adventures in peru

one more day

2008-12-10T11:57:00.000-08:00

i can´t believe that it´s finally here.. i can´t say that i´m happy for the last day because so far i´ve cried most of the time. last night saw the first tear, i had to say goodbye to Anke, Lilo, Robyn and Sally. we´re definitely going to see each other again, but it will be a while which is the sad part. they all came into pisac to eat for my birthday and to hang out one last time.

this morning was the hardest. we ate panetón for breakfast, basically cake in a box with fruit chunks in it...livia started crying when she was telling us about how lucky we were to have great parents and then went into how she would miss us. pati gave us a sweet note and that´s when i lost it.. everyone was balling. we got our suitcases ready because the cab was going to come pick us up around 9. when he got there everyone was out of breath from crying so hard and no one wanted to leave. we passed the teachers on the way out too and got to say one more goodbye.

realizing that i would never get to see the sacred valley and the town of pisac made it hard to not cry on the way to cusco. i´ve really never seen any place so exquisite in my whole life. i keep praying that the image of the mountains overlooking pisac and the ruins above the city would be burned in my memory forever.. i will miss it so much when i´m gone.

libby and i have spent the afternoon getting last minute things in cusco. i honestly don´t know how we´re going to get everything home and if we do actually fit it all in the suitcases i´m still going to be nervous that it´s too heavy or that we´re not allowed to have some of the stuff in there. it should be interesting.

our flight tomorrow leaves around 2:30 from cusco to lima and then we wait till 11:45 p.m for our flight to miami. we´ll be in atlanta around 12 noon on friday. it´s never as simple as just jumping on a plane and poof you´re home....

birthday!

2008-12-09T14:47:00.000-08:00

soo the beach ended up being the perfect addition to our time in peru. the second day was a little shorter than the first but we still got plenty of stares and sun. there was actually an earthquake too but it was a baby one. still cool. we all took showers after the beach and ate some amazing roasted chicken then headed to the bus station to catch a bus to arequipa to then get our bus to cusco. interesting story...

when we arrived to the station around 3:30 we had missed every bus by then and the only ones available were at 5:40 and later. our bus in arequipa to get us back to cusco left at 8:30 so we had to get going. at about 7:40 we´re rounding a huge mountain and on the other side there is a line of cars standing completely still in a line about 100 cars long. we all freak out. you still couldn´t see the city from there. time´s flying by and we´re still nowhere close. finally around 8:15 we´re in the city but still no sight of the station. the bus pulls into the station at 8:24. libby and i are sprinting to the check-in desk only to find out that we have to have a confirmation code that we of course don´t have. after all is said and done we´re getting on a bus full of annoyed people at 8:40. soooo close. we attempted sleep and arrived in cusco around 6:30 this morning.

it´s a rainy icky day and doesn´t feel much like my birthday... we are however going to eat at ulrike´s with the girls from calca and go out in cusco tonight so hopefully that will make up for the gloomy weather. i can´t wait to be home but so sad to leave at the same time. i went by the kindergarten one last time today and gave out jackets to all of the little kids. they´re brown and fuzzy and the kids looked like little bear cubs running around today. i´ll miss them intensely.

anyways, thanks for the birthday wishes today! hopefully we´ll celebrate more this weekend but for now wish me luck with the peruvians :) 3 days...

vacaciones

2008-12-07T13:05:00.000-08:00

arequipa was a really fun town, the architecture reminded me of europe. we arrived there around 9:30 p.m. after taking a 6 hour bus ride from puno. i was sad to leave puno..the seats on the bus were super comfortable so we weren´t complaining. the taxi driver at the station showed us to this really cute balcony hostel, which is great and all and precious with its balconies overlooking the city UNTIL you realize that you´re right on an intersection that doesn´t have lights or stop signs = horns constantly honking ALL night. ridiculous.

