Back in the USSA

I didn't have a chance to write about all the things Renee and I saw in Peru. There were so many cool things! I will try to go back and write a miniseries about those things, but at the moment it doesn't feel right. It makes more sense to me to write about what has been going on since I got back.
We flew back to the States on June 5th. After a nearly sleepless night at our posh hostel in la plaza de San Martin (the drivers blew their horns all night, plus anxiety about traveling), we took a cab to the airport at about 8:30 am. The driver had an English music mix on, and I wish I knew the names/artists that played, and that I'd written the lyrics down. Anyway, all of the songs were about having a great time and having to say goodbye. Lower lips quivered in the back seat. Hysterical laugh bursts ensued. We were sad to be going.
We were supposed to get in at 11 pm, but ended up missing our connection because of Spirit airlines and their bullshit scheduling. Who gives people on an international flight one hour to get through customs and security and to their next flight? In addition to that stupidity, their computer system had gone down. We waited at customs for two hours and made it up to the check in, where gobs of people stood in a big crowd complaining while a Spirit airlines employee yelled out passengers' names without a microphone to give them their boarding passes. It was ugly. Uglier things happened, too, like when I wasn't allowed to pass two women with tiny dogs in the security line, even though I asked them nicely and their flight was in two hours and mine had probably left half an hour ago. I hope they had a terrible flight. Anyway, long story short, we slept on the airport floor and flew from Ft. Lauderdale to New York to Myrtle Beach the next morning. Stupid.
I spent the few days back at my parents' house, hanging out and eating really good Mexican food. Shout out to El Camino Real on the corner of Spring Garden and Market Street in Greensboro. Que rico! Then on Sunday I went back to Asheville and reunited with my sweet boyfriend, who had cleaned the house and everything. We went to Cumberland Island off the southern coast of Georgia for the next weekend, an island with a maritime forest filled with live oaks, palms, lizards, armadillos, deer, and feral horses. Only 120 people are allowed on the island at a time, and you can camp under the canopy, hike (we tried to do this, but it was so hot and muggy that it was a miserable task, and we didn't make it to far), explore the ruins of Nathanael Greene's (shoutout Greensboro!) house there and the old Carnegie mansion, look at the wildlife, and swim/play on the beach. It was very relaxing. You should go.
I'm writing in the Pack Place library in Asheville (reminiscent of my days in Peru in internet cafes, but bigger and with less computer viruses). I find it easier to write away from home. There's more to come, but I have to get back to my car before a parking ticket finds its way to my windshield. Oh, American life.

Some Photos-See Captions

Ollantaytambo

Courtyard of my house in Ollantaytambo

Swimming pool. Note Veronica (glacier) in distance.

They were just waiting there outside my door.

Machu Picchu

Peruvian Dog and Pups

Salt Flats

Lago Titicaca

They thought we were famous. We were famous.

Kusi, Mirian, Dead Chicken, Victorious Anna

Quechua Lady Weavers

Totally En Amor En Lima

Kusi and Valery

Dan, Me, Machu Picchu

Maras-Inka Terraces

Frightening Quechua Dolls

Awkward Jumping Scene on Sand Dunes

Chicken Soup for the Peruvian Soul

To celebrate the last weekend in Peru, Renee and I went out in Miraflores. We started the night with a glass of Gato, a Chilean boxed wine, chased with Mankekes, Peruvian snack cake delites. Delish. Classy. This was followed by a papa rellena (mashed potatoes stuffed with beef and whatever else and deep fried) and soup that tasted like the ocean. Meh. We went to a really touristy street and found a bar that had a liter of beer for 10 soles (about $4). Sat down there and were almost immediately joined by some Peruvian dudes who wanted to flirt. They zoned in and talked to us separately. Renee´s guy looked like a chipmunk hobbit. Peruvian guys are always trying to get us to kiss them. What a pain. But they were nice and were starting an NGO, so we chatted. They bought us caiparhinas and got us to go to a discotheque, where we danced way too close and then ditched them for each other and danced way too close. Then we escaped and walked like show ponies back to the hostel, high stepping it so we wouldn´t trip. We haven´t been drinking much, and were really hungover the next day. Took a taxi to Lima and felt seasick like I was on a boat to the Ballestas Islands and smelling guano. The ride was only 15 minutes long, but it felt like an eternity and I clutched my yellow plastic grocery back like it was the only thing keeping me alive. When we got to our hostel in Lima central, we collapsed on the beds. But we were starving, and had to go eat something. Somehow, the worst restaurant in the area pulled us in . We ended up with greasy, tough chicken, rice, and lukewarm sweet potatoes. I also got the house soup, which was chicken and really tasty. It took the edge off the nausea until I dipped my spoon really deep and came out with...a chicken foot. No, really. A whole foot was in my bowl. I almost spewed. After that shock, I took shallow spoonfulls of broth. Occasionally I had to hold back a gag when a broken off chicken toe showed up in my spoon.
Goddammnit, Peru. How I have loved and hated you. How often you have mystified, inspired, and disgusted me.
This is my last day here. Today was devoted to eating the best Peruvian things: churros (long donuts with sugar on the outside and caramelly goo on the inside), big sweet popcorn, mazamora (goo dessert made from the purple corn served with arroz con leche), lomo saltado (stir fried beef, tomatoes, onion, ginger, and french fries), etc etc etc. It´s going to be shocking and sad in some ways to return to normal life. But I think that this trip has reopened my eyes to the possibilities and excitement that life holds.

