South of the Equator

That's all, folks

2008-09-22T00:21:00.004-04:00

Now that I'm home, that will be the end of this blog. I could continue writing about my daily life in Mill Hall, but I think I would get bored writing it, let alone reading it.

I honestly thought no one would still be reading after week 3, so thank you to those of you who are still with me. Also thanks to everyone for your thoughts, prayers, letters, postcards, care packages, email, and happy mail that got me through one incredible experience.

I'm still uploading photos from the end of my travels. I'll also be tweaking some of my previous photos, now that I have that kind of technology.

Muchas gracias and haste luege.

South America: In Retrospect

2008-09-21T23:10:00.002-04:00

I'm not quite sure how to sum up the last 9 months in one post, but I'm going to try. I know I'll think of other things to add long after I publish this post. But where to begin?

9 months and 6 countries. My passport is very nearly full. Only one page left. There are not many things more satisfying than a customs official searching through your passport, looking for a blank space to place his mark. But I collected so much more than stamps in a passport.

I learned more in these last 9 months than I ever have. I learned that some vegetables are not all bad, but that guinea pig definitely is. I learned alpaca burgers are one delicious meat, and that Argentines and Uruguayans know beef better than anyone else. I kind of learned the difference between ser and estar, but I never did figure out when to use por and para. I just pick one. I learned the real reason why you use "much" and not "many" and vice versa, as well as when to use the present perfect instead of the simple past tense. I learned how to salsa, but only kind of how to tango. And much, much more.

I also met more people this year than any previous years. I met some funny people, I met boring people, I met people I wish I hadn't, I met people I couldn't have lived without, I met people I forgot about the next day, I met people I won't ever forget.

People have been asking me what my favorite place I visited was, and I don't know how on earth I'm supposed to pick one. Of the countries I visited, I am and always will be the most loyal to Peru; it was my home for 6 months. One of these countries, Bolivia, is sadly on the brink of Civil War. The Peace Corps has gone so far as to evacuate all their workers. Lucky I got there when I did. Instead of picking one favorite, why don't I make a "best of" and "worst of" list. It's what everyone else does at the end of the year, so I'll do it for the end of my trip.

Best experience: teaching
Best flag: Cusco
Worst accent: Chile, I can't understand a word anyone said.
Best food: Argentina, no contest.
Worst meal: Cuy, no contest.
Best Amazing Race moment: Random Peruvian woman racing Peter and I to the bank.
Worst roommate: Templeton
Best Hike: The Inca Trail, obviously.
Best Island: Easter
Worst Name: Um, Hitler anyone?
Best Natural Wonder: This is a tough call. How do you choose between the Amazon, Lake Titicaca, and Iguazu Falls? I think I have to give it to Iguazu in a nail-biter, if only for the rainbows.
Best Moment Involving a Piece of Fruit: Feeding a banana to a monkey in the Amazon.
Worst Moment Involving a Piece of Fruit: Laying a banana peel out on the beach of Easter Island as a diversion for the flies. That was kinda gross.
Best weekend trip: Mindo, in Ecuador
Worst bus ride: Tres Cruces back to Cusco. Thought for sure I would lose my lunch.
Best dance: Salsa.
Best city: Buenos Aires

Since I've been home, I've had a few adjustments to make. I wouldn't think I would ever have to adjust to the ability to throw toilet paper in the toilet, and yet, that's been one of the hardest things to remember. It's also a bizarre thing to hear English conversations happening around me, as well as speaking English to waiters or store clerks. I have to stop myself from kissing people on the cheek when I see them so as not to seem alien. Shaking hands seems so stuffy.

What are the chances that I will go abroad for an extended period of time again? Very, very good.

The long, long, long journey home

2008-09-20T14:41:00.003-04:00

I arrived at the airport on Thursday morning just after 4am, having not been to bed yet. I can honestly say that was a day I was not at all looking forward to. Not because I didn't want to go, but because of how long it was going to take to get there. On Tuesday night, I had had a dream where Holli showed up in Buenos Aires to give me my birthday gift- a copy of Stephenie Meyers' Breaking Dawn, which I have been dying to get my hands on- so that I would have something awesome to read while I sat and sat and sat on airplanes and airports and more airplanes and airports. Sadly, this did not happen in real life. Instead, I found a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on the book exchange shelf in the hostel. I know I've already read it twice, but it's big and fat and downright entertaining.

When I arrived in Lima, I was happy to discover that my Spanish had improved just by changing location. I had a 50 sole note in my wallet, so I headed to a gift shop to use it up. I had no problems communicating with the store clerk, who kept adding up my purchases and telling me what else I could get with my leftover soles. He even told me my Spanish was very good and asked had I been in Peru long? Ha. You have no idea.

Then I flew to San Jose, Costa Rica, where I waited an excruciating 6 hours. Actually, I was thinking that it didn't seem so bad, until I got to those last 2 hours. Then I wasn't really sure if I could take it anymore. But Harry got me through, and I boarded the plane without losing my head.

I got extremely lucky on my last flight. I was the only one in my row of three seats, so as soon as I ate my meal, I stretched out across all three seats and actually managed to get some sleep.

The plane landed on time at 2:30am. True to reputation, everyone in the New York airport was rude to me. I didn't want to be there at 3am either, but you gotta do what you gotta do. Things improved drastically when I got to Alison's apartment. She had an air mattress all ready for me.

I spent Friday in Manhattan. My first stop was Serendipity's for a Frozen Hot Chocolate. The most amusing part of my day was when the woman at the table next to me asked the bus boy "Isn't this supposed to be hot?" The bus boy looked at her as if she had three heads and just walked away. She kept asking this question to her friend/sister/traveling partner, who was wearing a matching pink jogging suit, so I decided to speak up. I asked her if she had ordered the hot chocolate or the frozen hot chocolate, and she replied that she had ordered the frozen variety.
"Right," I said, "It's frozen."
"But why do they call it a hot chocolate? This is just a milkshake."
"No, there's no ice cream in it. It's a hot chocolate with ice."
"Well, I don't understand why it's called a hot chocolate."
"Have you ever heard of an iced coffee? It's like that, only way better."
"Oh."

Then the waiter appeared. "Isn't this supposed to be hot?," she asked him. Like talking to a wall.

Around 6:00, my parents showed up, and we went to dinner at a German restaurant in Brooklyn with Sajan and Alison. We finally arrived in Mill Hall just after midnight. After sleeping on bad mattresses with bad pillows and buses for 9 months, my bed felt amazing. I'm pretty sure it's the Most Comfortable Bed in the World.

The Finale

2008-09-20T13:51:00.003-04:00

Like I said, Wednesday was my last day in South America, and my birthday, which meant I called the shots. First off, Maribeth and I headed to the Latin American Museum of Art, since it was a free day. We had stopped in on Monday, but didn't feel like paying 15 pesos ($5) to tour, which turned out to be a really good decision. First of all, the museum didn't have all that much in it. Second, what was there was mostly modern art, a genre that neither of us care for. As Maribeth says, art should be something that not everybody can do. I can paint a canvas solid red if I wanted to, but why would I? This exhibit was particularly bad. The artist seemed to be a sugar addict who can't clean up after himself. In one corner was a pile of lollipops. Genius. An entire room was devoted to pieces of candy lying on the floor in a rectangle shape. We both managed to take pictures (which I swear I'll get around to putting up) before a man came over and told us that pictures were strictly forbidden. I'm pretty sure the whole thing is one big joke.

Afterwards, we went to a much more interesting museum devoted to Eva Peron. Everything I knew about Evita prior to this I learned from Madonna, so it was good to get a bit more background information. Then, of course, I had to go back and eat The World's Greatest Pizza for the third time during my stay.

In the evening, Maribeth and I went out for a steak dinner, courtesy of Maribeth as a birthday gift, accompanied by a few people from our hostel. We split a steak, since they serve you practically half a cow, but boy was it tasty. Following dinner, I finally got to go to my tango show. The show was fantastic. The dancers make everything look so easy, but after taking a few lessons, I know just how hard it is. The show also included more traditional song and dance. Towards the end, the stage darkened, and a spotlight went up over a balcony off to the side. On the balcony, a woman who looked and sounded an awful lot like Natasha from Rocky and Bullwinkle, began belting out a rousing rendition of "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" in Spanish. Pure camp. It was great. Maribeth kept hitting me, due to the fact that I couldn't stop giggling. When we got back to the hostel, Fredrick from Sweden made everyone sing Happy Birthday to me, in Spanish. I don't like being sung to. It's really just awkward for everyone involved, but I survived.

The show ended at 11:30, which meant I had 4 hours until it was time to leave for the airport. I certainly wasn't going to bother with sleep, since I would be so paranoid about oversleeping that I would never actually fall asleep, so Maribeth, Marc from Wales, and I played several rounds of UNO before heading to a pub for a late night snack. When we returned, it was time for me to finish packing up all my stuff.

Birthday Madness

2008-09-17T09:10:00.003-04:00

This is it. My last day in South America. It´s also my birthday. I think it´s appropriate that my last day here is my birthday. 25 was a really, really good year for me. Best ever.

I can´t believe it´s over, but I know it´s time. The other day I took a picture of myself in front of the Casa Rosada, and when I looked at it, I couldn´t believe how tired I looked.

But first, there is fun to be had. I´m so glad Maribeth was able to meet up with me here in BA. We´ve had a super fun and exciting past couple of days- year, really. She´s been busy telling everyone else here at the hostel that it´s my birthday, so I think we´ll have some good company tonight. The next 48 hours will be crazy. Here´s the rundown.

Museums, since Wednesday is free admission day
Shopping
Steak dinner
Tango show
Staying awake until it´s time to go to the airport, which will be around 3:30 in the morning- an early evening in this town
Flying from Buenos Aires to Lima
Flying from Lima to San Jose, Costa Rica
Spending a whopping 6 hours in San Jose
Flying from San Jose to JFK in New York
Arriving in NYC at 2:30am
Taking a taxi to Alison´s apartment in Brooklyn, where she has so wonderfully agreed to let me crash. Thanks bunches, and to Sajan too.
Killing time in NYC- not too hard to do
Driving back to Mill Hall Friday night

Whew. I think I´m too old for this.

A Night at the Opera

2008-09-15T09:21:00.004-04:00

There was no need to worry about dressing appropriately for the opera. It was certainly not a black tie event. First of all, the show started at 6pm, practically a matinee, especially in this town where dinner isn´t until 10pm, and the nightclubs don´t get going until 2am.

We sat practically in the rafters, but that didn´t really matter. The show was in French. I was surprised to see that they had Spanish subtitles on a screen above the stage. I found them a bit distracting, so I pretty much ignored them. The gist of the show was that Agamemmnon- the daughter of Oedipus if I remember correctly from my Biblical and Classical Literature class in college- was very, very sad because her whole family was dead. Unbeknownst to her, she had a brother in jail. Just as she was about to execute her brother, she realized he was her brother and they hugged. Everyone lived happily ever after. Or something like that. When it was all over, there was the world´s longest curtain call. It was as if they didn´t really know how to do a curtain call, all looking at one another for when they should bow, and pulling people out of the wings. But despite the finale awkwardness, it was a delightful evening at the opera.

Like a Chameleon

2008-09-15T09:10:00.002-04:00

While in Peru, I stood out as a gringa. Everyone knew that I wasn´t a local. In Chile, I blended in a lot more. In Argentina, everyone assumes I´m a local. I look more like a local than the locals do. All I need is a cigarette in one hand and a mate in the other, and I´m set. How do I know this? Because everyone asks me for directions. At least once a day, sometimes more. The other day, I was asked for directions twice in 20 minutes while waiting to meet someone. While waiting for Maribeth to change money on Saturday, a woman walked up to me and asked, ¿Vives aca? Do you live here? You´d think walking around with a pale blond English girl would give it away that I am not, in fact, a local, but even with Maribeth around, I´m still being asked for directions. And they go straight for me, while ignoring her. I usually just give them a blank look and say No se.

In other observations, Argentinians smoke more than you can possibly imagine. They also really really like their sweets. I can´t find a decent grocery store, but there are entire stores full of sweets all over the place. Argentina has the highest rate of eating disorders- or so I´ve heard- in the world, I guess because it´s all sugar and smoking.

Reunited

2008-09-14T15:38:00.003-04:00

Good news: my second and third tango lessons were much more successful than the first. I´m almost ready to start dancing in the street for donations in a hat.

Yesterday morning, Maribeth arrived for a reunion of girls who prefer i´s to y´s. Quite nice to have a friend again, although without Ashley we´re not quite complete. We went into the city center yesterday to look into tickets at the Teatro Colón, a very famous theater here in BA. When we got there, however, we found out that the theater is closed for renovations for the next two years. This has been a disturbing trend in my travels. I was also unable to tour the Casa Rosada- presidential residence- due to renovations as well. I guess I´ll just have to come back in a few years. We stopped at another theater to look at what was happening there. There appeared to be an opera performance tonight, so we bought tickets in the nose bleed section. When we got back to the hostel, we googled it, and found out that it is indeed an opera. Iphigénie en Tauride, a french opera based on a Greek tragedy. I´m predicting everyone will end up dead in the end. I´m hoping we´re not expected to wear anything fancy. I had an image of arriving in my only skirt and hiking boots. Jeans will have to do.