our great friend sally came to Arequipa to hang out with us. we got a quick bite to eat at a restaurant that made their pizzas with plastic-looking cheese. we visited the Santa Catalina monestary. huge! it took us 2 hours walking briskly through the whole thing. after we went to see Juanita, the Incan Ice Daughter or whatever they called her. basically some guys found this girl who had been sacrificed and buried by the Incas to worship the gods, but she was so high up that she was frozen in a block of ice which in turn preserved her body for 500 years. she still had skin... and her clothes were all on display next to her body which sat in a freezing cold box. it´s a really sad story but cool that at one point in time she was sacrificed and buried and now we could look at her.

saturday we were picked up around 2:30 a.m. for our tour around the Colca Canyon. it was a little rough in the bus because you couldn´t lean the seats back and there wasn´t a lot of room in from of the seats. i had that sick-tired feeling all day. we stopped a couple of times to take pictures, but everyone really just wanted to see condors. amazing birds wth wingspans up to 12 feet. we arrived at the lookout point and it took a while but we finally saw 5 or 6. we got home that day around 5 p.m. About an hour later we were at the bus station trying to find a bus to the beach. we got to Mollendo, the peruvian version of Panama city beach during spring break, around 10p.m.

this morning we got up around 9 and had breakfast and then made our way to the beach. the ocean is beautiful and it was about 100 degrees. the sun is so intense here that i had to re-apply sunscreen 30 spf about every hour. the only down side to this day was that we are the only white people here LITERALLY and we got stared at all day. that and the fact that we were all wearing our underwear because no one brought bathingsuits. i swear they look like bathingsuits though. the staring doesn´t really bother me. i know it´s not because they think i´m attractive it´s just that they don´t get a lot of white people around here and i think there´s a reputation about us here that makes them think we´d like to get whistled at and called names (one guy today called us "carne" meaning meat...seriously guys?) it´s so obvious it´s funny and by this point in the trip it just makes me laugh.

the countdown continues... i can´t believe i´ll celebrate my birthday here...23 feels old and is my least favorite odd number. 5 more days till i´m home...

work hard, play hard

2008-12-04T04:43:00.000-08:00

last week was the end of our time in the kindergarten :( i must say that we ended with a bang.

thursday of last week libby and i went to cusco to buy presents for the kids for Christmas and just to say that we love them and will miss them. we went to a peruvian wal-mart pretty much where barbies were less than $2 and everything was displayed in huge brown boxes like it was straight out of a warehouse. they did have a huge selection though. it got a little out of hand, considering there are 120 kids in the kindergarten and we wanted to get each one a couple of small things. we ended up with.... 60 barbies, 60 plastic colorful purses, 60 cooking play sets, 60 toy cars, 60 toy robots, 120 balls, balloons, whistles and coloring books. to say that we had a lot to take home is an understatement. the taxi was so full that libby and i had to lean forward because the back seat wouldn´t click back into place. the taxi driver was a good sport though and we bought him french fries from McDonalds.

after we returned home we set up an assembly line and everyone in the family helped pack bags. livia(the grandmother) opened the plastic bags, juliana helped count and pack finished bags in a box, patti and i stuffed the bags and libby helped count and tie ribbons on the sacks. it was quite humorous to watch but gets five stars for family bonding moment.

the next orning was our party so we had to rent a tricycle to take all of the stuff to the kindergarten. i picked up 15 2 liter coca colas and 5 chocolate cakes and we partied the day away. the kids we so precious receiving the presents. i think this day made everything worth it.

the weekend was really chill. libby and i went to cusco to do some last minute shopping and hang out. we got home and ate lunch with kathleen as our last meal together. i can´t believe that everything´s winding down and people like kathleen are gone...

now we´re on vacation! we took the most amazing tour bus from cusc to puno. there were four stops along the way which made for a 9 hour bus ride, but the bus was super comfortable and libby and i sat in the first two seats so we had the best view . thanks dad :) libby got a little sick on the bus so she didn´t feel like doing much later. after we arrived in puno i met up with a friend and we went out on the town.. and by town i mean the most drab, icky, rundown city. yuck. there was a really fun rock and roll bar and they played a lot of 90´s hits and coldplay. amazing to hear those.