The Seediest Hostel in Lima

We´ve had mostly good luck with finding good hostels in Peru. After about a week of dorm living, we decided we´re too old for it (sharing a room with seven other people, getting woken up when they drag their drunk asses into the bunk bed above you, smelling everyone´s breath and stinky socks) and since then have been getting private rooms. It´s only $5-$10 more and worth it. Paying $20 for 2 people for a night isn´t bad. Except when you go to the Hostal de Las Arcas in Lima.
Renee´s travel book, The Rough Guide to Peru recommended it. It was described as a ¨gay friendly¨hostel with beautiful tiling, common areas, and breakfast included. Apparently though, ¨gay friendly¨means sex friendly and seedy as hell. We got into Lima after the sun went down, so we took a taxi to this hostel and decided we´d just take it for one night and if it was bad we´d switch the next day. We knew it could be bad when it was next to a lot of compounded cars. But the police station was right there, so maybe it was safe? We went in and two little girls were playing at the desk. We asked if they had a room available and they said no and giggled. One of them went and got the 20 year-old guy with a front tooth missing and an earnest, crooked smile who worked there. He said they did have a room, and took us to see it. The house was cool. Really high ceilings, mustard yellow accents, giant doors, and beautiful tiling with green, blue and yellow flowers. Then there were other, less cool things: a stuffed vulture hanging from the ceiling in the reception, dark crooked staircases, sectional sofas draped in leopard blankets, a broken stained glass skylight with feather-strewn wire under it, suspiciously filthy walls, a mounted bull head lurking in the corner just as you emerged from the stairway...
No one else was staying there. The doors to the rooms hung wide open, and we could see the beds with their acrylic fleece blankets with smiling pastel flowers all over them. Creepy. The first room we saw was ok, but then I noticed that the shower was missing it´s hot water knob. The next room had both knobs, but after reception guy left we checked the sheets, and someone had had sex all over them. We had committed to the place, so we just got the sheets changed. We went to reception and signed in, noting that no one had stayed there for over a week, and the last people to stay were a couple of Germans who were in the same room as us. We went out, walked past the dusty homocide scene vehicle parked outside, and bought some water and popcorn. The streets reeked of human piss. The hostel across the street had a sign advertising that they rented rooms by the hour. We decided not to stay out. We went back to the room and put on pajamas that covered our entire bodies, plus hoods and socks, and gingerly climbed into bed. Then we noticed the beeping of three or four different smoke alarms with dying batteries and the horror movie buzz of the flourescent lights. This went on all night. Luckily we were tired and had earplugs.
The next morning we got up and went out for breakfast (no, it wasn´t included) and went into the historical center of Lima. We found a really nice hostel and checked in there that afternoon.