This morning we wandered around San Telmo, the neighborhood I´m calling home during my stay. There is a huge antiques market on Sundays, so we walked around, admiring all the old telephones, cameras, gramophones, etc. and watching street tango performances. Then we hoofed it down to the La Boca neighborhood, a very colorful- literally- barrio south of San Telmo. All the buildings are brightly painted, and artists sell their creations on the street. It´s a very fun and cheerful neighborhood. Unfortunately, the areas beyond the beaten path are very dangerous.

And now, it´s off to the opera...

Deliciousness

2008-09-12T15:35:00.003-04:00

Normally, while traveling, I don´t pay much attention to food. I forget about it really, as I´m too busy to sit down and have a meal, then I just cook myself some pasta or something in the hostel kitchen to save money. In Buenos Aires, it´s hard to forget about the food. It´s an attraction on it´s own. The steaks, the pizza, the ice cream... it´s all good. So instead of fighting it, I´m just going to enjoy it. I have 6 days left. I´m officially on vacation. They may have to roll me onto the airplane, but who cares? Argentina is no place for calorie counting.

T-A-N-G-O

2008-09-11T08:56:00.004-04:00

Last night I went to my first tango lesson. I´m pretty terrible. I say this with the comfort of knowing that when I started with salsa, I was also pretty terrible. But the tango is not salsa.

I pretty much have to be de-programmed from salsa. The instructor kept telling me to stop moving my hips, and everytime I was at a salsa lesson, they kept telling me to move my hips more. I´m not quite sure how it´s possible to keep your mid-section straight, chin up, but to relax your shoulders. I was a bit tense. But I am very, very determined, and therefore, giving it another go tonight.

What's new, Buenos Aires?

2008-09-10T15:53:00.004-04:00

Due to popular demand (from my mother) I decided I better update this thing. I'm getting lazy in the last days. The pictures, on the other hand, may just have to wait until I get back.

I've finally made it to Buenos Aires. My last stop. Starting in Quito and ending in Buenos Aires is not too shabby. I arrived yesterday via boat from Colonia, Uruguay. Colonia was built as a Portuguese smuggling port in the 17th century, and it's full of cobblestone streets and cute old buildings. Luckily, I had a much nicer day in Colonia than I had had in Montevideo.

After arriving in BA, I decided to stroll around the center of the city to get a feel for it. I like it. A lot. My hostel is named after Carlos Gardel, the inventor of the tango, and it has a very tango decor. (What is a tango decor? you ask. I don't know, it just is.) During my walk around the city, I grabbed a slice of pizza for lunch. It was, believe it or not, the Best Pizza I've Ever Had. And I have eaten a lot of pizza in my day. Definitely more than the average human being. It's going to be hard to avoid eating that pizza every day I'm here.

While I was walking back to my hostel that evening, I noticed a group of people gathering around something. When I got closer, I realized they were watching dancers. My first tango show! At first, they just seemed to be posing with tourists for photos. Finally, they got around to actually dancing. Now I'm hooked. I must learn how to do that in a week. Later, a police officer growled at me. That was a first.

Today I toured the Recoleta neighborhood. Recoleta is the Beverly Hills or the Upper East Side of BA. It's also where they bury dead people. So naturally my first stop was the Recoleta Cemetery. It's not so much a cemetery, but a small city. It would be very easy to get lost in there, as well as spend hours and hours just taking pictures of all the fancy tombs. I opted not to buy a map, but instead followed the crowd of people in order to find Eva Peron. Sure enough, the largest group of people was standing in front of her grave. I paid my respects to Evita, snapped a few pictures, and wandered around the necropolis for awhile, until I kept asking myself Have I seen this one yet? Didn't I already take a picture of this one? And moved on.

On Saturday, one of my other halves (wait, if there are two others, does that make it a third? I was always bad at fractions) in Cusco, Maribeth, will be arriving. v. v. excited for the reunion.

Staying warm and dry in Montevideo

2008-09-07T20:58:00.003-04:00

Weather-wise, Uruguay has been downright miserable. On Friday, I planned to explore Montevideo. It was cold, gray, and sometimes rainy. The kind of day that makes you want to sit inside with a good book on a cozy sofa, but when you´re living in hostels, this isn´t really an option. Besides, how often is one in Uruguay?

On my venture around the city, I stopped in more shops than usual, just to get out of the cold. Or the rain, if that´s what it was doing at the time. Montevideo is a beatiful city, even with a gray background. The architecture makes it look like a stand-in for Gotham City. I wandered in and out of museums and shops and beautiful buildings that seemed to come straight from Europe, including the Theatro Solis, the city´s main theater, and poked around until someone told me to get lost (which no one ever did), so I opened a door and found myself in the theater equivalent of a luxury box. Very fancy theater, could be straight out of Vienna. I found a cafe with some tasty hot chocolate to warm myself up, then spent the evening at the hostel, chatting with the other guests on the rooftop bar, where I learned they were even forecasting SNOW for the next day. This is a very, very unusual cold snap for this region of the world. That´s like predicting snow in Georgia in late March.

It did not, however, snow on Saturday, it just rained a very cold rain all day. I went with a new German friend to Punte del Este, which is THE beach resort in Uruguay in the summer. No, it´s not summer, but we wanted to go anyway. Somehow, she managed to get us a 20% discount on our bus tickets, even though she only asked for 10%. Too bad I can´t keep her around a bit longer. As soon as we got off the bus, we saw the Los Dedos sculpture in the sand. (My picture didn´t turn out that well. No blue sky.) I realized that just two weeks ago, I was dipping my toes in the Pacific, and now here I was, looking out at the Atlantic. My multiple layers of clothing told me that dipping my toes in at this juncture might actually cause them to fall off.

This morning, the sun was actually kinda-sorta out, and it wasn´t as cold as the previous two days, so I went for a walk to take pictures of some things I hadn´t bothered to take pictures of before. When I arrived at the Plaza Independencia, there was a section of the street blocked off. First, I noticed a group of people wrapped in blankets. Then lights. Then cameras. Then a street sign indicating 42nd St. Then a... NYC taxi? In Montevideo? The people in blankets were actors, (dressed for warmer NY weather, I suppose) and they had attempted to make this corner of Montevideo a stand in for New York City. For a movie, for tv, for a Uruguayan telenovella, I have no idea. I stood around and watched for a bit, but not much was happening. I got excited when the actors started shedding their blankets, and a woman pulled out a bullhorn, but then something held them up, and the blankets went on again, and I got bored. The women all wore high heels, the men business suits and overcoats, and they found a few people to make it racially diverse. I kept thinking maybe they would point to me and say "You! American! We need you in this shot!," but I was apparently not meant for Uruguayan stardom. Maybe next time.

Summer to winter in one day

2008-09-05T09:39:00.003-04:00

What a difference 24 hours makes. Within one day´s time, I went from needing a cold drink and some air conditioning, to needing hot chocolate and a warm blanket. Let´s back up...

On Tuesday, I went back to the park in Iguazu. There was a short hiking trail I hadn´t had time to do on Sunday, so I set out on that. I got to the park early, and was the first one on the trail. The trail ended at another "hidden" waterfall and pool. Thought about stripping down for a swim, but that was about the time someone else showed up, and I´m too much of a prude American for that. (And we really are prudes, you know.)

Afterwards, I took a boat across about 50 yards of rapidly moving water to an island in front of the falls. It was very, very hot. I got a nice shower from the mist of the falls, which felt good temporarily, but it only made things hotter once I was out of the mist.

When I had seen everything there was to see in the park, I went back to town and hopped a bus to San Ignacio. (See previous post.) I stayed in San Ignacio for the night, then hopped a bus to Posadas, where I could catch a bus to Concordia, where I could cross the border into Uruguay and catch a bus to Montevideo. Whew.

In Posadas, I had about 3 hours to kill before my bus left at 5pm. I decided to go into town and get lunch. According to Lonely Planet, I needed bus 21, so I got on bus 21. Only bus 21 didn´t go into town. It went in the opposite direction. I sat on the bus for the full loop. Luckily, it was a short route. I´m sure the bus driver thought I was an idiot, but he must be kind to idiots, because he gave me a ticket to catch another, more appropriate bus. Which I didn´t end up using, as time was ticking.

I found a paradilla across from the bus terminal. It was so hot, all I wanted was some ice cold water, but I knew that would take a miracle. I ordered a water sin gas, and the menu of the day without really knowing what it was (My, how I´ve changed!). The waiter was obviously some sort of angel, because he brought me a bottle straight from the refrigerator, along with a glass full of ice. I thanked him profusely, then ordered another. The menu del dia turned out to be a salad- with lettuce and everything!- bread, and a load of some sort of really good beef. He even offered me more beef when I had finished, but there was no way I could eat anymore. It was a good thing I ate so much, though, because I left my bag 'o food in a bathroom of the bus terminal. I´m getting sloppy in these final days...

My bus arrived in Concordia, Argentina at 1am. I couldn´t get a bus into Uruguay until 7am, so I took a taxi across the border. My taxi driver, Carlos, was super chatty. He showed me his collection of coins from all over the world. Not places he´s ever been, but from people he has driven in his cab. I didn´t have any American money on me, but I did contribute a few Chilean pesos and Peruvian soles to his collection. He actually offered me Argentine pesos in exchange, but seeing as how I had given him about 62 cents, I didn´t really think it was necessary.

I crossed the border without problems, but the bag inspection was by far the most thorough I´ve been through. The guy actually went through everything with a flashlight, taking everything out, looking through my shoes, my book, my journal, and all the pockets. This did not make me happy, since packing my bag is an exact science, and I didn´t feel like doing it again in the cold of 2am.

The first bus from Salto to Montevideo was at 6:30am, so I spent 4 hours in the middle of the night in a freezing bus station in a hard, plastic chair. It was all very glamorous, I tell you. When my bus finally arrived in Montevideo (an hour and a half late), I was starving, so I headed to the Mercado del Puerto, where they served me half a cow. (and a salad) It was definitely The Best Steak I´ve Ever Had. And that´s not because I was so hungry, it was just that good.

Here in Uruguay, it´s still winter. I went from shorts and a tank top (and hiking boots, I looked like such a backpacker!) to my jacket, scarf, and hat. But at least I don´t look like such a tourist, right?

Lonely Planet vs. Rick

2008-09-03T10:36:00.004-04:00

I´ve been meaning to write this post for some time, but then I keep doing things to actually write about.

For this trip, I´m traveling with the aid of Lonely Planet´s South America on a Shoestring. Normally, I would be using Rick Steves, but Rick sticks to Europe, so that´s not really a possibility.
I can´t say enough good things about Rick. Holli and I have had some really really good trips thanks to Rick. He tells you exactly where to go and what to see, and even includes possible itineraries so you know what to see and when. With the exception of our dad of course, we say that he´s the only man that´s never let us down (ahem). He´s that good.

Lonely Planet, on the other hand, is no Rick. Lonely Planet has let me down several times. Take today, for example. I´m in San Ignacio, Argentina. The main attraction here are the ruins from an old Jesuit settlement. According to Lonely Planet, there are "several bizarre museums" as you enter the complex. With several museums to tour and the city worth of ruins, I assumed it would take half a day, maybe more. There were not several bizarre museums, there was one normal, very informative museum, and therefore, the whole thing took an hour and a half. It was still an interesting place to visit, and a good way to break up my trip to Uruguay, but still annoying.

The biggest problem is that Lonely Planet casts their nets a bit too wide. They publish guides for every place on the planet. Since Rick stays in Europe, everything´s more carefully researched and more recently published. My problem with Lonely Planet is also that everything´s out of date. I have the most recent book, but it´s several years old already. In Santiago, I was wandering around, looking for an English bookstore mentioned in LP. I heard two men speaking English at a cafe table, so I asked them if they knew of it. They told me it no longer existed. Turns out, one guy had spent that whole morning looking for it, while the other, who had been living there for awhile, said he tried to find it a whole year ago and couldn´t. Good thing I ran into them. It saved me a lot of Lonely Planet-induced frustration.

I miss Rick...

Poor Niagara

2008-09-01T17:14:00.005-04:00

I feel sorry for Niagara Falls. They don´t stand a chance next to their South American counterpart, Iguazu. Iguazu makes Niagra look a bit like a leaky faucet.

When I got to town yesterday, I decided to head over to the Falls around noon, which proved to be a good move. You can spend a lot of time at that park. For some reason, something about the park reminded me a bit of Disney World. Maybe it was taking the shuttle from town, and then taking a small train to get around (because it´s that big), or all the families and strollers and the expensive food. Either way, that really didn´t diminish what I was seeing at all.

The first thing I did was take the train to the far end of the park. From there, I walked along a series of catwalks over the Rio Iguazu to the viewing point of The Devil´s Throat. I was pretty stunned at the sheer volume of water. It wasn´t even possible to see the bottom, due to all the mist being sprayed up by the falls, which also got me pretty wet. No wonder they were selling ponchos all over the place.

Afterwards I hiked two other trails to see more falls. I got really really wet in one spot, and saw lots and lots of rainbows. And thus took lots and lots of pictures.