yesterday was our tour of lake titicaca. absolutely beuautiful. there´s one huge island called Taquile, if you´ve seen Lost, that´s where i felt like i was. families just live out there on this magnificent island and once a day tours would come and they would get business. because it´s so big you can see out to bolivia. ha! there´s another island named Uros and it´s actually a floating island, meaning they use some kind of reed and build the island so that there´s nothing underneath it, it just floats. kinda creepy. they told us that if they wanted to they could cut the island in half or move it to a totally different place. there´s a school, hospital, church and a little market on it. i don´t get it. unfortunately the tour lasted all day so we were exhausted by the time we got home. libby and i watched a movie and just had a chill night.

today we´re headed to Arequipa! it´s supposed to be beautiful and they have beaches and sunshine so maybe i can get some color back. por favor. i´ll be home in 9 days. so strange.

hospital

2008-11-25T14:05:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-19T19:27:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-18T14:23:00.000-08:00

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.

2008-11-12T14:51:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-03T15:25:00.000-08:00

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..

2008-11-01T08:40:00.000-07:00

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...

singing songs.

2008-10-24T14:28:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-10-22T16:19:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-12T15:37:00.000-07:00

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..

2008-10-11T13:03:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-10-09T15:57:00.000-07:00

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...

2008-10-05T19:23:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-10-04T10:39:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-10-02T15:28:00.000-07:00

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.

farewell.

2008-09-30T19:51:00.000-07:00

i just said goodbye to my dear friend and fellow traveler/volunteer Sebastian. it´s amazing how close you can get to people in such short periods of time. i´m not sure if he feels the same, but it´s as if i´ve known him since k-5. we went to ulrike´s, who was actually surprisingly pleasant even this late, and watched Sex and the City the movie. there were 12 or so girls there to say goodbye. it´s going to be strange not having my German amigo around.

i just wanted to tell everyone that i miss them so much. watching the movie i got a quick pang of homesickness, surprisingly the first i´ve had yet, and i just realized how much i love my friends.

after watching Sebastian go i´m going to try to fully live life while i´m here, because yes, it is so much more than our culture makes it... thanks kina :)

machu picchu.

2008-09-29T15:35:00.000-07:00

the 3rd week?! i can´t believe that it´s been that long, although, i am beginning to feel at home here. that feeling was the most intense last wednesday on my way to urubamba for a fun night with the volunteers. i sat on the bus for an hour with my iPod blaring Radiohead and everything made sense... it was as if i´d been here for years.

this last week went by pretty fast. we had a fun day in the kindergarden with the kids. there was a fiesta and the school had a group of people come dance for the kids with Barney and Winnie the Pooh costume people. quite entertaining i must say. i can´t say that my stomach has been too pumped about being here. i was laughing at the people who were having issues with the food and of course, that was the exact moment that it got me the worse. not goign to go into detail because i´m sure your brain can comprehend what i´m saying...but let´s just say it´s not pleasant. whatever..it´s all part of the experience right?

i went to machu picchu this weekend. needless to say that it was an amazing weekend. i will say that a lot of the reasons behind it being great were the people that i went with and the ones that i met.

Libby, Kathleen, Sebastian, Maxim and I left for Ollantaytambo on Friday around 3. we had a horrible taxi experience (some of the rubber blew off our tires but he kept going) on the way there so we decided to stop in Calca, 30 min from Pisac, and got a minibus to Urubamba. i employed my iPod once again to make me feel more at home and ended up feeling like i was in a Hummer going to the jungle in Africa or something(there was a military guy in there too). the scenery definitely went along with that. if you get a moment, Brooke Fraser´s "Albertine" did the trick that day. we rode to Urubamba and stopped at the office to say hello to whomever was there. friday was the social in Cucso so there was only one person there, Hannah, and we just chatted for a second and then headed to the restaurant that we always go to with the other volunteers called The Muse Too. it´s a cute, chill space painted in bright colors with modern fixtures and accents. of course my natural inclination was to access where the best spot for a bed would be when i converted it into a chic loft. i can´t help it...