Vaga en Peru

       Eighteen days of traveling have passed, and I am now eighteen days from flying home. Just realized that when I sat down to write. I´m in Nazca right now, an oasis that feels pretty much like every smallish city I´ve been in Peru so far, but sunnier. Am writing from an internet cafe that costs one nuevo sol (33 American cents) for an hour. Shakira is staring at me open-mouthed in a white bikini from a poster on the wall. Everyone else in this cafe is a twelve to sixteen-year-old boy playing video games.
        Saying goodbye to Ollantaytambo was emotional, but I was ready to go. That day there was a fiesta celebrating the anniversary of San Isidro, the neighboorhood my family lived in. That helped to take the edge off. The day before, I went with Mirian to her mother´s house, where she traded a chicken for a cuy. Her mother -who she calls ¨La Reina, The Queen,¨ without a hint of sarcasm- squatted on the floor in her long skirt for ten or fifteen minutes, feeding the cuy alfalfa while they chirp/squealed, then snatched a white and brown chubby one out of the group, while the others ran for cover. I carried it home in a nylon flour sack. This was her contribution to the feast for the next day.The festival consisted of huge plates of food, chicha, beer, dancing children (they´re always demanding that children dance in this country), and whimsical contests for adults (potato-peeling race, race that involved pushing large round squashes from one end of the court to another, race that involved blindfolded feeding of masa mora from one adult to another, sack race that made me wonder if any of the women here wear bras). I sat with Renee and Susan in the stadium and watched while a cold wind blew and a light rain fell. Valeri and Cusi sat by my sides, hugging me and then forgetting to be sad and running off to play every now and then. It was time to leave, so the whole family walked me to the house and we got my things. Mirian and Ebert made speeches about how I´ll always be part of their family and held in their hearts forever, so of course I cried. They are beautiful. Then we hugged and Mirian walked me and Renee to the square and got us a taxi to Cusco.
        Since then, I have been a lot of places and seen many things. Too many to write about in detail right now. So here´s a synopsis:
       Quillabamba, a ¨cloud forest¨that borders the jungle nearish to Macchu Picchu. Spent some time at a waterfall in someone´s backyard with seven different tiers and basins, ate fruit, felt what it´s like to be in a place where Renee and I were the only outsiders to be seen. A few children pointed at us in the market. Everyone was very helpful and friendly, and even approached us on the street to ask where we were going and if we needed a taxi. Two thumbs up.
      Cusco, again. I love Cusco and would choose to live there out of all the places I´ve seen so far. The buildings are big, beautiful stone colonial structures with arches and carved, wooden balconies. The gritty real-life side is mixed in with the more glamorous and touristy. The market is about 4 blocks from the Plaza de Armas, and we went there every day to buy fruit or eat a cheap, tasty meal. The mountains watch you from afar.
      Puno, the town that sits on the edge of Lake Titicaca, which locals pronounce ¨Titichaachaa¨ with a more throaty sounding c. I prefer this... Puno is run-down and graffitied, but the lake is a giant, blue, rippling mirror that could make anywhere appealing. We took a boat one day into the lake and visited the floating islands, which are human made out of reeds that grow in the lake. The people created the islands when the Incas took over, in an attempt to escape. They´re made of dirt from the bottom of the lake covered in eight or nine feet of reeds. All of their houses and boats are made of the reeds, too, and they all have to be replaced every three months or they´ll rot. Talk about ephemerality. Beautiful.
     Arequipa, which feels like Europe. It was really strange to arrive there after the semi-ruggedness we´ve been experiencing. The buildings are large and made of white volcanic rock. They have many arches but aren´t decorated otherwise. A highlight of Arequipa was visiting the Monasterio de Santa Catalina, a convent built in the mid-1500´s. It´s enormous (takes up 3 city blocks!) and contains beautiful paintings from the Cusqueñean school, plus much of the original furniture and tools used by the nuns. Another highlight was going to the museum that houses Juanita, the mummy of an Incan girl sacrificed in the mid-1400s to appease the gods and help to stop the earthquakes going on at that time. She and other child sacrifices like her were discovered in the mid 1990´s. Since they had been frozen solid, the bodies are in very good condition, as are the textiles and ceramics that were found with them. So the museums and history there were very interesting, plus we got a taste of the modern life, including fast food and Starbucks (almost didn´t admit that, but it had to be told).
      Colca Canyon, the deepest canyon in the world. We went on a three day trek there with a group of eight, plus a guide. Our group consisted of 4 Germans, 2 Argentinians, and Renee and me. We didn´t talk much, though the Germans spoke English and our Spanish is getting better. I was feeling a bit timid and reluctant to have a three-day conversation, especially because once I get past my getting to know you Spanish, it´s hard to know what else to talk about. It was much more difficult, physically, than I´d expected. The first day we left at 3 am and the hike was a 3.5 hours straight downhill in the blaring sun into the valley. We spent the night at a tropical-feeling, but rustic, hotel in the valley. Everyone went to bed at 8. The next day we walked a more flat path, and stopped at a house/museum in a village in the valley, where we tasted the owner´s chicha and saw traditional farming tools and clothing. Then we stayed at another small hotel (both were made up of adobe cabins and the eating areas were open air and made of cane and straw) but this one had a pool, which was nice for about an hour and then the sun hid behind the mountains and it was cold. We woke up at 4:30 the next morning, had coca tea and 4 oreos each, and hiked to the summit in the dark, and then in the cool morning sun. We climbed 1200 meters and it took about 3 hours. Mules and Peruvian men in ajotes -sandals made out of tires- pranced up and down the path like they were running from their house to the mailbox or something, listening to radios and smiling contentedly. We sweated, grunted, and grimaced our way to the top. We ate breakfast at a small restaurant in the nearby pueblo, watching Arequipa-style Huayno music videos in the background. I must buy a Huayno dvd for you all to see. It´s describable, but describing it saps it of the beauty.
       As I said, I´m in Nazca. The sharp edge of the desk is eating lines into my wrists. Shakira is blowing my mind with her hotness. How is she so pretty but so tiny at the same time? I want to put her on a keychain. I just came in from the plaza, where two seventeen-year-old girls asked me questions about the U.S. for a while until I got uncomfortable and had to leave. They were especially interested in how many stories certain buildings have in New York (Twin Towers, Empire State Building, etc) and what the weather´s like. I ended up feeling inadequate for not knowing the answers to their questions. Don´t have a head for facts. But I was happy to talk to them and again impressed by how genuine they and almost all of the Peruvians I´ve met have been. This morning, Renee and I took a private tour to the towers where you can view the Nazca Lines. They´re giant figures etched into the desert floor by people of the Nazca culture between 400 and 650 AD. We saw giant hands, a tree, and a family of adorable people with feathers or maybe antennae or dreadlocks. No one really knows what the lines mean, but I liked what our guide said. He believes that the figures are a type of offering that the priests would design, draw, and walk the perimeters of in religious ceremonies to demonstrate their devotion  to their gods. Whatever they mean, they´re amazing.
     The rest of this trip will follow the Peruvian coast. We go to Ica, the home of many Pisco-making wineries, tomorrow. Then to a national reserve (Paracas), then north to Trujillo and the beaches and more archeological sites around there.