This morning, I decided to do a little adventuring. I hiked, I climbed rocks, I zip-lined across the canopy, I climbed a squirmy rope ladder, I zip-lined across the canopy again, then repelled back down the rocks. It was pretty cool. To get back to town, we took a boat down the river. From the river, we entered the waters of both Brazil and Paraguay. If you´re wondering why I´m not going to the Brazilian side to see the falls from there, it´s because of all the stupid and very expensive visa regulations. Same thing with Paraguay, although not nearly as expensive as Brazil, I´d rather spend extra time here and in Buenos Aires. But I guess I can say I´ve been in them, just haven´t actually set foot in them. I don´t think that makes much sense.

Welcome to Argentina, Enjoy the Beef

2008-08-31T16:50:00.004-04:00

Last week, I left Chile for Argentina. (And in case you´re wondering, yes, the soundtrack from Evita has been running on continuous loop in my head.) On Wednesday, I took a bus from Santiago to Mendoza. In order to do this, I had to cross a serious mountain range. The border itself was high up in the mountains. There was several feet of snow, and it was freezing. We had to wait for a few buses to go through in front of us, and all I had to eat all morning was a dry cheese sandwich they gave us on the bus. I went into a sandwich shop and ordered a burger. Eating burgers in Peru was like a Where´s the Beef? commercial. All bread with a thin, tiny beef patty. That´s why I was so shocked when they handed me my burger here. It was easily as big as my head, with at least 3 huge beef patties. There may have been more, but I lost count. It was as if they were saying, "Welcome to Argentina, here´s all the beef you´ve been missing in the last 8 months."

In Mendoza, I didn´t do much, but I took the time to get a few things organized, like when and how I´m coming home. (September 18th) I went to the bus station to figure out how to get to Puerto Iguazu, which is where I sit right now. The bus trip was 36 hours and cost well over $100. Instead of doing it all in one shot, I made a brilliant move. I took an overnight bus halfway, to a town called Santa Fe. In Santa Fe, I got off the bus, bought my bus ticket for another overnight trip to Iguazu, stored my bags, ate lunch, and walked around town. It was a nice town to walk around in, lots of shops, and a path along the river. At 5:30, I got back on the bus. Only this was a nice bus, like traveling first class. I might never go back. Why was splitting it up so brilliant? Obviously I didn´t have to spend 36 straight hours on a bus. However, it was also much cheaper. I managed to save about $40. And somehow, even with the 6 hour break, I only arrived an hour after the 36 hour marathon would have. Sometimes, it´s like I actually know what I´m doing.

But after 2 straight nights on a bus, I´m ready for a bed.

Easter Island: Days 4&5

2008-08-28T15:00:00.003-04:00

As a reward for two of the best travelling days possibly ever, we went to the beach on Monday. The beach is on the opposite side of the island, but a crazy taxi driver took us there and back. He insisted on showing us a photo of the sunset, and next to the sun was a spot, or as he liked to call it, a UFO. I think he needed to clean his camera lens.

The beach was not your average beach. It had nice white sand and blue, clear water, but also maoi and wild horses roaming around. I even saw one of the horses walk to the shoreline and drink from the water. Saltwater. Huh. Very pleasent day on the beach, even if I only dipped my toes in. Everyone else said the water was "nice" but water temperature is subjective, and I am a cold water weenie, a trait I picked up from my mother.

On Tuesday morning, it was time for me to go home. Well, not home, but back to the mainland. Peter was staying for a bit longer, although what he will be doing, I have no idea. We saw the whole island, it's not very big.

At the airport, I had my first casualty. I stopped at the snack bar for a fresh passion fruit juice, and it wasn't until I was on the plane that I realized I had left my sweatshirt on my chair. It was a thrift store purchase, so the net loss is about $3, but I loved that sweatshirt. It reminded me of Rainbow Brite.

Easter Island: Day 3

2008-08-28T11:26:00.005-04:00

Sunday morning, we had to figure out how to get around. The feet weren´t cutting it, and the sightseeing agenda for that day didn´t really allow it. A car would have been great, but we didn´t have that luxury. Peter suggested we go out Saturday night, and I find myself a man to drive me and "my brother" around the island. I didn´t really appreciate the suggestion that I pimp myself out to enhance his sightseeing pleasure. Besides, I didn´t think it would work out so well, what with my dirty clothes (I really need to find a lavanderia), unwashed hair, and something crusty developing under my nose. I suggested he find a lady friend, but he pointed out that women in South America don´t have cars. This is true.

So, we rented bikes. First thing on Sunday morning, everything was closed, so we followed the music, until we got to church. The service was in the Rapa Nui language and included some cool, very un-church like music. After awhile, we headed back to the bike shop, which had since opened.

The ride out was fairly easy. There wasn´t much uphill and the wind was at our backs. We stopped at several sites on the way to Rano Raraku, mostly with fallen maoi, victims of warfare. The wind was intense, and it rained off and on, but was nice by the time we got to Rano Raraku.

Rano Raraku is the quarry where the maoi were built. There are hundreds of unfinished maoi, most of which are just the heads, just waiting to be finished or moved. Some are still in the ground, never having been chipped out. It begs the questions: why did they suddenly stop making them? Why did they destroy them? What were they doing with them in the first place? Fascinating stuff. At Rano Raraku, you can walk right up to the giant maoi heads- but don´t touch!- so we took lots and lots of pictures before heading down to Ahu Tongariki, a site of 15 maoi all lined up.

The ride home was a lot more difficult than I expected. We cut across the middle of the island, which I swear went straight uphill for several miles. Not only that, but we were riding into intense wind. Impossible to get any kind of momentum going. My legs weren´t working anymore, so I had to push the bike.

Obviously the highlight of Easter Island is the maoi and all the mysteries surrounding them, but the island itself isn´t too bad. Volcanic craters, impressive coastline, and wild horses roaming around everywhere. Very cool place.

Easter Island: Day 2

2008-08-27T21:05:00.004-04:00

Saturday. Best travel day in a long time. Started off the day by hiking to Rano Kau, a crater lake south of the city. On the way, we acquired a family of dogs, including a little puppy only a few weeks old. Everytime we stopped, the puppy stopped. When we started up again, so did she. Peter suggested she was after the peanut butter and banana sandwich in my backpack, so I named the dog Skippy. (Back story: I intended to get jelly at the supermarket to go with my peanut butter, but the only supermarket in town didn´t have jelly. Only three aisles, and one of them was all wine. So I went with bananas instead, which the German thought was disgusting. I made him try it later, and he admitted it was quite delicious. Victory!)

When we arrived at Rano Kau, the scene was impressive. On the other side of the crater was the Orongo ceremonial site, from which you could see a small island out in the ocean. Male members of the birdman cult would swim out to the island (above, left), and the first one to retrieve an egg was declared the Birdman. The distance doesn´t look too far, but it was incredibely windy, and the sea was really rough. When we went to the park rangers office to pay our entrance, the ranger addressed the papa dog by name. We asked if he knew the dogs. He said the papa dog walks up there 2 or 3 times a day with tourists. Then he told us we had to take the dogs back down, otherwise the rangers have to drive them back to town at the end of the day. This was a problem with Skippy, whose little legs were just too tired from the long climb up. So, I put her in my backpack. It was just adorable, I tell you.

After reuniting Skippy with his 8 brothers and sisters, we kept walking. We hoofed it out of the other side of town for more maoi and more ruins. It proved to be a very long walk. Energy we had, but feet we didn´t. We were both having issues with feet, but Peter told me an old German proverb about shared pain being half the pain. I didn´t really feel in any less pain after that.

Eventually we found the village we were looking for next to the skeleton of a dead horse. Another 20 minutes down the road, we found the 7 maoi we were looking for (above, right), although we didn´t see them right away. How we missed 7 huge stone men on the side of the road, I have no idea. Must have been that tired.

We were hoping to hitch a ride back to town, so whenever I heard a car pull up, I started visibly limping. (People on Easter Island are really that friendly. Anytime we pulled out a map, someone was immediately pulling over to ask us if we needed help.) A tour bus pulled over and told us they had two available seats in the back if we wanted a ride, so we hopped on. We assumed their tour was over and they were headed back to town, but they apparently had one stop to make at a volcano. I thought for sure they were going to charge us after that. I felt like a bit of an intruder listening to the guide, so we hung back. But we did find out that the driver, who was wearing a funny headdress and carrying a fancy big stick, was doing so because they belonged to his great-great-great-great grandfather, a former Rapa Nui king. Cool.

When we got back to town, they tried to drop us off at our hostel, but we assured them the city center was sufficient (needed more groceries anyway) and they would not even hear of accepting money for the ride. Somehow, the people on the island are even friendly than Chileans on the mainland.

Easter Island: Day 1

2008-08-26T21:47:00.000-04:00

Way back at the beginning of the month, while still in Lima, I paid a visit to the South American Explorers clubhouse for a little advice. While I was there, I talked to a man who had just returned from Easter Island. I told him my plans to go, and how excited I was. I asked him what he thought of it. His response was "I´ll tell you it was great since you´re so excited." He said all the maoi looked the same. Now, I´m glad I didn´t listen to him, because I know he is an idiot.

I left the hostel early Friday morning with Peter, a German backpacker on the same flight. I´ve never visited a place where people were more interested in the landing as they were on this one. As the plane began it´s descent, everyone craned their necks to see out the window and many grabbed their cameras. I definitely couldn´t see any maoi from the air, but there was an excitment on the plane I don´t think I´ve experienced before.

The German and I left the airport (one gate, only a few flights a week) to go to our hostel. While waiting for our room to be ready, we drank bright pink Kool-Aid prepared by the owner´s shirtless son. Island living.

We walked through town, which is the only town on the island, and not much, and out to the first maoi site. The first glimpse of maoi ranks way up there, and it was only a small taste. First thoughts: I think I´m gonna like it here. After a trip to the local museum to learn about all the theories behind the maoi, I was very excited to explore the rest of the island.

The first day brought me two other great joys: The ability to drink tap water AND flush paper down the toilet. When I first used the bathroom, I noticed the abscence of a bin, and kept thinking, what am I supposed to do with the paper? It was an embarassingly long time before I thought of the possibility of actually flushing it down the toilet. I stood there and watched, waiting for something terrible to happen. When it didn´t, I left the bathroom thinking, I am totally badass.

Tomorrow, I will hopefully be in Mendoza, Argentina, and should be able to upload some pictures. To be continued...

Taking a Mini-Break

2008-08-21T19:25:00.000-04:00

Went to a winery today. They let us keep the glass we used for the tasting, but I´m willing to bet mine won´t make it home in one piece.

Tomorrow, I´m flying to EASTER ISLAND. You know, the one with all those huge statues, that no one can figure out. The most remote inhabited island in the world. I´m PUMPED to say the least. This is kind of like Machu Picchu for me. Something I´ve been waiting for for a whole long time. I only hope that, like Machu Picchu, it´s able to live up to my lofty expectations.

Rumor has it that internet access costs an arm and a leg out there. I don´t have an arm and a leg to give, so chances are good that I will spend my time on the world´s most isolated island being, well, isolated. I will, of course, chronicle my trip in great detail (and post thousands of pictures of giant stone heads) upon my return to the mainland. Chao for now!

Country Roads, Take Me Home...

2008-08-20T21:17:00.001-04:00

The hostel where I am currently residing in Santiago is a bit cluttered, to put it in polite terms. While rummaging through a pile of magazines, I found a National Geographic from 1994. One of the cover stories was titled "Central Pennsylvania." How odd that I would travel so far, and in Santiago de Chile stumble upon a 14-year old article about my homeland.

The article was written by an Altoona native returning home, and on the second page there were several substatial paragraphs about Lock Haven, along with a photo of a hang glider off Hyner Mountain. In 1994, the levee was just being built, and the town was still divided over it, which is what the author focuses on. He should have assured them not to worry, they could fight over consolidation in a few years. Don´t know what they´re fighting over now.

The mention of Peachy Paterno at the University Creamery at Penn State made my mouth water (but for Coconut Chip, not Peach Paterno, which I´ve never had), not to mention shoefly pie. Not together, obviously, that would be silly.

The other day, for the 857th time, I was asked which part of the US I hail from. And for the 325th time, the persons response to "Pennsylvania" was "Like Dracula?" So in honor of this nearly ancient National Geographic article, here is a list of differences between Pennsylvania and Transylvania.

Pennsylvania Transylvania

Location The United States, Romania, Europe
North America

Cuisine Shoefly pie, Tastykakes, Um, don´t actually know
Utz potato chips

Famous sons/ Will Smith, Michael Dracula
daughters Scott (fictional)

Politicians James Buchanon, Vlad the Impaler
Tom Ridge (Dracula)

Hero Ryan Howard (non-fictional) Jonathan Harker

Famous exports Dunder-Mifflin paper, Gymnasts,
Little League vampires

So there you have it. Very, very different.

Selling out in Santiago

2008-08-19T17:30:00.003-04:00

Today, I sold out. Big time. And it felt good.

I arrived in Santiago around 6am. I went to my hostel, I took a nap. I woke up two hours later. I was hungry. I decided to get started with the city, I would go on the self-guided walking tour provided in my Lonely Planet book. (LP is no Rick Steves. More on LP vs. Rick later.) But first, I had to find some food. By the time I got my metro card and got to the center and couldn´t find the mystery cafe recommended by said tour book, it was after 11. I spotted a Burger King. I sold out for the first time today. But man did that Whopper and fries taste good.