everyone ate food and drank tea while we listened to Tracy Chapman and watched the Simpson in Spanish. we then headed to Ollaytaytambo in a taxi. you must understand that everytime i write "and we rode in a taxi" i always should add to the end "and we almost died" because that literally applies to every taxi ride i´ve had so far. to save time in the future i´m just going to leave that out. so we got to the O-town and i had to exchange some travelor´s cheques so that we could pay for our bus ride up the mountain to machu picchu and eat during the weekend. we stopped in a super cute restuarant, once again i had converted it into a cozy, chic one-bedroom flat within moments of entering it. it had all of the Incan designs but there were white sofas and hardwood floors and fun bob marley cover music. we had a glass of wine to wind down from the traveling there.

our train left around 8:00 and we had to be there :30 early so we bought the tickets and got on the train when we were supposed to, hanging out in coche A and laughing with the people around us at how little space they gave people to be comfortable in there. libby and i sat across from a Belgian couple and across from people from somewhere in Asia. that always happens and i always feel plain. oh well.

we arrived late to Agua Calientes, the town below Machu Picchu, and spent time looking for a hostel to stay in. a man saw us at the train station and got us to follow him to what looked like a concrete block building with only two rooms that had 3 beds in them. a joke. he was mad too when we didn´t accept his offer, which could hardly be labeled an offer because there would have had to have been something to give. we left. found a place that charged "35 soles" a night--this ended up being "per person" a minor detail we later found out as we were being forced to pay saturday night but it was nice to have a private bath with hot water and a really comfortable bed, which in fact did have bugs in it. the girls got eaten alive. nasty but definitely authentic (the only thing i´ve decided that counts on this trip)...

we decided to go "get a bite to eat or a coffee or something" and ended up finding a soccer game played on a concrete lot with mini rock cliffs for bleachers. in a field next to it there were people practicing an Incan dance routine complete with drums and a little recorder-looking thing (help me out if you know the name). they all had on skirts and things that slung around when they twisted. also very authentic. the soccer game was awesome. of course libby was having fun (she loves the game) as well as all of the drunk people there. if you closed your eyes it sounded like any highschool football game, there was a cheering section complete with a cowbell, rowdy kids, horns and confetti. the drunk people got upset when their team lost and there was plenty of glass thrown on the field and a few fights broke out. we were told by libby´s friend that she met there that all of the hotels and restaurants have teams and that they are very competitive. obviously.

after that we decided to follow libby´s new friend to a local discoteca. soo much fun. we were all disgusting from traveling but that didn´t stop us from dancing until 2:30 am. i learned how to salsa from this short, 40-something, sweet little man. we had a blast. i saw sebastian break out some German moves which were pretty awesome.

the next morning we slept in till 10 or so and went and ate breakfast. the funny thing that everyone picked up on was that the entire street was filled with restaurants so they are all yelling at you to come eat at their restaurant, but once you did that, they had no idea what to do with you. it was as if they´d never had a customer. it took a while to eat, but we did it and then walked around some to look at the town. it started to downpour and of course we all left our raincoats in the room so we headed back (as a lady is video taping me running soaking wet up the street) and took a 3 hour nap with the porch door open. it felt like we were sleeping outside and because Agua Calientes is sort of the outskirts of the jungle, it was lush, green and muy tropical.

after our naps sebastian and i went to find libby and kathleen who had left 45min earlier and we found them super stressed out about something... cock fights. like, legit roosters with blades attached to the back of their legs in this little ring with 30 people yelling and betting on the winning bird. no doubt there were peruvian mafia there. it was really bloody and none of us cared to stay around that long. we headed back early to go to sleep for the next day...

4 a.m. really isn´t that painful when you know you´re headed towards something as intense as Machu Picchu. we ate bread for breakfast and got in line for the bus down the street from our hotel. God was very generous with our timing all weekend, and we ended up being in the first rows of the second bus. (only the first 200 people in the gate can go up a different mountain, so we made it) it was a little funny because we literally ran straight through machu picchu because the entrance to Huaynapicchu, the other mountain that i was talking about, was at the other side of it. we were numbers 49-54 and were psyched to get to climb early in the morning before it got really hot. the climb, on the otherhand, was not so awesome and all of us nearly wanted to die before we got up there. i was shocked at how unregulated it was for safety. anyone could have fallen off at anytime. i spent about an hour in silence up there, from every angle there were more and more mountains. some where even snow-capped. the clouds were the most brilliant shade of the purest white and the sky an intense blue that contrasted with the green of the mountains with perfection. God showed me the littlest things, like the hairiest fly i´ve ever seen, the pinkest single flower in the middle of hard stones, six oragne butterflies fighting for a plant, rivers so far below they weren´t moving and the intricacy of things living on these huge mountains. it was so cool because on the way up there the song "can you feel the mountains tremble" suddenly popped into my head and i couldn´t stop singing it all day. i mean seriously, if THESE mountains are trembling then how awesome our God must be... because these mountains are enormous.
from where we sat, macchu picchu was smaller than my thumb. chew on that. we were high.