Christian #3

I got to sit next to Christian in the convi yesterday. His sister, looking a little less severe with her hair down and flowing, stood outside the van as it filled, scowling. The sun glinted off her braces. She and Christian were both eating popsicles, and when hers fell off the stick onto the ground she made Christian give her some of his, then made him give her money for another one. I saw her soft side when the driver ordered him to get in the backseat with three giant men. She stuck up for little bro, whiningly insisting, "No, he doesn't want to sit back there. My brother isn't skinny. He can't fit" (he totally could have, but whatever, it was sweet). The van took off and she waved us off. Christian and his tiny friend sat in one seat next to me, and somehow played with a top on the floor, even when there were probably only six inches of space to work with. This was the fullest convi I've been in yet. People were literally spooning, standing up in the area next to the door. Christian used my right thigh as a brace for his top-playing, pressing very firmly against it as if it were a seat cushion or his older sister standing in his way in the hall. I'm sure he knew it was a leg, but he didn't care. "Bajabajabajabaja!" I love that kid.

International Model? Check.

Always the eager model/actress, here I am modeling Awamaki's new knitwear collection on their blog.
http://awablog.tumblr.com/

Ollanta Living

           In the mornings I wake up at 4:30 when my host family gets up to do God-knows-what as loudly as possible, put in my earplugs and go back to sleep. At 6:45 I get up for breakfast with my host mom and sisters, which is usually fresh bread and avena with chocolate (A milky oatmeal drink with small grains. If you know me, you know I don't like oatmeal normally, but this is very tasty). If it's Monday or Wednesday, I leave to catch a collectivo to Pachar with Renee for our computer classes. If it's Tuesday or Thursday, I retreat to my room to study before Spanish class, or scrub laundry and hang it in the courtyard in the sun.

         Pachar is a tiny pueblo eight kilometers from Ollantaytambo. A woman waits at a tiny gatehouse at the entrance to the town to take down the chain in front of the bridge when cars or people need to cross the river. There are no paved or even cobblestone roads there, so it's always very muddy. Four out of five days there's a bull, donkey, or sheep in the path through the fields of corn and grasses on the way to school. There are probably only six or seven teachers at the school -one for each grade, including Jardin, which starts at age three or four- and they're busy in the schoolyard when we get there, setting up a giant PA system to have the Monday morning assembly on the basketball court/soccer court with all of the students, pulling weeds in the garden, or ushering children from place to place. The assemblies involve a lot of shouting “BUENOS DIAS NINOS” and “BUUUUEEEENOS DIIIAS PROFESSORAAAAAA!” plus singing of patriotic songs.

           We have hour and a half-long classes from 8:30 or 9 until 1:30, which is a very long time. Our yes attitudes wane as the morning goes on, and we sometimes have to stress-eat bread and chocolate. The best part of the computer classes is that the kids are really excited to be able to use computers, some of them for the first time. Also, I think they're learning things...we're focusing on the most basic of basics, like using the keyboard, knowing the parts of the computer, and finding and opening/closing programs. Many of them speak mostly Quechua and none of them are very good at spelling: Hola! Minonbre es royer. Bibo in Pachar tengo 11 anos. This was the sentence we had them typing yesterday (spelled correctly, with their own info inserted, of course) and it took most of them at least 10 minutes. 