A few hours later, I was towards the end of my tour and on my way to the Presidential Palace when I spotted a Dunkin´Donuts. No big deal, except that through the window I could see blueberry muffins. I heart blueberries. A lot. Eat them by the handful and love them in muffins and pancakes. I have been in South America for nearly 8 months and this is the first time I´ve spotted them in any way, shape, or form. Not even in huge produce markets that have everything other fruit known to man. I don´t even know the word in Spanish for blueberry. I had to have one. I started eating the muffin while walking, but that just didn´t feel right, so I sat down on a bench and savored it. It was perfection.

So good ahead and judge me for my shameless exploitation of Western commercialism. I don´t care.

Backing up

2008-08-19T17:02:00.003-04:00

Hmmm, now that I´m actually moving, I´m falling behind. Let me back up.

Sunday morning (at least I think it was Sunday morning, I keep losing track of the days) I took a bus from Caldera to La Serena, and I arrived in La Serena mid-afternoon. My first thoughts upon arrival were that I had taken a wrong turn somewhere and ended up in Europe. The architecture, the streets, the fact that absolutely nothing was open on a Sunday afternoon...

I took a walk around town, but nothing was open and there were no people anywhere. Luckily, my hostel, which was a bit over my nightly budget, was well worth it and worthy of hanging out. I had a room with a king-sized bed- or maybe it just seemed king sized since I´ve been sleeping on beds that can barely pass for twins- cable tv, and hot water. I was able to take my first real shower in, er, I probably shouldn´t say, but I did wash my hair for the first time in 2 weeks. And before you tell me how gross that is, let me tell you that you wouldn´t have been able to notice. It really wasn´t that bad. (But still had sand in it from sandboarding.)

On Monday I was pretty disappointed to discover that the two things I had on my agenda- Japanese gardens and a museum- were closed. Sooooo, I walked around a lot, snapping pictures of the architecture. I wandered into a department store (mostly just to use the bathroom. Which I had to pay for. My bladder is not cut out for this continent.) I walked down to the beach and the lighthouse. I ate a long lunch. In the market square, there was a Menudo-like singing trio performing. I couldn´t stop listening to them, mostly because of their exaggerated passion. They made me laugh. (And they weren´t supposed to.) I first spotted them around noon. When I went back through at six, they were just finishing up. That´s dedication. Best of luck to them.

Close Call

2008-08-18T17:11:00.002-04:00

On Friday, I got on the bus headed south to Caldera, a beach town 12 hours away. After my run-in with the bus lady, an apparent follower of Voldemort, I was a bit nervous that I wouldn´t make it out of San Pedro. Mostly because she didn´t actually give me a new ticket, she just wrote the new time and seat number on the old one. I asked if I needed a new one, she said it wasn´t necessary, and I certainly didn´t want to insist on a new one. No need to upset the beast.

The journey was supposed to take 12 hours, but that didn´t happen. First of all, our bus disappeared for an hour in Antofagasta, for reasons unknown. We were all made to get off the bus, then the bus left and did not return for over an hour. I´m very grateful that it did, as all I had was my messenger bag, but at least that meant I had Lonely Planet and my camera. Money belt with money and passport were, of course, under my clothes.

The bus actually dropped me off in Copiapo, 40 minutes from Caldera. From there, I took yet another bus, which was supposed to leave 5 minutes after I arrived, but 5 minutes became 35 minutes. By the time I arrived in Caldera, it was midnight.

Caldera is a beach resort town, but despite the warm weather year-round, was completely deserted as it is winter. I knew that coming in, but I wanted to go to a beach that wasn´t socked in by cold fog caused by the Humbolt Current. On Saturday morning I packed a beach backpack and headed for the water. The beach was a bit industrial looking, so I took a collectivo to the next beach over in Bahía Inglesa, where the sand was white and the water true blue. The sun was warm, but the breeze chilly. I didn´t actually strip down to my bathing suit, but it was nice to sit on the beach with a book, and explore the rocky coastline down the beach.

For lunch, I went to an empanada joint across the street from the beach. I ordered beef, chicken, and cheese, and took it back to the beach for a picnic. After about 3 bites, I still hadn´t gotten any meat, so I peeked inside. In it was something pink. Pink... pink? Uh-oh. It couldn´t be... shrimp?! It was shrimp! Can you imagine? What if I had taken a bite of the other side first. Oh the horror! I may have learned to eat a few new things this year, but seafood is and will never be, one of them. I went back to the empanada shop. Just after I handed him back my seafood tainted empanada, another man walked in with one missing a bite. Presumably my meat and cheese. Eventually, I got the right one, and all was right with the world. Especially because it was a ridiculously delicious empanada.

One Bad Apple

2008-08-18T16:56:00.003-04:00

Just so no one gets the wrong impression of Chile, thanks to a certain bus ticket agent two stops back, let me tell you: she was an extreme exception to the rule here. Every other person I´ve met in over a week in Chile has gone out of their way to be helpful and hospitable. In San Pedro, I was having a hard time finding an available hostel. At one hostel that was over my nightly budget, the woman offered to call a friend of hers who also ran a hostel. The friend actually drove over to pick me up in his van. At that same hostel, the woman there told me to please, stay as long as I liked after I asked to stay an extra night. Then she thanked me when I left.

I arrived at my last stop, Caldera, at midnight. The taxi driver insisted on carrying my heavy bags. The owner of the hostel answered the door in his robe and slippers. He showed me around, despite the late hour, and in the morning, asked if I had slept well. I hadn´t, but it wasn´t his fault. It was more because I had spent 15 hours the previous day sitting on a bus. And the stupid rooster in the yard.

Today, in La Serena, I sat down to a long lunch this afternoon. The man at the table next to me struck up a conversation, and insisted on buying me a coffee. (I opted for hot chocolate.) He told me he likes to meet new people and practice his English, as he travels to the US frequently for business. When I told him where in the States I´m from, he responded with the old line, "Are all the girls in Pennsylvania as pretty as you?" This is a can´t win question. There´s no answer to that. Answering either yes or no gives the appearance of arrogance. Then he told me he was sure he had seen me before in that particular restaurant. I told him that was impossible, as I had never been to that restaurant before, let alone La Serena or even Chile, and he said maybe it was just in his dreams. Ugh. You have no idea how much willpower it took not to roll my eyes at that one.

Anyway, I digress. My point to this whole story is that Chileans are incredibly friendly. So much so that I´m convinced the bus lady comes from somewhere else.

Deserts and Geysers and Frostbite, oh my

2008-08-14T16:11:00.004-04:00

Current location: San Pedro de Atacama, a small town in the Atacame Desert, the world´s highest and driest. Wednesday morning, I rented a bike and rode out into the desert. In about 20 minutes, I arrived at some more Incan ruins. I swear one of these days I will be finished with Inca ruins, but apparently that time has not yet arrived.

After about an hour, I hopped back on my bike. It wasn´t an easy ride; it was every so slightly uphill (only noticeable if you´re on a bike), at a high altitude, went through deep sand that was hard to peddle through, and despite being in a desert, crossed a few streams that I hesitantly navigated. It was also very bumpy. I stood up a lot to avoid a bruised bum, but to no avail. I´m very sore.
But the scenery was amazing. I stopped to take pictures, but limited myself because I knew they would all look the same in the end. The ride back was much easier, downhill, and this time I didn´t hesitate, I sped through the streams, spraying water all over myself.

In the afternoon and evening, I went on a sunset tour of the Moon Valley. We had a few stops first, including a viewpoint of Dead Valley (I don´t know if it´s supposed to be Death Valley, but all the guides translate it as Dead Valley, so I´m just going with it), which inspired an "oh, wow" moment upon first glimpse. The sunset was pretty great, turning the mountains red and purple.

I didn´t sleep really at all last night, mostly because I knew I had to be up at 3:30am for a 4am pick-up time for a tour. Plus, for awhile I seemed to be the only person staying at my hostel. I hate that. It makes you wonder what´s wrong with the place. There´s nothing wrong with the place, and the night before, it was practically full. I had 4 roommates, all Australian, one of which was a champion snorer. I heard my neighbors come home a bit later, so I didn´t feel so lonely.

Like I said, I had a 4am pick-up time to tour a geyser park. My hostel is outside of town, so I knew I would either be the first or last picked up. The power was out again (the whole town was without power the first 24 hours I was here. Then it came back, went out again, came back... You get the idea.) so I sat in the dark front room, reading with the aid of my trusty headlamp. Headlamp= best investment I´ve made on this trip. At 4:35, I was beginning to think they had forgotten about me, when the bus finally pulled up. I was the last one on.

The geysers are at 4220 m above sea level. We climbed and climbed on a horrible dirt road. If dozens and dozens of tour buses are climbing this road everyday, don´t you think it would be a good idea to pave it? Just a thought. On the way back, I noticed we weren´t even driving on a road most of the time. Just your basic tour bus off-roading, I guess. The guide had warned everyone about the altitude and even had oxygen on hand. Not for me, of course. I´ve lived in Cusco, climbed the Inca Trail, visited Lake Titicaca. I´m an altitude champ.

However, the cold knocked me flat. I knew it would be cold up there. -10C, in fact. I wore my thermals, along with every other piece of warm clothing I have. But the cold cut right through my thermals. If I´m completely honest, I was too cold to enjoy it. My toes were so cold they hurt, and my sole thoughts were concerned with when I could get back on the bus. I was, however, actually looking forward to a swim in the thermal pool. Even though I was freezing, and the last thing I wanted to do was put on a bathing suit and get wet, I just remembered back to the Blue Lagoon in Iceland, and how cool that was. You could even get into the Lagoon via the changing room, so you didn´t even have to run in order not to freeze. I wasn´t really expecting anything that fancy, but I was at least expecting a changing room, and there definitely wasn´t one. I didn´t feel much like changing into a bathing suit in front of all kinds of people, but I did want to warm my toes up. I took off my boots, socks, warm alpaca wool leg warmers, rolled up my pants and long underwear, and stuck my toes in the warm water. It was just what they needed.

When it was time to go back to the bus, I dried my feet off and reapplied all those layers. When I stood up, I was face-to-face with a bare bottom. Since the bare bottom was in my direct path back (and there was no other way around) I decided to wait for the bare bottom to dress. I can´t imagine a more awkward situation than saying "excuse me" to a bare bottom. Can you?

Oh, Bother

2008-08-14T15:25:00.004-04:00

I was just about ready to rave abut how much nicer Chilean buses are than their Peruvian counterparts when I got a slap in the face today.

First of all, Chilean buses are much nicer than their Peruvian counterparts. The amount of leg room is unbelievable. They actually have heat. And provide pillows and blankets! It´s the simple things in life that make all the difference. On top of that, they give you food! On an all-nighter to San Pedro, they handed us a small boxed breakfast with juice. They´re also super concerned about safety, almost to a fault. At 3am on this particular all-nighter, we were made to get off the bus (and I was actually sleeping!) with our bags, so they could inspect them. They did a top notch job too.

Bag inspector (peering into my bag) : ¿Sola ropa?
Me: Si.

And I got back on the bus. Of course, then I couldn´t fall asleep again, and it didn´t help that the man next to me began snoring like a lawn mower. So I accidentally-on-purpose elbowed him while removing my scarf, which stopped it, but only temporarily.

Yesterday, I went to the bus station to buy a ticket to my next destination, Caldera, 12 hours away. Everything seemed to work out perfectly. I bought a ticket for Caldera, leaving San Pedro at 7:30 pm Thursday night, arriving Friday morning. Then this morning, I just happened to glance at the ticket- and realized it was for Wednesday. Uh-oh. I really, really don´t have a spare $34 dollars to spend on a second ticket.

As soon as my geyser tour returned to town, I high-tailed it to the bus station. I explained my situation to a very nice man, who then explained it to the woman who actually sold me the ticket. She took the ticket, told me to wait, then disappeared. When she returned, she asked me where I wanted to go and when. It wasn´t possible to leave tonight, so I said tomorrow would be fine if that was the best I could do. She disappeared again. I assumed she would just change the ticket, but I was shocked when she came back and started yelling at me. At first, I thought it just seemed like she was yelling because Chileans talk even faster than other Spanish speakers I´ve encountered, but she was really letting me have it. I couldn´t understand a word of it, but the guy next to me was giving me the raised eyebrows "what did you do?" look. I tried to explain to her that I couldn´t understand, and could she please so down, but I was getting pretty upset. So she started mocking me. Seriously.

It was pretty clear that I couldn´t deal with her anymore, so I went to look for my helpful guy. He explained (very calmly and politely) that since the date was passed, they couldn´t change the ticket, and that he was very, very sorry. (And he was.) It was one of those days where you just think "I just want to go home," (the same thing could very well happen at home, but there is not the added stress of a language barrier) but it´s nothing a hot shower and some ice cream can´t cure. Unfortunately, a hot shower in South America is nearly impossible, but tomorrow´s another day. It also didn´t help that I had a sleepless night, had to get up at 3:30am, and spent the morning freezing my tail off.