we descended in about a fourth of the time it took to get up and spent some time wandering around MP. there were a ton of llamas roaming around all of the people there. they really are cute animals! (i´ll try to post pictures later) and holy mosquito! i felt like i was in an insect farm or something. ridiculous. we left machu picchu exceptionally parched and payed way too much for water. i don´t think i´ve been that tired in a long time. once we got to the bottom we ate amazing pizza and decided to check out the hot springs at the top of the city. haha NASTY. i will give the people credit for strategic marketing techniques, as false as they may have been... you pay for your ticket about 200 yards down the hill where there are pictures of gorgeous pools and green scenery. once you walk up an incredibly long way you can look over the pools and seriously we all wanted to turn around at that very moment. the pools were just concrete holes in the ground that looked like they were filled with pee water. that, or tea. the dressing rooms were insanely public and not in the least bit clean. once we got enough courage to get in the stagnant murky water it just felt so wrong that we had to leave within 10 minutes. sorry but that just wasn´t on my list of things to do before i died. all there was left to do was to wait for the train to arrive at 6 so we went to a restaurant and got dessert and read books.

on the train ride home libby and i sat across from two brothers from Ireland. it was really cool though because one of them had done the same thing i´m doing after he graduated from college, but he went to Uganda. now he has plans to go for the next 6 months all over South America. the train marked the end of his 5-day trek through the Andes with 12 strangers-turned-friends. my new role model...

we got back to pisac around 9:30 and passed out quickly. sunday was one of the longest days i´ve had in a while and i was glad to be back home...

party.

2008-09-22T14:30:00.001-07:00

i know i´ve aleady talked some about the school i´m working in but i thought i´d go into more detail. it´s a really quaint little school. the front door is a huge rickety blue door with an old fashion lock on it. once you walk in the school yard there are 3 buildings. the one on your immediate right is the 3 year old classroom, the 4 yr olds room A and the kitchen. on the left is the 4 yr old class B room. across the yard is another building for the 5 year olds classes A and B. the yard has two little slides, a miniature monkey bar, and two circular concrete patios- libby and i wrote in chalk all over it and made a little hopscotch game. the kids love that.

i have been working with the 5 year olds. they are sooooo precious. today i wrote in their notebooks for their homework. we´re learning numbers 1-10 right now. today was "ocho." the school likes to use stamps so i stamped 8 little stars and wrote "¿cuantas estrellas hay?" there was a place to write a lot of 8s.

so tomorrow in school we´re having a little fiesta to celebrate the students. today we got out at about 11 which is an hour and a half early so that the teachers could blow up balloons. there were a million it seemed like. we linked them all together so that it made an arch. there´s a new guy working there named Alex. he does a lot of the grounds work in the tiny yard and helps clean stuff. he´s really sweet.

i´m going to sad when i leave the kindergarten because already the kids will see me in the street and yell at the top of their squeaky little lungs, "profe, profe!" it helps me feel like i´m doing something good. i think that was the whole point of this trip, so i must be doing ok.

exhausted.