         There are two worst parts too. One is that the health and hygiene of the students and facilities is rather poor. Many of the students have to walk for two or three hours to and from school. Many of them smell like they don't wipe when they poop or take showers, which isn't surprising in a place where there's never toilet paper in the bathrooms and many people don't have running water. The bathrooms in the school are pretty disgusting. One day I caught a little girl squatting and peeing on the floor in there, even though all the stalls were empty. WTF Melissa? The other worst part is being way less than fluent in Spanish. I just learned how to use the imperative correctly last week, five weeks into computer classes. Dang. It can be rough. But the kids are surprisingly sweet and forgiving, and it's a good crowd to practice with. We only have one week left with them. Hopefully this program can continue with other volunteers, because I think the kids and teachers are starting to trust and like us. The teachers just started inviting us out for a mid-morning snack that we really don't need (who wants a tuna, onion, and tomato salad plus a boiled potato at 10 am?).

         As I said earlier, I'm taking Spanish classes in Urubamba on Tuesdays and Thursdays. My teacher's name is Sylvana, and she's probably my age or a little bit older. She has a cutely shrill laugh and always smells good. I'm learning a lot really fast and am not processing it all, but it's good that she's giving me what I need to get a strong foundation and I can practice during my time here with my host family and the many bored Peruvian men who work in the bars and restaurants in Ollantaytambo and love talking to voluntarias and asking us out for drinks and dancing every day or tell us about Inca myths, even though obviously we have to work tomorrow... I have only met one Peruana who wants to chat and be friends, and that was in an official intercambio set up by Awamaki for Wednesday evenings. Everyone else I meet is a dude: in the combis, on the street, in the ruins when I'm trying to listen to my ipod and get some sun.

         I guess most of the women my age who live here are busy taking care of their families. My host mother calls me “hija” even though she's only four years older than me, and she has an eleven-year-old and a five-year-old. Living with the host family is good for the most part, and I'm glad for the experience. But it can be tough sometimes being treated like a baby by a 29 year old. “Abrigate! Come mas! Estas flaca, Anita! Vas a gordar un poco aca, Anita. Un poco, no mas.” No, but really they're super nice and cute, and it's fair that they think I'm a little stupid when I say things in Spanish like, “I was going to you walk to the store eggs” all the time.

         Highlights of living with the family: going to the stadium for the women's soccer league games on Saturday and playing a ton of games with like 30 kids, led by my parents, Mirian and Ebert; always having a giant, delicious lunch every day no matter what; killing, plucking and eating the chicken that would always come into my room and poop. They really want me to love them and be part of their family, and I do. I think it will be hard to keep in touch, though, because none of them have email. I tried to get Mirian to come to an internet cafe to set up and account with me, but she kept not being able to, and I think maybe she's intimidated by the whole idea. Probably my best bet is to set up an account for Valeri, the 11 yr old, because she's pretty tech savvy and loves me and will want to be in touch. I think she can use internet at her afterschool center for cheap, too.

         My afternoons vary. Sometimes I work in the Awamaki weaving shop, which can be slow and boring, but at least I get to gaze at beautiful textiles and smell the fragrant Palo Santo wood we sell there. Some Tuesdays I help out another volunteer, Susan, with her afterschool P.E. Class. We had one successful gymnastics lesson, but for the most part the kids are just in it for the futbol and it's impossible to get them to play another game. Other times I go to a cafe or climb up to Pinka Lluna, some of the ruins that overlook the town. Mondays we have Awamaki meetings with project updates and check-ins. It's exciting and inspiring to hear about what everyone is doing with very limited resources. It's a small organization, but it packs a lot of punch. All of the volunteers are nice and enthusiastic. Some evenings we meet up for drinks or have pizza parties and those kinds of things. Since people are coming and going all the time, we have despedidas (going away parties) almost every week, too.

         I've traveled in the Sacred Valley area on the weekends a bit, when I'm not working in the shop or spending inordinate amounts of time at birthday parties for one-year-old cousins. The first weekend in April, my friend Dan (we grew up together in Greensboro and Quaked together, he went to Warren Wilson so we see one another regularly in Asheville, too) came to Ollantaytambo. We went to a fiesta for Renee's host brother's birthday (turning 24 I think) on that Thursday night, which was pretty fun. We drank wine, beer, and pisco and salsa-danced. Then Friday-Sunday we went to Machu Picchu. I'm having a hard time thinking of what to say about MP. It was just what I imagined: amazing. We got up at 4:30 to buy our tickets and ensure that we would be at the head end of the crowd. The weather was perfect: cloudy and cool in the morning and hot and sunny by one. We hiked up to Huaynu Picchu in the late morning, a mountain/temple that's way above MP where you can see everything. Almost the entire path was extremely steep stairs. It was painful, but worth it.