So I asked for another bus station, and left. Only problem was, the only other bus company doesn´t actually leave from San Pedro. It only leaves from Calama, about an hour away, so I would have to buy a ticket there from company #1 anyway. I swallowed my pride and headed back to bus company #1. The place had emptied out, and who was the only one working? That´s right, the evil witch. I calmly asked for a ticket to Caldera for tomorrow. She asked very slowly, and at least three times, where I wanted to go and when. Seriously, what is this woman´s problem? What did I do to deserve this treatment? She asked me for my old ticket. She took it, picked up the phone, then disappeared again. When she returned, she explained that she called someone to ask about an exchange, and for me to wait. Huh. Either she saw how upset she was making me and had a pang of sympathy, or she saw the angry letter I was composing to Tur-Bus in my head (and I was). A minute later, she told me the bus leaves at 8:50 and gave me my seat assignment. So I think, I think, I will be spending 12 hours on a bus tomorrow on my way to Caldera. Fingers crossed!

Chile!

2008-08-11T09:13:00.003-04:00

Greetings from Chile! I arrived in Tacna, Peru at about 3am on Sunday morning. I was planning to take a train across the border, but by 4:30, the train station still wasn't open, so I opted for a combi- an official taxi with 4 other passengers. I had absolutely no problems getting out of Peru as they never asked for the paper I was so worried about, and no problems getting in.

From Arica, Chile, I took a 4.5 hour bus ride to Iquique, a sleepy beach resort town in the middle of winter, so it's pretty slow. However, I am staying in easily the best hostel I've been in. Iquique is the place to go paragliding, something about the perfect wind currents, so obviously, I didn't want to miss out on that. I was planning to wait until today, but after I got checked in, I asked the reception desk about it. She made a phone call, then told me I would be picked up, along with two other guests, in 5 minutes. What service.

I was not nervous at all for paragliding. It's actually quite relaxing, like hanging out high above the city. For a good half an hour, I was flying. The best part was right before landing, we flew right by the top windows of a high rise apartment building. Then we went in for a very soft landing on the beach.

While paragliding, I met Kelly and Tim, two friends traveling for a few months. Tim took off before Kelly and I did, and long after we landed, he still hadn't. We were getting a bit jealous at his extra long flight when one of the other pilots told us his pilot wasn't able to get the right current to fly over the city, so they had to land on a huge sand dune behind it. The van had gone to pick him up.

Afterwards, we walked through town, which has a ghost town feel to it. The wide main boulevard is full of beautiful old homes and storefronts from the town's heyday in the 19th century. Kelly commented that it looks like an abandoned Hollywood soundstage, and I agree with her. I'll have to go back and take some pictures today. It will be another overnight bus ride for me tonight!

A few things about Chile: 1. I can't understand their accents. All that work for nothing.
2. There are about 500 Chilean pesos in 1 US dollar. It's very unnerving to have a 10,000 peso note in your hand, and to use coins with triple digits.

Killing Time

2008-08-09T19:50:00.003-04:00

I have 2.5 hours before my bus leaves, so I´m sitting here in an internet cafe where they are playing-and I´m not kidding about this- The Best of Michael Bolton. I said I loved you but I lied...

I finished up with Arequipa today, and thus Peru. My first mission this morning was to find a highly recommended bookstore in order to exchange my last read with a new one. I had a big debate over whether or not I wanted to take Jeffrey Eugenides´ Middlesex (which I´ve been meaning to read for sometime, as I am a big fan of The Virgin Suicides) or Sophie Kinsella´s Shopaholic Takes Manhattan. In the end, the Shopaholic won out, for practical reasons: It was smaller and will fit into my bag much easier.

Afterwards, I toured another monastery, this a working one, with nuns sequestered behind the walls. Again, I had a solo tour. English is apparently a dying language. According to my guide, these nuns are quite the singers and bakers. People come to the worship services to hear them sing (from behind a curtain of course) and you can buy their baked goods at the shop.

Following the monastery, I hiked to an outer neighborhood of the city. In this particular neighborhood was a lovely, palm-tree lined Plaza, with a view of the city and the snow-covered mountains beyond. I still don´t get how it´s possible to have palm trees and snow in the same picture, but here in Arequipa, it´s possible. The plaza also had a church, which I very much wanted to go into, but was unable due to multiple weddings. One right after the other. I couldn´t crash either, on account of my traveling clothes, which sadly, can never double for wedding clothes. One of the brides had a very noticeable baby bump. Scandal!

Following a tour of a colonial mansion, I had finished my sightseeing for the day by mid-afternoon. With several hours before my departure, I decided to take in a movie (aren´t cinemas awesome?! And in Peru, seeing a new movie at the cinema only costs $3!) The only movie that wasn´t dubbed in Spanish- and don´t get me started on how much I despise dubbed movies/TV- was Sex and the City. (I will find Mamma Mia somewhere!) I was able to see a low-quality bootlegged version in Cusco, and I was a bit disappointed. There was too much squealing, the clothes were hideous (that was a bird in her hair!), and it was just too long. But on a second viewing, it seemed better. But this could also be because I missed the first 20 minutes, so it didn´t seem so long.

So now I think I´ll just take an evening walk around the Plaza and enjoy my last hours in Peru. See you in Chile!

Peru: In Retrospect

2008-08-09T19:18:00.004-04:00

With the exception of 2.5 days spent in Bolivia in May, I´ve spent the last 6+ months in Peru. Tomorrow, if all goes according to plan, I will cross the border into Chile. (I say according to plan, because the last time I left, I needed to sign a paper stating that I was not leaving Peru in order to escape any major debts. No matter how hard I´ve tried, and how many times I´ve googled it, I cannot find this bit of paperwork anywhere, although my former boss at Maximo swears it´s online. E-mails to said former boss were unanswered. However, last time I crossed at a dead-end border crossing. This time, I´ll be getting on a train in an actual town. Therefore, if I do need this bit of paperwork, they can just tell me where to find it, and I will hopefully be able to run to an internet cafe and do just that. Or, if worst comes to worst, these guys can usually be bought off.)

I think my posting the last few weeks has been about down on Peru. I don´t think this accurately reflects my feelings about this country. Yes, it was frustrating at times, and even more so as I approached the end of my six months, as sheer exhaustion set in. However, I wouldn´t trade my time here for anything. I often asked myself why I didn´t choose somewhere warmer, like Venezuala, or somewhere a bit more modern, like Buenos Aires. Living in the tropics would have been a bit too luxurious, and Buenos Aires a bit too much like home. I wanted a truly South American experience, and boy did I get it.

Whenever somebody got sick, or we were involved in something that never would have passed safety regulations at home (like being crammed into a combi- basically a van- with 35 other people), we just pulled out the phrase, "Ah, Peru." Like our version of "Manny being Manny," that´s how we made excuses for Peru. Ashley, Maribeth, and I have decided when we have our little reunion on the Great Wall of China, we will laugh so hard at what we did or witnessed in Peru that was considered normal. Like all the random livestock being led on a leash around a major city. Or the fact that I lived with a rat for 2 months. Or the fact that Maribeth showered in freezing cold water for 2 months, or that Ashley and I kept electrocuting ourselves when we would use our respective showers. That I was written an absolutely ridiculous love letter from a student who never spoke to me, but instead used Ashley as the monkey-in-the-middle. (He recently wrote me to thank me for the "inspiration." I don´t think I want to know. His best friend, in the meantime, is infatuated with Ashley.) Or the time Maribeth and I were walking down Gringo Alley to meet Ashley for dinner, and a guy trying to get us to eat at his restaurant, while telling us all our dinner choices, whispered conspiratorially "with a free massage" to go along with those dinner specials. It´s all so charming.

When I got here, six months sounded like forever. I didn´t realize six months could go by so quickly. You know what they say, time flies when you´re having so much fun. And so Peru, I bid you adios. Hasta luego.

The White City

2008-08-08T20:38:00.005-04:00

From Nasca, I took the night bus to Arequipa. I decided to be thrifty, and take the economic bus. Note to self: Spring for the luxury bus on overnight trips. The bus was cramped, dirty, and it smelled bad (although I am not one to point fingers, as I pointed out in a previous post about my hygiene going down hill) and there was no bathroom. And the bus ride was 10 hours. Luckily, no disasters occured.

I arrived in Arequipa about 7 this morning. Arequipa is beautiful. I went from the desert, back to the mountains. Arequipa is surrounded by snow-covered mountains, and behind the Plaza de Armas sits El Misti, a snow-covered cone-shaped volcano. Very cool.

First stop was the museum to visit Juanita, the ice princess. Juanita is a perfectly preserved, frozen 12-14 year old Incan girl, who was given as a sacrifice to the gods so that the volcano wouldn´t erupt and kill them all. She was found near the top of the volcano, frozen, but in tact. Despite being several hundred years old, she still has skin, hair, and fingernails. (I have certainly gotten my share of dead bodies in the last two days, eh?) Naturally, pictures of Juanita are strictly verboten. So much so that I couldn´t even find a postcard. Highly unusual. But the tour (which consisted of me, as I was the only English-speaking person around this morning) was very interesting. Juanita is just so... creepy. She actually has ice all around her mid-section, which is how she was found. Also very sorry for the poor girl. That sacrifice didn´t stop the volcano from erupting, or earthquakes from happening. There was one here just a few weeks ago.

After Juanita, I went to the Monasterio Santa Catalina (also one of the 1,000 places to see before you die). It´s huge, a city within the city. Colorful walls, lots of flowers, lots of courtyards. Photographers were going crazy, there was even a model shoot going on. I spent the better part of 2 hours wandering around the maze. Definitely worth the admission fee, that´s for sure. While I was in the monastery, I started talking to a couple of Canadian medical students on their summer vacation. We chatted for awhile, then decided to grab lunch on the Plaza de Armas (even prettier than Cusco´s plaza, I have to admit) followed by ice cream afterwards, before they caught their bus to Puno.

Tomorrow, I will be finishing up with Arequipa, and with it, Peru. Tomorrow night I will take the night bus to Tacna, which is the end of the line for Peru. From there, I´ll cross into Chile. So long, Peru. It´s been a trip!

Boredom in the desert

2008-08-08T20:12:00.003-04:00

Whenever you travel, you´re bound to have your share of frustrating days, or even places that frustrate you. Nasca was one such place. I arrived in Nasca around noon on Wednesday. Everything got off to a great start, considering the hostal I wanted to stay in had free transportation from the bus station. I got there and checked in with no problem. Then I was faced with the question of what to do.

Nasca is famous for the Nasca Lines. That´s it. There is nothing to do within the city. It´s more of a town, really, and it consists of hotels, restaurants, and travel agencies. Everything else is out of town. I wanted to find a tour that went to a pre-Incan cemetery just out of town, but no one could tell me if they had a tour or not. They kept saying they might have a tour, but it all depended on whether or not other people wanted to go. I gave up for the day and decided to try that again on Thursday.

The way to see the Lines is by flying over them. I opted not to do this, for a few reasons. The first and biggest reason is that it is expensive, and I am currently unemployed. I´ve also heard very mixed reviews. Some people think they´re amazing, while others are unimpressed. I´ve never been too terribly fascinated with them. If I was able to parachute out of the plane afterwards, then I would have been all over it. Instead, I took a bus 20 minutes out of town and paid 1 sole (about 30 cents) to climb a tower. From there, I could see a few of the formations, most notably the hands and the tree. I snapped a few pictures, I climbed back down. After about a 15 minute wait, I flagged down a bus headed for Nasca, and went back into town. At least now I can say I´ve seen them (they are, after all, on the list of 1,000 places to see before you die). I spent the rest of the afternoon in the museum, which gave information on the pre-Incan culture that built the lines. The highlight was the to scale model of the Lines, which you could view from above on a platform. I feel satisfied.

The next morning, I finally found a tour company that was definitely leading a tour out to the cemetery, which is a good 40-minutes outside of town. The cemetery was full of old, dead, decomposed bodies and bones. The bodies were buried seated in a fetal position (because they believed in the after-life, so they were ready to be born again) and was certainly unlike anything I´ve ever seen. The skeletons were so well-preserved, I assumed they were fakes, but our guide assured us they were all original, and had not been touched. He seemed insulted we had even asked.

When we returned to Nasca, it was only 1:00, and my overnight bus to Arequipa didn´t leave until 7pm. I spent the afternoon at the Nasca Lines Hotel pool (I paid to get in, but with the admission fee came a nice lunch, delivered to me poolside. I´m not used to such service.) and chatting with Ava, from Denmark, who was staying at the same hostal.

In hindsight, I would have come into Nasca, stashed my stuff at the bus station, went out to the tower or the cemetery, then caught a bus that evening to Arequipa. No need to stay a night, but alas, that is traveling. Mistakes will be made. Moving on...

Sand, sand, everywhere

2008-08-05T20:35:00.002-04:00

I spent a day yesterday in my urban paradise (I went to the movies! At a movie theater! Saw Batman. v. creepy.), and took off this morning for the desert. By early afternoon, I had arrived in Huacachina, a small oasis in the desert.

It´s exactly what you expect an oasis to look like: Nothing but sand dunes for miles and miles, and then there, out of nowhere, is a lagoon, surrounded by palm trees. The weather is perfect. I was worried for awhile that the misty fog of Lima would follow me all the way out here, but about 20 minutes down the road, we hit blue sky and sunshine. The highlight of Huacachina: dune buggys and sandboarding.