2008-09-22T14:22:00.000-07:00

so i just got my first official workout in since i´ve been here....DOING MY LAUNDRY. sheesh it was tiring. not that i´m not a fan of hand-washing everything that you´ve worn in the last couple of weeks, because i am, but when you aren´t one of those people who wears the same thing everyday and you end up having 30 pieces to hand-wash it gets a little exhausting.

around here this is the norm. my house has a little outside sink and we filled some buckets with water to first soak the clothes. then we transfered them to another bucket with soap in it and did this little scrubbing motion that she had to teach me about 50 times before i got it right. for the dirt at the bottom of the pants you use a brush to scrub the fabric. once that´s done you rinse the soap out and squeeze the water into the sink. then i hung the clothes on the clothes line. after i was finished it seemed like it could have stretched about 1 mile. ridiculous. my mom kept saying "muchas ropas." i was kinda embarrassed although it was mine and libby´s clothes from the last two weeks. i must say, i did find a little humor in seeing Spongebob Squarepants boxers hanging next to the traditional peruvian dress.

Cusco.

2008-09-21T18:34:00.000-07:00

hello again. this weekend was officially my first weekend to experience the night life in peru. interesting to say the least...

we began the weekend with a ¨casual¨ hike up to the pisaq ruins. when i say casual i mean i was so out of breath by the time i´d walked 10 minutes that i debated turing around. the altitude makes me feel like a slacking couch potato.

i woke at 5 45a.m. to meet a group of other volunteers, who i will write about later, in the Plaza de Armas a couple of blocks away from my house. we had an estimated meeting time of 6 30 and i wanted to get a quick shower before i began the day (which after the hike ended up being the dumbest idea i´ve had recently). after meeting in the plaza we began the hike. our reasoning behind getting up so early was that the ticket guard doesn´t usually arrive at the gate until later in the morning so we thought we´d try to beat him there.. why pay for nature, i say. i must comment that the trek up the gigantic mountain is not for the feint of heart. the altitude took a serious toll on everyone´s respiritory system so we stopped every 10 or so minutes to catch our breath.

the view from even the first lookout was incredible. we all sat on huge rocks and admired the view of the entire city, as well as 2 others that were visible from where we sat. the mountain range is even more impressive from up that high. i´m still in awe of the scenery so it was very hard for me to grasp what i was looking at. i kept saying that it was as if we were on a movie set and someone had placed a drop screen behind us.

the ruins were very impressive. i´m amazed that they still remain which is probably the main reason behind them being such a successful national park. there were many building-looking structures that i´m sure once housed little families that had pets and ate family dinners just like everyone else. i don´t think i would have made a very good Inca because those people built their houses off 1,000 foot cliffs that LI-TER-AL-Y go straight down off the edge. i became very familiar with what it must feel like to be deathly afraid of rollercoasters. you people have no idea. i have´t figured out how to post pictures yet but they won´t even do the drop off justice. i´m shuttering just thinking about it.

we stayed at the ruins for about 4 hours. Sebastian, another volunteer who lives in Pisaq, and I went as high as we possibly could which was tooooo high. i probably made a few dumb decisions that thankfully didn´t end up tragic. at some points we could see all around us at every neighboring village in the area. it was very freeing to know that there was nothing between you and the next mountain 2 miles away except air. it makes me want to go paragliding even more. sorry mom.

we were scheduled to go to Cusco that same afternoon so Sebastain and I met the others in our favorite little cafe in the plaza called Ulrike´s Cafe. Ulrike is from Germany and she has really amazing pizza that she only serves on Tues, Thurs, Sat and Sun. i usually get the vegge pizza but the hawaiian is really good too. after we had a little snack we took showers and got a cab to Cusco. the drive is very windy but totally worth it because of the view. it takes about 35-40 minutes via cab to cusco and only costs 25 soles which is about $8. we crammed 5 people in the cab so we´re looking at about a $1.60 a person. once we got to Cusco we headed to our hostel. i´m still not really sure what its name is but we fit 6 beds in a room and payed $5 a person for one night and a private bathroom. yeah, we´re defining the term ´traveling on a budget´ over here. it´s pretty sweet.