         In the afternoon we went to Aguas Calientes, the town that is Machu Picchu, with all of the hotels and restaurants and trashy souvenir shops. There are also hot springs there, where pretty much everyone goes after they've been to MP. They were murky hot tubs with sandy bottoms, and they smelled like pee and made my flea bites itch. We could only stand being there for about thirty minutes, and then had to return to our very wet hotel to shower. I guess MP is at the edge of the cloud forest, so it's always humid. The sheets in our beds were damp and there was a centimeter of water on the floor in the bathroom, which was exceptionally disconcerting when I accidentally zapped myself on this outlet with prongs sticking out of it and electric current running through it. Still have no idea what that was for, but the back of my arm has a very strong memory of how it felt. This is where my blog changed it's title. We went to dinner at one of the hundreds of restaurants where people desperately stood outside begging customers to come in. We were the only people there. We ate fajitas and lasagna with noodles made from quinoa, and drank pisco sours and caipirhinas. Not too shabby. We went to bed early and slept forever. Then we took the beautiful Peru Rail Train home to Ollantaytambo, where we had lunch with my family and said our farewells. A good time was had by all.

         Last weekend, Renee and I went to Moray and Salineras, which are within an hour of here. We took a collectivo to Urubamba, where we checked out a Bioferia (tailgate market with organic products and hippies by the dozen. So used to that scene...) and had pastries at a wonderful little bakery. Then we caught a bus to Maras and a taxi to Moray. Moray is the site of an ancient Incan agricultural research center. Yeah, that's right. They always planted crops on terraces, in order to manipulate temperature and the types of crops they could grow in one place but at different altitudes. Moray takes this concept to a new level, with concentric circles of terraces that probably sink two or three hundred feet into the ground from the top to bottom. So cool. We walked from Moray to Maras, which took about an hour and a half and was beautifully scenic, with bulls, fields, red mud cliffs, and agave. In the plaza in Maras there was a festival going on, which involved lots of food and chicha and also a bike race, which we caught part of. We rested for a while and then walked for another hour and a half to Salineras, another incredible site of Incan innovation. They realized that the nearby springs were salinated, so they dug out thousands of rectangular shallow pools along the side of the mountain (using gravity and aqueducts to move the water better) where they STILL harvest salt. It was beautiful, and kind of looked like something out of a sci fi movie, because the mud was so red, the salt was so white...it looked like another planet. We walked some more down to the main road (probably walked 15-20 miles that day, no joke) and took a tiny motorcycle taxi to Urubamba, where we ate some snacky bar food, wandered in the market, and I tried chicha, which is probably the reason I've been feeling sick for the past couple of days. But I couldn't leave this part of Peru without trying it. Ghiardia be damned!

         I have a week and a half more here. This weekend I'm going up to Patacancha, which is the community where Awamaki works with weavers and buys most of their textiles. It's a traditional high altitude village and almost everyone speaks Quechua. I hear it's beautiful. I'm a bit sad to be leaving Ollantaytambo soon, but am also so excited to be hitting the road and seeing different parts of this country!

Christian #2

Fortuitously, I had the opportunity to meet Christian, the downtrodden boy from the convi. Walking down the dust-turned-to-Three Musketeers Filling-street that occurs when it rains here (red boots are now the color of old bloodstains on clothes) to my neighborhood, I ran into another Awamaki volunteer, Susan. She's a hardcore soccer superstar, who will be playing for James Madison in college starting this fall. She was finishing up playing soccer with a probably 19 year-old Peruvian guy, and with him was his little brother, Christian! Christian seems like a pest: he kept hitting and bothering his brother while we tried to have a civilized conversation. He probably got it from his ogre sister. Ok, don't really have time to write now, but I did go to Machu Picchu over the weekend with Renee and Dan...will post later.