Late this afternoon, I boarded a dune buggy with 7 other people. We were strapped in as if we were in a car seat, and for good reason. The driver drove fast. Really fast. It was like a roller coaster on sand. It was awesome. I was quite annoyed with the girl in the back who kept screaming for the driver to stop and to slow down. I wanted to ask her why she bothered to come. Seriously, she didn´t do much sand boarding either, so I´m not sure what she was doing there.

Anyway, sand boarding is the same concept as snow boarding, only on huge sand dunes. Now, I have never been snow boarding before, but I´m sure if I really wanted to I could be good at it. I was not very good at sand boarding. You know when you go to the beach, how you get sand in various places? Imagine that, only five times as much sand in three times as many places. I´m pretty sure I had half the desert in/on me. I ate sand. I dumped more sand out of my boots than I thought possible. I have sand in my ears, behind my ears, on every inch of skin, in my pants, in my underwear... you get the picture. I spent more time riding down on my bum than I did standing up (and I wasn´t the only one). It was actually when I seemed to be doing the best and had been on my feet for quite awhile that I wiped out the hardest. I have a bit of a welt on the back of my calf where I whacked myself with my board. I´m fine, though, thanks for asking. The last hill was way too steep for my better judgement. Sandboarding is softer than snowboarding, but this would be testing it. I didn´t really want to cut my travels short with a broken apendage, so I rode the board like a sled, but even that built up some scary speeds, so I slowed myself down with my foot, causing sand to go flying into my face. This may not sound like a fun time, but I promise it was.

We rode back to the hostal in the sunset light. There was not a single part of me that was not covered in sand, including my face, which was a sight. Unfortunately, my luxury hostal does not have hot water. I´m pretty sure I´ll be discovering sand in various places for weeks to come. Totally worth it.

Moving On

2008-08-03T21:16:00.004-04:00

I had to say good-bye to Cusco yesterday. It was a bit bittersweet, since I had such a wonderful experience and lots of happy memories, but I´m excited to move on. I´ve been playing guide and translator for the family since their arrival. While I´ve been frustrated by how seemingly slow the Spanish learning seems to be, now I know I´ve improved. I can function with very few problems. On Friday, I visited two new places with the family. Tipon, more Incan ruins, and Piquallacta, a pre-Incan city.

On Saturday, we flew to Lima. As soon as I arrived in Lima, I felt like I had re-entered civilization. Cusco is beautiful, and definitely a city, with a population of 400,00, but it´s very isolated. While there are neighborhoods in Lima I wouldn´t want to walk through by myself in broad daylight, the Miraflores neighborhood (where I currently sit) is like being in a candy store after 6 months of obeying a sugar free diet. The ocean! Pizza Hut! Department Stores! A movie theater! Burger King! Starbucks! I know, I know, I don´t eat fast food when I´m at home, and I´ve never spent a dime in Starbucks (making me a member of a very exclusive club, I´m sure) but just seeing their familiar trademarked faces is comforting. And I know I´m only appreciating it because I´ve spent 6 months in the last McDonald´s-free wilderness.

The rest of Lima isn´t as bad as I previously wrote. During a tour of the city, we visited the San Francisco Monastery, complete with a crypt full of thousands and thousands of human bones and skulls. Creepy. I could never live here, however. The city is currently blanketed under a coastal fog, which is apparently the weather situation from April through December. That´s 9 whole months of gloominess. No thanks.

The family leaves in a few hours (airport pickup time is 3am, lucky them), but I think I´ll stick around in my ultra-urban environment for one more day before moving on. I might even see a movie. How exciting is that?!

Book Review: Everything I Needed to Know About Being a Girl, I Learned from Judy Blume

2008-08-02T19:41:00.003-04:00

In case you´re wondering, no, I didn´t write this book, but yes, I could have. Like so many others, I grew up on Judy Blume, and this book is a collection of essays from other writers who had the same experience. Not surprisingly, most of the essays were about the most controversial books, Deenie, Forever..., and Are you There God? It´s me, Margaret. (very little was mentioned of my personal favorite, Tiger Eyes. It´s a good thing that so few people were able to closely relate to a main character whose father was murdered in a hold-up in his own convenience store.)

During one essay about the BFF book Just as Long as We´re Together, one author writes about how she was essentially "dumped" by her best friend by not being invited to the wedding. She found out about the blessed event after the fact by a mutual friend. OMG!, I thought to myself as I read it, I know exactly how that feels! I found myself nodding along with the authors as they wrote about how their own experiences mirrored those of Blume´s characters, and how they went from Superfudge (I always loved that Peter and Fudge had a dog named Turtle) to Sally J. Freeman to hiding their copies of Forever... in their desks (can´t really relate to that, if I´m totally honest, I didn´t read Forever... until recently.) and finally to her adult fare, Smart Women, Wifey, and the best of the bunch, Summer Sisters. I remember reading Summer Sisters for the first time when I was 17, and spending Christmas with the family in Arizona (that´s when you know you´ve read something really great. You remember exactly where you were and what you were doing when you read it.) and I remember thinking, this is the same woman who wrote The One in the Middle is the Green Kangaroo?! But despite the intial shock, Summer Sisters is one of the books I´ve read again and again. We all have that friend that we allow to come in and out of our lives, or that friendship that doesn´t really seem to make sense.

If you never read Judy Blume as a kid (and why on earth not?) I wouldn´t bother with this one, you won´t get the references. But if you grew up with Deenie and Margaret and Sally J., you won´t want to miss it.

Funny Sentences: The Finale

2008-08-02T19:36:00.003-04:00

Greetings from Lima! Since I am officially done teaching, this will be the final edition of funny sentences. At least from my students, anyway. I read one of these outloud to my friend Maribeth, who told me that I always have the funniest sentences. That´s because I´m such an awesome teacher.

Remember, the password is your bird day. (Obviously a fan of The Office.)
I will be happy if I hear "I love you" from teacher. (Huh. So that´s why he´s always winking at me.)
My happy is in April.
Can I have some conversation about your future?
I´m deadly now, but I think in about 10 years, I will be married.
The car was repairing the mechanic.
I would like to inherit my father´s green eyes.
I have a beautiful catapult in my home.

What's that smell? Oh, it's me...

2008-07-30T14:42:00.003-04:00

My 7 months in South America have marked an all-time low for personal hygiene. Because of the shower situation, I would rather stink. Yes, I remember a time when bathing was a pleasant, relaxing experience. When it was over, I felt warm and clean and refreshed. Now, when I emerge from the shower, I'm frustrated, freezing, and slightly singed. Let me explain how the showers work.

There are no such thing as hot and cold water taps. You get hot water by turning on an electric heater that is attached to a shower head. Because handling electricity while you're in the shower is brilliant. In order to have hot water, you have to keep the water pressure low, so the water has time to heat up before it hits you. Therefore, it's impossible to have both good water pressure and hot water at the same time.

This in itself isn't too horrible, but my current shower makes my previous shower look like a luxury bath. I turn the water on, then my electricity and wait for the water to get hot. By the time I step into the shower, it's usually so hot it's scalding. I try to adjust the water pressure, but when I touch the metal knob, it gives me an electrical shock. I grab a towel to turn the knob, which works until the towel gets wet. I turn the water pressure up. Within a few seconds, the water's too cold. I grab the towel to try to adjust it again. Occasionally, I can get it just right. However, the whole thing is wacky, and the water pressure, and thus the temperature, will fluxuate without me touching anything. Half the time, I just give up and get out before I'm finished.

One of the first things I noticed about the hotel room where the rest of my family is staying is the shower. It actually has a hot and cold tap. No electricity necessary. When they return from Machu Picchu tonight, I plan on heading over there for a nice, long, stress-free shower. I hope. (Now if only I were able to flush toilet paper down the toilet, I'd be living the life.)

No One Wants to Spend the Night in Lima, part 2

2008-07-29T10:36:00.006-04:00

I've been waiting for quite some time to have visitors, and while that wait was made a bit longer due to airline screw-ups, it's finally over.

My parents and sister were suppose to arrive in Cusco around 7:30am on Saturday morning. They didn't get here until 2pm Sunday afternoon. Turns out, a certain American Airlines changed their flight schedule, and made it impossible to make their connection in Lima. Doesn't seem like it would be too much of a problem, considering there is a flight from Lima to Cusco every half hour, right? Not so much. It's a holiday weekend in July, and everyone and their mother, brother, sister, great-uncle, and fifth cousin twice removed is apparently coming to Cusco. Mom and Dad were schedule on a sure-thing for Sunday afternoon, but it was looking like Holli wasn't going to make it until Monday. After a lot of determination, (arriving at the airline office at 3:30am to get in line) begging, and a very nice ticket agent named Sissy(hmm, appropriate I guess, considering that's what Holli used to call me), Holli arrived in Cusco about an hour after the parentals. Ah, the joys of traveling.

This *slight* delay in arrival seriously screwed up my to-do plans. Salsa class? Out the window. Moray and Salinas? Maybe next time. Luckily, thanks to some heavy duty altitude sickness medication, we were able to set out and see some sights right away. Walking...very...slowly... of course. Now we know that 12,000 ft is something that can actually slow my mom down.

While I'm happy to have them here, I think they better make some sort of sacrifice to the travel gods, as their trip seems to be karmicly doomed. Besides having to spend the night in Lima (and if anyone ever decides to publish my travel adventures, the name of the book will be No one Wants to Spend the Night in Lima. Consider that trademarked, or copyrighted, or whatever.), we realized that their travel itinerary had also been changed without warning. So now they're in Machu Picchu today, while I am spending a perfectly good day off at home, and their tour of the Sacred Valley (which I am supposed to be joining them on) is on Thursday, when I have to work. And yesterday, on our city tour, it rained. It hasn't rained in Cusco for 3 months. The rain left the weather chilly and damp, the coldest day I can remember.

Despite the bad luck, we're having a good time. I took them to San Pedro, where there were multiple pig's heads waiting for them, and the woman behind them was using a huge cleaver, ala Lizzie Bordon. I introduced them to alpaca burgers, which they all agreed tasted like really good hamburgers, and cooked them dinner in my little apartment. (The theme of the evening seemed to be, Wow, can you believe Kelli cooked vegetables?)

We still plan on spending the night in Lima this weekend, but hopefully Lima will be better to all of us this time around.

An Open Letter to Peru

2008-07-26T17:05:00.004-04:00

Dear Peru,

We've been together for 6 months now, and while I still have a few weeks to go before I make my way into Chile (I know, I know, you hate Chile. Get over it.), I wanted to say a proper goodbye, via an open letter on a little-read blog.

In 6 months, we've had some good times and bad. Conquering the Inca Trail, finally laying eyes on Machu Picchu, exploring the Amazon, setting foot on floating islands of the world's highest lake, as well as being pick pocketed, almost being eaten by savage dogs more than once, then stepping in their fresh poo. Ah, Peru.

In 6 months, I've seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. And boy has there been some ugly. The public urination/deification for one. I've seen more adults relieve themselves more often than any one should have to. When I explained to my students that public urination/deification is actually illegal, they asked why? Why? Why? Because it's disgusting. Because it's unhygienic. Because it's unsanitary. You know that aromatic scent that makes you scrunch up your nose when the winds picks up? Yeah, that's the smell. Piss Alley got it's name for a reason. To the men: those kissing noises you make when a woman walks by? (you know who you are) are not okay. And don't tell me it's a cultural machismo thing, because the Peruvian women don't like it either. Just stop.

You are a land of contradictions. Of majestic remains from a powerful empire and extreme poverty. You beg for business, never relenting until we agree to buy something, then you never have the change to give back. You want business, but don't know what to do with it. You seem to work so hard, never taking a day off, yet there's a laziness beneath that just won't quite finish the job. If I needed a metaphor, I'd say you're like a dog. Warm and friendly, but then you lift up your leg and pee on my shoe. Actually, that's not quite accurate. You're like a dog that sits on my shoe and poops on it. A runny, diuretic kind of poop, because that's what happens when you drink the water here. Or eat at the wrong restaurant. Or eat a bad piece of fruit. Or a number of other things that I don't care to recall. Case in point: My family, who I was so excited to see this morning, is still in Lima, and will be spending the night there. Granted, this is really more the fault of an anonymous American corporation (that rhymes with merican dairlines), but these things just seem to happen here.

And while I've had some interesting trips to the bathroom, I'm still not giving up on you. I don't seem to care anymore if the girls at the orphanage kiss me with their snotty-nosed faces. Or, such as happened last week, if they sneeze directly on my hands and I have to wash someone else's sneeze off my hands. I've met more strangers here than I ever would at home, who greet me with a simple buenos tardes, senorita, while waiting to cross the street or sitting on a bench. As long as it's not accompanied by a 'wow', or a me gusta, or a crude kissing noise, I'm happy to practice my Spanish with them. Almost daily, I look around at the colonial buildings and the Andes rising up behind them, and I think to myself "I can't believe I live here."

I'd tell you never to change, Peru, but I don't think I need to. Viva El Peru.