we had a couple of hours to burn before the other girl we were meeting at the hostel arrived, so we took that opportunity to visit the black market in cusco. everything there is ridiculously cheap. i purchased all 4 seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm for about $12 as well as the movies Wall-E and Horton Hears a Who for $1 each. it´s all bootleg but it´s not illegal and everyone goes there for a lot of things. ***let me know if you want any movie or tv series and i´ll get it for you. it´s great quality and only $1 per disc. they had everything including Grey´s Anatomy, Friends, 24, Prison Break, movies that havent come out on dvd yet, The Office, etc.***

we headed to dinner after the other girl arrived at the hostel. we actually couldn´t find her for a long time until she wrote on someone´s facebook wall that she was lost and sitting in Jack´s Cafe. we found her an hour and a half later in tears because she thought she wouldn´t ever find us. it was funny because libby and i were looking for our hostel about an hour earlier and this sketchy guy asked us what we were looking and we told him our hostel. he said that our friend was looking for us and the hostel too and that she had gone down the street and he would show us. libby and i were like ´um no´ and walked the other direction. turns out she really had talked to him. small world.

we ate at a cute restaurant where some of the money we paid for food went towards the kids in the city. it was decorated a lot like what i would think hansel and grettel saw in the lady´s house they followed before they got eaten. i ate a yummy chicken, cheese and tomato sandwhich.

we then returned to the hostel to take a quick nap then went to a fun little bar named Indigo. they had hooka there and a cute little wood-burning stove to keep everyone warm. we played card games and chatted until everyone decided they were too tired to stay any longer. libby and i split off to meet with some other volunteers in a discoteca. THAT was an interesting experience. everyone there was incredibly sloshy and way too much in the music and dancing to make it a casual, conversational venue. duely noted.

we met some interesting people. i think that in a night club where you can´t really hear anyone it´s easier to practice your spanish. i ended up making good friends with one of the club owners and we had fun laughing at each other´s ability to speak our second languages. he kinda looked like fat joe. great guy. after that we went to a different place that wasn´t that fun and quickly determined that McDonalds would be better at that moment. i struggled out our orders and we proceeded to enjoy one of the best meals i´ve ever had at Micky D´s.

the next morning it was a little hard to wake up but we had a great breakfast at Jack´s Cafe. by great i mean i ate homemade french toast with fresh strawberries and bananas with an insanely delicious chocolate milk. am i on a diet? haha...no. we walked around for a little while, observed a festival in the plaza and hailed a cab for home...the most carsick i´ve ever been in my life by-the-way. by the first 5 minutes i had already sorted out in my head how to yell at the cab driver in spanish to pull over so i could yack. what seemed like forever later we arrived, and libby and i went home to recover from the drive home and our sleepless night. i took the best nap so far in my life.. we are going to machu picchu this weekend so we went to meet up with our friends to buy tickets online. they were at Ulrike´s watching Across the Universe so we grabbed a bite to eat and then headed to the internet cafe i´m in right now.

wow. i type too much. thanks for reading this far.

how was your weekend?

one week.

2008-09-18T16:03:00.000-07:00

OY. trying to find a computer that is not in use in a town that has a total of 20 computers where everyone speaks a language that you don´t = a migraine. it´s been one full week so far and i´ve only now been able to access a computer. i´m sorry to everyone that i´ve been ignoring, it´s not on purpose. if you only knew.

so our journey here wasn´t not as scary as i thought it would be. yes, i was scared to death of being faced with a situation where all of the vocab that i didn´t use in 9th grade Spanish would suddenly be very practical and necessary, but it hasn´t been all that bad. in the airport i was able to communicate that i needed to exchange my u.s. dollars into Peruvian Soles. and i managed somehow to get my luggage rechecked in Lima where Libby and i ate at McDonald´s (because we know how to travel the right way).

it makes me sad that you won´t be able to fully understand the beauty that is this country. if you´ve ever been to Gatlinburg, Tenn., you´ve experienced 1\20 of the beauty that God intended for the earth. the mountains here are seriously his signature on this planet and every night the stars shine the brightest i´ve ever seen them. the air is a fresh mountainous breeze all day long and at night there´s a little bite as it gets colder. flying into Cusco i saw snow-covered mountains (the forgotten Andes) and villages nestled in between gigantic mountains. coming closer into the airport i could see the city buildings, none of which clear 3 stories, all brightly-colored and smashed together in ¨barrios¨. once inside the airport i was greeted with authentic music and many coupons for free ¨papas fritas¨ at McDonalds (the newest commodity as of today in Cusco).