The Convi Vans

My two main activities these days (taking Spanish in the nearby town of Urubamba and teaching computer classes to kids in a nearby village, Pachar) both involve taking Combi vans from Ollanta to my destinations. Each ride is an adventure. It costs about $2.50 to get to Urubamba (20-30 minutes from here) and back. A nice deal, but you have to deal with the conditions.
Vignette #1: First day of Spanish classes
I think the driver was thirteen, and he loved the challenge of fitting as many people as possible into the van. These are rickety fifteen-passenger vans and usually there are at least twenty-three people in them. That day there were probably twenty-five or six. I sat with my knees on the outside of Renee's in the van, plus pressed against the knees of the dudes next to me. Knee bruises times four.
Vignette #2: The Chicken.
On the way home from Urubamba Renee and I were in the back seat with one other person. By the time the van took off, there were four of us in the backseat. The seating order went like this: Quechua man with campfire-smelling poncho on my left, behind my left shoulder; Quechua man with sheep-smelling poncho on my right, pinning my right shoulder down; Renee to the right of that man; chicken in a bag below our seat, periodically pecking Renee's ankle.
Vignette # 3: Future Women's Penitentiary Rugby Coach at age 12
This was the first time I LOL'ed since being in "Carefree Cusco" (just made that name up). Here's the scene: 8 year-old boy and hot 23-year old futbol coach/model talking in the backseat. Renee and me on the side-facing seat. Mom, dad, baby in seat in front of Renee, all eating popsicles and baby moaning/crying periodically. Eight schoolchildren somehow standing in the space next to the door, eating popsicles and using Renee as a chair/trashcan for slobber and melted snacks. The best part: The girl in the seat across from me was about twelve and was wearing a way too thick for the weather, red tracksuit. She had the build of a girl bully. She kept yelling at her little brother, who was probably eight and was super disgruntled, to come sit with her. He didn't want to because she wouldn't let him have the window seat. After she yelled at him for five excruciating minutes, he came to sit with her with a sourpuss look on his face. She was taking up 5/6 of the seat, so his feet were basically on mine. He tried to take a nap, but was probably having hateful dreams about his sister and had the worst look on his face I have ever seen for a sleeping person. That didn't last long though, because Giant Of a Sister lost something on the floor and proceeded to bend over and search on the floor for it, all the while edging her brother farther out of the seat, until she finally woke him up and made him look for the thing, while shouting orders at him. He found it, was then completely awake, and then the mammoth girl fell sound asleep with her pumpkin-sized head resting atop his delicate head/neck. He totally hated her. She probably tortures him by never letting him sleep at night, by telling him terrible stories about what happens to little boys who sleep/roaring like a lion whenever she notices him dozing off. She probably steals all of his food, too. He was so small. Renee and I decided that a)she's destined to be the rugby coach at a women's prison; and b) we are going to make a movie about this pair of siblings. When we pulled into Ollanta the little boy yelled "BAJABAJABAJABAJA!" at the top of his lungs until the driver stopped and let them off so they could go home and he could do all of his sister's chores.

Mi Casa

My house in Ollanta is less than a year old. ¨Nice!¨ you say. You are wrong. In Peru, people move into buildings before they´re finished, and then continue adding to them for years after. So right now the top floor of the house is nonfunctioning. There´s no floor except for what looks like bamboo (I can see it through the cracks at the edges of my room´s ceiling, which is actually a tarp). To get to the bottom floor, aka basement, you have to go down a steep, ladder-like staircase into some muddy muck next to the corn field, then go through the wooden door in the cement block wall. Here, you enter a courtyard, which functions as the center of the house. There are seven chickens living in the courtyard and they do all of their things there, unless you forget to close a door and then they do their things in your room, the bathroom, or the kitchen. There´s also a dog named Tarzan, who I´m a fan of. If I ever have chickens, they will live at least fifty feet away from my house. There are lots of laundry lines in the courtyard and a rusty metal tub with a spigot that serves as a washbasin for dishes and whatever else needs washing. The bathroom is small with a real (though seatless) toilet, a sink, and a hot shower. Not so bad. There´s a window that looks out from the shower into the courtyard. Privacy is not so important here. My room was my sisters´room before I got here, and the first day there were two beds because the five-year-old wanted to share a room with me. I had to say no. Now my entire family besides me sleeps in the kitchen/bedroom/living room. Yikes. But really...come on.
My room has a twin bed with very pink bedding, a bookcase with stuffed animals (some are very creepy. murderous baby doll, one-eyed giant Minnie Mouse), a dresser that I have two drawers in, a sewing machine, some educational posters and books, and pictures of Jesus being flogged and that kind of thing. The window is a plastic sheet, and that plus wind and rain is a recipe for the loudest night of your life. The room is really damp right now. That will probably change once the dry season kicks in, but for now my Spanish dictionary has been wet for a week. This sounds really bad, no? But somehow I´m getting used to it. I can do anything for six weeks! Five more to go before traveling...

Cusco and Beyond!

