side of things. my eyes were opened to just how obnoxious a tourist can look trying to take a picture of a little peruvian kid. and i´m pretty sure that i made it into about 6 different home movies too. awesome. after school libby and i packed for cusco and got our halloween costumes ready to go for the social in Urubamba.

the social was fun, we ate pizza and had fun laughing at everyone´s costumes. i was a hippie because of course i waited until the last minute to get a costume. i had a long flowy tie dyed dress and drew a peace sign on my face. (funny story... apparently it´s been a while since i drew a peace sign. i couldn´t figure out why it looked so weird and then realized hours later that i had left off one of the smaller legs. i was supporting mercedes benz for about 3 hours). after we ate we handed candy out to little kids in the town. side note... those little children are con artists in the making. i watched so many kids take candy from one volunteer and then loop around and beg for another piece "for their little brother." once they´d used that excuse, they´d put on a mask and try again. i guess that if they want candy that bad that means that they don´t usually get treats like that so i guess we really should have given them more than we did.

cusco was next and we did the usual routine of taking the bus and going to our hostel, except this time we LITERALLY went off-roading in a tour-bus sized bus. oy. i didn´t think it was possible but the driver pulled it off. i can´t be positive that there was even a dirt path. all i saw was crop fields.

cusco on halloween is crazy. definitely the most people i´ve seen in the plaza yet. the next day is even bigger. i guess it´s tradition to eat pig because they are everywhere...raw...legs cut off...staring at you...yuck. today libby and i are going to chill out and shop a little. our parents come tomorrow!!!!! i´m beyond excited. we´re picking them up from the airport tomorrow. not sure what time--should probably figure that out...