Mission: Accomplished

2008-07-25T13:24:00.004-04:00

Today is my last day teaching. Granted, I have to give exams and quizzes on Wednesday and Thursday, but since Monday and Tuesday are holidays to celebrate Peru's independence, I'm essentially done at 9pm tonight. And boy does it feel good.

During my first week, I was pretty sure I wasn't going to make it. I was pretty sure I was terrible (and I think I really was). I really didn't have a clue what I was doing, but somewhere along the line I figured out how to teach English and have fun at the same time. And, I'm pretty good at it. I can do so many things now that I couldn't do then. I can teach all 12 tenses, explain countable and uncountable nouns, I know the difference between "to say" and "to tell," the 11 different meanings of "to get" (had a dream about that once, it was kind of frightening), and everything else in between. In the 9th grade, I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to diagram a sentence (or figure out why we were made to diagram sentences, as it seems a pointless skill). Now, I know I would rock that 9th grade grammar test. Hey, the best way to learn something really is to teach it. Of course, this comes with a down side. I analyze grammar a bit too much now. I apologize in advance for correcting your grammar in my head. I will do my best to keep it in my head.

On a day-to-day basis, I didn't feel like I was accomplishing anything. I know that 75% of everything I've ever said has sounded like gibberish to most of my students, but I also know that I've actually taught them something. Take Alberto, my longest tenured student, for example. He's been in my class for 5 months (actually switched times so he could remain in my class). In those 5 months, he's improved by leaps and bounds. In the long run, that makes up for all the comma splices, the lack of subject-verb agreement, mis-pronunciation of past tense verbs, and everything else that makes me feel like pounding my head against the white board. That makes me happy.

Listen In

2008-07-23T18:08:00.002-04:00

Overheard in my basic class:

*******
Me: When is your birthday?
Student: Windows?
Me: No, when is your birthday?
Student: Oh! Fine, teacher.

********

During a game of Simon Says:
Student: Touch your right ass.
(Everyone looks confused)
Student: Touch your right ass
Me: (Pointing to mine) Ass?
Student: NOOOOOO! (Points to his right eye. We obviously have some pronunciation issues.)

*********

Me: What do you eat when you're sick?
Student: The kitchen.
Another student: No, chicken soup.

Have I snapped?

2008-07-21T15:33:00.003-04:00

Today, I made my advanced class write "I will indent every paragraph" ten times. Have I snapped? Not sure, but I do know that every day I tell them to indent, and every day they don't. I threatened them that if they don't indent tomorrow, they'll write 15 sentences, and so on and so on. Is it really so hard?

I am continually baffled by how minds work. This morning, while introducing a reading on the Titanic, I asked the class to tell me what they knew about the Titanic. One student asked, "the headache?" Huh? What on earth does a headache have to do with a giant ship sinking nearly 100 years ago? The ship wasn't named The Migraine. I'm stumped.

i write good

2008-07-17T18:26:00.003-04:00

How do you teach a second language to people who don't really know their first language? This is what I've been struggling with for 6 months, and it's really starting to make me want to pull my hair out. I'm teaching probably the most educated population of Cusco. Therefore, I've come up with two words to describe the Peruvian education system: pretty crappy. (By the way, you should try explaining to a an ESL learner that "pretty" is used as emphasis and that the term "pretty ugly" makes perfect sense in English. That's a treat.)

My advanced class focuses on writing. The problem is, they can't write in Spanish, so they really don't have a prayer in English. To give you an idea of what I have to correct every week, I'm going to write the rest of this blog in the style of my students. They don't like to use punctuation which makes it very hard to read and where on earth am i supposed to know where to take a break when i'm reading it's all one long run on sentence and if there's anything i hate its a run on sentence have you every noticed how hard they are to read? really hard let me tell you and no matter how many times i tell this guy in my advanced class not to write with words like "gonna" and "wanna" he still insists and also insists on replacing the word "the" with "da" and "and" with "'n" and i finally had to tell him that i wouldn't correct his writing anymore if he was going to write like that and that he wouldn't pass his exam and he couldn't understand what the problem was and gave me some crap about saving time but it doesn't take you anymore time to write "the" than it does to write "da." He also wore a Mets jacket to class today so that certainly didn't endear him anymore to me. And how many times do i have to tell them to indent? Indent, indent, INDENT, it's not that hard, and if you're wondering why I don't indent on my blog posts it's because blogger doesn't allow the use of the tab button, which I find really annoying and I certainly don't want to have uneven margains and maybe we should all petition blogger to change this if for no other reason than to better the writing skills of Peruvians and so that I'm not such a hypocrite.

Whew. I can't write like that anymore, it's exhausting. And exhausting to read. My red pen is quickly running out of ink. (And I didn't even get started on the subject/verb agreement problems, but those will never go away.)

In other teaching news, my basic class is setting a record for stupidity every day. When I tell them no, they repeat the same answer, sometimes 3 or 4 times in a row. I guess they subscribe to the theory that if at first you don't succeed, try, try again. A lot of the problems I have with teaching them isn't always the English though. The other day, they asked what "sing" meant. So, like any good ESL teacher, I didn't tell, I did, and I sang for them. One of the students said "bailar?" For those of you who don't know Spanish, "bailar" means "to dance." Now, I may not be Celine Dion, but bad singing does not equal dancing. I wasn't moving. Plus, I had already demonstrated what dancing was. This isn't a problem with English, this is a problem with her head. I was relieved when the other students started laughing. At least it got through to somebody. Oh, vacation. How I need you.

Christmas in July

2008-07-16T13:08:00.003-04:00

I didn't know it was possible for me to survive until the All-Star break without seeing a single inning of baseball, but that's exactly what happened. I couldn't stand it anymore. Plus, it was the All-Star game. All the best players in one game. It's like Christmas in July. I went to the Real McCoy, everyone's favorite gringo hangout, to ask if they could show the game in the evening. The owner told me he would be happy to show it if it was on, and he even checked the cable menu to make sure it would be on. I had a hard time getting through my last three classes, I was so giddy with excitment. As soon as my last class ended at 9pm, I dragged Ashley with me to see the game.

We arrived in the 6th inning. It was heaven. Just in time to see Chipper strike out in his last at-bat. I saw 6 whole innings. If you can do the math, then you've probably figured out I didn't make it to see the end in the 15th. It was after 11:30, and the fact that I had to teach the passive voice at 7am was looming large. We took off after the 12th. When I read the game ended on a sacrifice fly in the 15th, I was glad I didn't stay. What an anticlimatic way to end it.

Using the All-Star game to determine home field advantage is stupid. Home field advantage in baseball is too important to be determined by what is meant to be a fun exhibition. The team with the best record should have home field advantage. Bud Selig says this isn't possible, but if the teams involved aren't determined until a few days in advance anyway, what's the problem?
Dan Uggla didn't exactly prove himself worthy to be there. 3 errors! 2 of which loaded up the bases with no one out. Kudos to Aaron Cook for getting out of that jam.
I thought for sure the game was over in the 11th when Michael Young singled with a runner on second. Nate McClouth's throw home to nail Dioner Navarro was a thing of beauty. Probably the best moment in Pirates history since 1992.
I didn't get to see Brian McCann get into the game, although he attempted to apply the tag to the winning run. I know he was the third catcher, but he shouldn't have been. He should have been the starter.

Fancy seeing you here

2008-07-13T19:23:00.004-04:00

It really is a small world after all. For the last two weeks, my college roommate Heather has been in town. Heather and I lived together during our senior year at UD. We had a lot of good times together, which mainly included belly dancing and cooking Mexican themed dinners(not at the same time). From belly dancing in Delaware, to salsa dancing in Peru. Heather is a grad student at Johns Hopkins, and has a 10 month internship on the northern coast of Peru. Who knew we would both be living in Peru one day? She just happened to be visiting Cusco for two weeks before heading north.

We met up for lunch her first week here. It was so strange to see her here in Cusco. (She said the same thing to me, but hey, I was here first.) However, it was soooo nice to see a familiar face. It made me even more anxious to see the fam in two weeks. We got caught up, swapped stories and gossip, reminisced, and went salsa dancing Friday night, before she had to fly out on Saturday morning. Great to see you, Heather.

To market, To market

2008-07-11T12:42:00.004-04:00

One of my favorite things to do in Cusco (or at least it was before I hit the mother-lode of burn out effect and decided I couldn't be bothered to do such a thing) is to do my shopping at the central market. I hit up the Mega (Peru's version of Kroger, or Pathmark, or whatever your regional grocery store chain is) for things like cereal and milk, but for everything fresh, the only place to go is San Pedro Market. The place is huge, with aisles and aisles of vendors selling every kind of food you can possibly imagine. Well, every kind of food available in Peru. Peter Pan peanut butter remains elusive.

The produce is so much fresher there than at the grocery store, where it's clear that it's been sitting out for far too long. I spend a good bit of time in one of the fruit aisles, buying strawberries, kiwi, apples, bananas, and plantains to fry up. It's the only place I can buy peanuts and raisins that cost a bit less than an arm and a leg, so that I can make my own trail mix. Before hiking the Inca Trail, my regular nut lady wasn't working, so I switched nut ladies. The new nut lady can see me coming from a mile away. I buy fresh cheese and avocado and tomatoes for my cheese, avocado, and tomato sandwiches, fresh flowers for my apartment, and every kind of fruit juice you can imagine, made right there for you. (sin agua, of course, for us gringos.)

Beyond the fresh produce is a huge room of the Peruvian version of lunch counters. Old timers climb up onto rickety stools for their daily portions of soup, ceviche, or rice and potatoes.

As great as the market is for fruits and flowers, it is vitally important for those of us raised in a culture of refrigerated meat that we never EVER buy meat there. Why? Because it is sitting on a table, sans refrigeration, simply collecting flies. The meat ladies stand behind their counters, slicing up various dead animals, while occasionally swatting at insects swarming around their meat. If I'm lucky, there will be a nice big pig's head to greet me as I walk into the market. I'm not sure what one is supposed to do with an entire pig's head, and I'm not sure that I want to know.

100th Post!

2008-07-09T21:00:00.000-04:00

It's my 100th Post! 100 posts of fabulous blogosity. (Some more fabulous than others.) I feel like I should have some sort of retrospective clip post, like they do on tv shows when they're too lazy to write a new episode, or have some sort of top 10 blog moments. That might be overdoing it, no? The first person to comment on the 100th Post receives a major award! In fact, everyone who comments on this post may receive a major award, just as a thank you for sticking with it through 100 posts. Thanks to my tens of loyal readers out there.

Sixteen = 33 in Peru

2008-07-08T14:07:00.005-04:00

After teaching for a few months, I had gotten pretty comfortable with the curriculum and material, and assumed I would cruise through my final month in my pre-intermediate and intermediate level comfort zone. So I was pretty shocked and peeved when I got my schedule and saw that my favorite Intermediate II class had been dropped and in it's place was BASICO 1. I don't like Basico. I taught Basico my first two months, and it didn't go so well. (Remember Hitler?) They don't get my jokes. They seem to think I'm going to use Spanish to teach them. They either smile and nod when they clearly don't know what is happening, or they stare at me as if I'm from another planet. I don't know which one is worse, but they both make me want to bang my head off the wall.

Plus, you have to work really hard to teach Basico. I'm not up for that. I'm burned out. I can't be bothered to buy food, let alone eat it. I just ate crackers for lunch. I make my classes do stretches and jumping jacks before class. I started that to energize my 6pm class, who was among the living dead last week, then I realized it really helped me. So now if they don't answer my questions, they do jumping jacks until they do.

The first two days of class, I had three students. One was clearly not really a beginner. She could speak to me in full sentences. I love her. I rely on her. I hope she doesn't wise up and move up to another level. Another showed up 20 minutes late, didn't have a book, and wouldn't write anything down, even when the other two told him he had better. The third is right smack dab in the middle. A few new students showed up on Thursday. I taught them numbers. One woman saw the number sixteen and wrote 33. 17, maybe. 60, maybe. 33? Oh, help.

Yesterday, even more new students showed up. Missing a week of class is bad enough, but a week of basic? You're screwed. They all came up to me after class to tell me that they had missed the first week. No kidding. I pointed them to the tutor, but they wanted to keep talking. One girl informed me that she was mostly deaf, so she can't hear me when I talk in class. Oh goody. (I've had a blind student before who had to have everything read to him.) They were still talking to me 3 at a time when my jovenes started coming in the room, so I literally had to shoo them away, using shooing motions with my hands to get them to leave. (Although I can't wait until next week, when I teach them to sing Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes. I LOVE that!) Only 13 days left!

Happy Birthday, Dad!

2008-07-06T12:49:00.004-04:00

Today's my dad's birthday, so be sure to wish him a Happy Birthday. I won't tell you how old he is, but I'm sure it's equal to the number of hairs on his head. HA! What's a dad's birthday without a bald joke? Love you, dad. Have a good one.

Happy Birthday, America!

2008-07-05T23:42:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, while all of you were going to picnics and bbqs, parades, fireworks, and watching a tripleheader on ESPN, I was doing my usual routine of waking up at the butt crack of dawn and teaching 7 classes spread out over 14 hours, which would have been a much better day if my 8pm and final class had grasped the concept of the past perfect progressive tense a little better than they did. (It's really not that bad. I get TWO days off at the end of the month to celebrate Peruvian independence.)