Cusco was really nice. We stayed in a house with internet, tv, and people who spoke some English. Spanish school was intensive and great: four hours per day for five days. Could have used a couple more weeks, but it was a good start. Our teacher, Sandra,  was adorable, and we ended up laughing uncontrollably for at least ten minutes a day. We got her digits (no biggie). I got tummy sick while we were there and had to shit in a bag in my room one day, but other than that things were fine.
The adventure had just begun. We took a van from Cusco to Ollantaytambo on Tuesday the 15th. The ride took about an hour and a half, and the route went through unbelievably green, wildflowered, and dotted with roaming livestock. When we got to Ollanta, we hopped out of the van into a street near the plaza. There are lots of restaurants and hotels/hostels on the main streets, alternately muddy or dusty streets, and impatient drivers trying to pass on the roads that are only wide enough for one vehicle at a time. People hang out on the sides of the streets asking ¨Machu Picchu? Cusco? Urubamba?.¨ This is a tourist spot mostly for people passing through and staying for a couple of nights. It´s the last tourist-ready town on the way to Macchu Picchu.
After getting to the plaza, I called the Awamaki volunteer coordinator, Kaitlyn. She showed up within five minutes. She, like all of the Awamakians I´ve met so far, is friendly and tries to make new volunteers feel included and supported. We walked to the office, which is just a couple of blocks from the main square. We looked around (concrete floors, back door opens to courtyard/kitchen/volunteer house, tiny rickety spiral staircase to upstairs) and in a couple of minutes my host mother walked in, super-excited to meet me and show me to the house. I´m her family´s first volunteer, though her sisters, aunts, and cousins (everyone here seems to be related) have hosted before. Her name is Marianne and her husband is Ebert. They´re in their thirties and have two daughters: Cusi, who´s five, and Valerie, who´s eleven.
Kaitlyn, Renee, Marianne and I walked to our neighborhood, San Isidro, which is about a ten minute walk from the center of town. At the entrance to the neighborhood there is a concrete soccer stadium and a bull ring. Hopefully there will be a bull fight while I´m here. There are definitely enough bulls. Some are in pasture, some are led around on leads through town, and in the smaller villages they kind of roam around free... There are actually a few bulls that live right next to my house in a bald patch in a cornfield.
Ok, hate to leave people hanging but my thirty minutes of internet are up! Stay tuned. I will finish this episode in the next couple of days!

Lima to Cuzco

It´s now my fourth day in Peru. So far, Renee and I have had great luck overall with our travels. We arrived at 10 on Saturday night, were picked up by a taxi sent by the hostel, and arrived at the hostel around 10:30. Despite our often heinous Spanish, we managed to buy bus tickets to Cuzco (a day later than we´d wanted, but that ended up being a good thing). We also made friends with people in our hostel, including a woman who lives in Ollanta, owns a hostel there, and is familiar with Awamaki. We had some very good conversations with her.
We also happened to be in Lima on a gorgeous, sunny, 70 degree day. We spent some time hanging out on the beach watching surfers, walked around Barranca, the section of Lima we were staying in, ate delicious ceviche, and ended up in the town square just as the Carnivale celebration began. There were probably a couple thousand people there with lots of energy and beer. Many of the young people had painted their bodies, and a fire truck came by at one point and sprayed the crowd while everyone cheered. There were also some really cool, giant puppets (skeleton pirate!) and a fireworks show. We couldn´t believe our luck in ending up in that part of Lima that day. It was fun.
Yesterday we mostly just rode a bus for 24 hours. It was the nicest bus I´ve ever been on, with giant, cushy seats, nonstop pretty good movies, and wonderful scenery out the window. Then again, it was 24 hours and all of it was uphill, so at about 10 pm we started feeling pretty queasy. Somehow we made it through, and now we´re at our host family´s house, who are a really nice 60 something couple named Ali and Dani. They´re very open and friendly, and are determined to help us learn Spanish. Hopefully my next post will also be so enthusiastic!

Travel-Time: Day 1

Justin and I headed out this morning at 8:40 after searching wildly for my wallet for twenty minutes (found on the floor of Greta's car) and losing my keys (they were in my left hand, underneath three sweaters and a bag of muffins. You know how sometimes you can't feel things in your hand when you've been holding them for a while?!) We drove the Yaris down to Myrtle Beach, stopping four times in five hours. We're now at the university apartments at Coastal Carolina, where his brother, Kevin, goes to school. Justin, Michael and Kevin are having a brother reunion this weekend. They're going to rub Justin's feet while he cries for two hours tomorrow after my departure. We plan to eat hush puppies and popcorn shrimp tonight until we fall asleep. I fly tomorrow morning at eight! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!