we were picked up from the airport by Cleona, the office aid, who is from the UK. everyone is from there it seems like. .. we drove to the office to meet the staff and then journey over an hour and a half to Calca, to drop off another volunteer, and then to Pisaq to our house. Our family greeted us at the door(here it´s customary to kiss on the right cheek). there is an elderly woman about 71 yrs old, her friend who´s 49 and her daughter who is 22. she´s really sweet and we laugh a lot when we´re around here. our house is a very interesting arrangement. when you walk in the main door --which is 5 ft tall-- the bathroom is directly on the right, still outside, and there´s a separate shower head in the same room as the toilet and sink. if you´ve ever been on a house boat or a submarine i´d imagine they´d be the same. then you continue to an open courtyard with two flower beds. surrounding this courtyard is the house part.. with the rooms in a line surrounding the open space on the second floor. the kitchen is a small little room with it´s own outdoor entrance and the dining room is attached. the living room is on the other side of the courtyard. it´s very disconnected and open. people on their back porches can see into our entire space. i have my own room with a bed, table, closet, and bed side table. only the basics but it´s home for now.

we eat three meals a day, most of which consist of carbohydrates like i´ve never seen before. a typical day of food would be... breakfast--a piece of bread with jelly and tea. lunch--potato soup with peas, carrots, french fries, and cilantro, then a second course with a plate half full of rice and the other side with potatoes and some other kind of carb. dinner--half a plate full of rice again, chicken breast on the other side with cucumbers and tomatoes and tea to follow. libby and i had to take a break from this and went to Ulrike´s Cafe and ate vegge and hawaiian pizzas with a brownie and ice cream for dessert. it was amazing.

the kindergarten that i´m working in is very small and quaint. they don´t use much to get things done--and empty plastic coke bottle cut in half is commonly used for a pencil holder and they don´t have toilet paper in the bathrooms.. it´s very plain and simple. right now i´m just helping the teacher copy homework into their notebooks and sharpen colored pencils.. the kids call me ´Sarita´ and pull on my clothes all day. i would say that this is very annoying but hey, they don´t get to do that often so whatever.

i told you i would document my first llama sighting and i am writing to say that i saw one!! sadly though, 5 minutes after i saw this interesting creature, a crazy dog attacked and killed it in the middle of the street and about 30 people proceeded to crowd around and make a huge thing of it. i was very sad for the llama. he looked nice.

the town that i´m in is very small and traditional. if you´ve ever seen pictures of Peruvian women with babies on their backs, that´s what i see everyday all day. these people have no shame. peeing in the street, changing baby diapers on the backs of stopped motorcycles at intersections and things of this nature are not uncommon. it´s very interesting...

i think i´m going to get used to being here for a long time. i miss my friends, family and my cell phone very much but in the end i think this will change my view of the world and why i´m living on it. please keep me in your prayers because there are days when i don´t think i´ll really learn spanish or i´m scared to get photocopies made for school because the girl behind the counter hates foreigners but i´ll make it.

people are staring at me and of course i have no idea what they´re saying so i must run. please email me and give me the scoop on your life!!

hasta luego.

tomorrow...

2008-09-11T01:59:00.000-07:00

there's something about being a Loveless that makes you late/procrastinate for everything. it's 4 a.m. and libby and i just finished packing. my mom will cringe when she reads this...

tomorrow marks the beginning of our journey to Peru. i'm not sure that either of us will be feeling up to the 14 hours of travel ahead of us--Atlanta to Miami, Miami to Lima, Lima to Cusco, bus to Urubamba, and finally, short ride to Pisaq, our destination. this time tomorrow i'll be on a different continent at a different altitude speaking a different language (i hope). while i'm there i'll be working with 3-5 year olds in a kindergarten in Pisac, Peru. i'll help the teacher with things like making sure the kids wash their hands, watching over the playground area and assisting with classroom activities. i seriously cannot wait :)

i'll be back in 13 weeks! here's my address while i'm there if you feel like mailing fun things!

Sarah Loveless
Projects Abroad– Peru
Casilla Postal 831
Correo Central Cusco
Peru
or email me at sarah.s.loveless@gmail.com

i'll keep you posted and let you know the moment i meet my first llama :)