The teachers of Maximo organized a North American Independence Day BBQ, since Canada Day was on Tuesday. (Our teaching staff is made up of half Americans, slightly less than half British, and two Canadians and an Australian for good measure.) For some reason, not many of the British teachers came. They didn't seem to like our jokes about throwing them down the well or tarring and feathering. You know, after 300 years, they still don't have a sense of humor about that.

Anyway, we (and by "we" I mean American Rob and the Australian) grilled up every kind of meat. It was like paradise. I ate a burger AND some pork. The plan was to have fireworks, but the only thing anyone could find was the firecrackers you light and throw, only the Peruvian versions have a wick so short you have to get rid of it awfully fast- which is why I let other people do the igniting. I like all my fingers, even if some of them can be described as "bulbous."

Happy 4th of July, everyone.

Travels with my Sister

2008-07-01T00:00:00.000-04:00

While I'm looking forward to my adventures in traveling South America, I am a bit saddened that I won't be joined by my sister Holli on this trip. My sister just happens to be my favorite travel partner, but this time around, she won't be able to join me. She's a grad student, so I'm sure you can figure out the reasons.

We've had a few backpacking adventures in the past, around the British Isles and Scandanavia, and every time people figure out we're sisters, they always say something along the lines of, "You're sisters? And you, like, get along?" Well, yeah, we do, but sometimes, we don't. When traveling with someone, you spend 24 hours a day with them for the duration of your trip. You're bound to argue. Arguing with a friend can be awkward and weird, because you're not used to it. Holli and I are well-practiced at the argument. We've been doing it for 23 years. And when it's over, we don't feel the need to discuss it or try to figure out if we should continue the relationship, because we're sisters. We're still going to be sisters at the end of the trip, until the end of time, really, so we may as well just get over it and move on. I mean, if you're going to be stuck being someone's sister, you may as well have fun. No one else can make fun of your parents. (Only because we love you, of course.)

So who am I going to take embarassing photos of on this trip? I certainly don't want to take goofy pictures of myself. And if I feel like a good laugh, I won't be able to say, "Hey, do you remember the time mom played the finger cymbals?" or simply "Sandy!" to the person next to me. They won't understand why that's so funny. Or if my money belt is officially wet, I can't tell anyone, for fear they'll think I'm a freak. Holli already thinks I'm a freak, and neither of us really care. Surely my artistic renditions of each stop along the way won't be nearly as good.

So I'll start off on my own, meeting new people along the way, I'm sure. I'll meet up with Maribeth in September, then Ashley in October, but it just won't be the same. So, Holli, where are we going next?

30 days and counting

2008-06-30T11:50:00.000-04:00

5 months down, 1 month to go. On August 2, I'm flying to Lima with my parents and sister, who will have been visiting me that last week that I'm here. And then what? They'll fly back to the States, and I'll head south to Chile, then Argentina, then everywhere else I feel like going until I decide it's time to go home. Or I run out of money. One or both will happen before Christmas, so I'll be home by then.

Then comes the hard part: starting all over again. Luckily, after years of searching for the right job to support me through my impending spinsterhood, I've found it. (I make single look good. I plan on continuing that.) Teaching English is just down right fun. (Have you read my funny sentences?) I make an idiot out of myself on a daily basis, and yes, I do occasionally feel the need to bang my head off the wall, but the payoffs are awesome. If anyone knows of any teaching ESL jobs available in the Atlanta area, please let me know!

Book Review: Lonesome Dove

2008-06-27T17:50:00.003-04:00

There's this feeling you get when you finish a really, really good book. You haven't been able to put it down, but you don't want it to end. And when you do finish it, you feel that emptiness, like something wonderful has just ended. That's exactly what I felt like today at approximately 2:30pm.

I picked up Lonesome Dove for the first time about a year ago, at the urging of my good friend Mark, who had been trying to get me to read it for some time. It's a massive book, and I just wasn't in the mood, so I got about 2 pages in before putting it down. It's a Western, and westerns aren't really my thing. I'm more of a Bridget Jones kind of girl.

While complaining about having no good books to read in Peru, Mark again urged me to read Lonesome Dove. I told him I would read it if he would send me a copy, not actually expecting him to do so. But he did, all 945 pages of it. This time, I had no other options, so I dug in. I had my doubts still after the first few pages, but soon I found I couldn't put it down. It's about a group of cowboys and a whore on a long cattle drive from Texas to Montana. It still doesn't sound that interesting, even after I've read it, but the characters are all so rich and very real. First of all, they have cool cowboy names like Pea Eye, Needle, Gus, and Newt. When trying to pick my favorite character, I just keep going. I like Deets, the scout, and Po Campo, the little Mexican cook, and Gus, who can't stop talking, and Newt, the baby of the bunch. There's not a bland character in the group. The wild west can get a big gory for my taste, but I just kind of skimmed the bloody parts. Throughout the journey, tragedy strikes several times, some of which made me very upset (but then again, if it wasn't good, I wouldn't care, right?). When it was all over, I found myself getting a bit choked up, not just because it was a sad ending, but because it was over. Now that's a good book.

Now I'm at a complete loss for reading materials, so if anyone wants to send any my way, please feel free. Gone With the Wind? Bring it on.

Funny Sentences, Part 4

2008-06-26T22:31:00.004-04:00

I've got some doosies this month. Please pardon any vulgarity that may be implied.

Shouted out for the world to hear by Edwin, my favorite joven, who needed an example sentence using the word "single": The teacher is single!
Thanks, buddy. (Made even funnier by the fact that he's a tiny little guy, with chipmunk cheeks, freckles, braces, and glasses. So cute!)

I love to conversate with you. (Points for making up new verbs)
When did you and your boyfriend first feel?
We collected Pig of Eart. It was horrible but funny. (I haven't the slightest idea)
I was outside with your mom.
My friend lays me all the time. (The vocabulary word was "layer." When I explained what she wrote, she got a bit red in the face.)

I may have more to add tomorrow...

... and I do!

I hope everyone is as well as my cat.

Templeton update

2008-06-25T22:18:00.002-04:00

The rat is STILL alive. I mentioned it to my landlords today when I saw them, and they were pretty shocked, and told me the exterminator did indeed come and pull a rat out. Great, I have a whole family of Templetons down there. I think I'm just going to have to accept the fact that I have a roommate. So gross...

Real Sun Worshipping

2008-06-24T19:32:00.003-04:00

All the parades, and all the parties of the last week had been leading up to today, Inti Raymi. Inti Raymi is the ancient Incan celebration of the sun. It starts in the morning, with a ceremony at Q'orikancha, once the Incan capital before the Spaniards built a cathedral over it, then heads to the Plaza, before going up the hill to Saqsayhuaman. I met up with a few of my amigos, but we skipped the procession in order to get to Saqsayhuaman early. We needed to claim a spot on the hill opposite the ruins, since a ticket to get into the park and sit in the bleachers cost ninety dollars. Not ninety soles, ninety dollars. Things I would pay ninety dollars to see: (plane tickets to exotic locations not included) 1. Atlanta in a World Series clinching game. 2. An MLB All-Star game- good seats. 3. Possibly Madonna, depending on which tour we're talking about. That's it. So I was fine with pushing my way through the hordes of people to find a place to drop our blankets.

We managed to find a pretty good spot, with a decent view of what was happening. It was a gorgeous, sunny day, one that required lots of sunscreen. Appropriate, since we were there to worship the sun. Half the fun was sitting out in the sun, munching on our picnic lunches, and buying ice cream from the vendors. (I had an excellent lucuma popsicle. Mmmm.) By the time the Inca warriors filed in, the place was packed. The ceremony was in Quechua, the Incan language. I tried to follow along in the English guide I bought, that included the entire script in English. It was pretty difficult, though, since an entire paragraph in English is apparently only a few words in Quechua. Due to a small tree blocking my view, I occasionally stood up to take a picture or two (as did my companeros). This caused a few people behind me to throw rocks at me. Don't worry, the Peruvians seriously throw like girls, (and I don't, so if I wanted to, I could have taught them a lesson, but I didn't, of course.) I was unharmed.

The highlight of the whole event was when a group of Peruvians decided the empty hill across from us was too empty and broke through the yellow PELIGRO tape and stormed the hill. Then everyone between hills who couldn't see a darn thing decided to do the same. It was far too many people for the police to do anything about, so they didn't. The highlight of the whole event was supposed to be the llama sacrifice, made to the sun. Up until very recently, they actually sacrificed a real live llama, right there in front of everyone. Then PETA, everyone's favorite animal rights group (insert sarcastic face emoticon) showed up and changed all that, so we got a fake sacrifice. I'm sorry if you are a card-toting member of PETA, but they are my least favorite charitable group. Yes, animals have rights, but mankind has survived all this time by eating them. Besides, it's not everyday you get to see a ritual sacrifice, and now I've missed my chance. Le sigh.

Parading in Peru

2008-06-24T09:27:00.006-04:00

Last night, I had the opportunity to march in my first Peruvian Parade. The occasion: Inti Raymi, a Cuscanean holiday devoted to the sun god. The parade consists of almost every business, community, or group marching up Avenida El Sol into the plaza, where they are announced to the mayor of Cusco. The parade starts in the morning, and goes into the night. (I was trying to figure out who would stand on the side of the road and watch such a parade. It was fun to be in, but I can't imagine it would be all that exciting to watch.)

We met up at the school, where they loaned all the teachers a blue poncho, and several students joined us (but they had to bring their own ponchos). We lined up right outside our building, waving little Maximo Nivel flags and chanting. The whole atmosphere was electric. People actually cheered for us (but then again, we were a pretty entertaining group, the gringos in ponchos, dancing around). We walked up Avenida El Sol, and into the plaza, setting off firecrackers. When we arrived at the mayor's post in front of the Cathedral, he was sitting in a tent on top of the stairs, flanked by other important looking people. When we were announced, he waved to us, and we waved back- and British Rob bowed to him, as I'm sure he's been instructed to do when meeting the Queen. It was much fun.

The Winter Solstice

2008-06-23T22:30:00.004-04:00

As you may have read in the last post, the goal for the weekend was to see an awesome sunrise. I left on Saturday, the shortest day of the year, with Rob, Jenny, Dave, and Stephanie, 4 other teachers, for Tres Cruses, overlooking the Amazon. The bus ride was pretty dramatic. Not long after leaving Cusco, we left the paved road for a narrow dirt one, that wound up through the mountains. I got a little nervous when I looked out my window to see that the road had disappeared beneath me. I felt like I shouldn't even be leaning towards the window, for fear that I would upset the balance of the bus and cause it to tumble down into the ravine. No such thing happened.

Three hours later, we arrived in Paucartambo, the last town before Tres Cruses (and a complete dustbowl. I was filthy before the trip even really began). We had to do some bargaining to get a taxi driver to take us the remaining two hours, and who would promise to pick us up Monday morning. We arrived at our destination just before dark, which gave us just enough time to set up camp. I had borrowed a sleeping bag and rented a tent and a heavy down jacket (which I was very grateful for) before we left, so I was all set.

When we got there on Saturday evening, all we could see was fog. As we were sitting outside our tents, we had about a 10-minute window where the clouds broke and all we could see were millions of brilliant stars, ala Lake Titicacca, but the clouds rolled in again. Still, we woke up at 4:30 am, ever the optimists. Only to be disappointed. It was clear overhead, and the moon was so bright, it was casting a shadow. But overhead is not where sunrises happen, and the horizon was much too cloudy. No sunrise this morning.

For most of the day, we were completely socked in, with a slight drizzle (it's wet inside a cloud). And we were completely alone. It was kind of like being in a horror movie. Wet or not, we headed down into the jungle for a bit of a hike. The trail was awesome, full of little canyons and cool foliage. We went through a couple eco-systems in one hike. After returning from our hike, an amazing thing happened: the fog cleared! We could see the sky! And the mountains surrounding us! It was beautiful! Of course, there was still a layer of clouds over the forest below, but it's a cloud forest, so what can you expect? We had very high hopes for the morning sunrise. Only to have them dashed- again. By morning, the clouds had rolled in again, and it was not to be.

Despite the sunrise disappointment, it was a good weekend away from the Cusco craziness- until the bus ride home. Because of Inti Raymi, everyone wants to go to Cusco, so the bus was standing room only- for 4 hours. At first, I sat myself down in the middle of the aisle, but I didn't like that so much. Soon, the extremely bumpy, windy roads, combined with the airless bus filled with, shall we say, fragrant Peruvians, began to take their toll, and I began to turn various shades of green. Luckily, I never needed the plastic bag I rummaged up, thanks to the woman next to me, who got up for about 20 minutes (doing what, I have no idea). Just that time that I was able to sit down and close my eyes was enough to make me feel somewhat healthy, but I was very, very happy to arrive in Cusco. Just in time to march in a parade! (details on that coming later...)

The impending weekend

2008-06-19T13:35:00.002-04:00

It's been awhile since I've gotten out of Cusco, and I think this weekend, it's time. We have a 4-day weekend coming up, since everyone will be too busy worshipping the sun to bother with English class on Monday and Tuesday. While I definitely don't want to miss that, I'll be getting out of town on Saturday and Sunday to watch a sunrise. Here's what Lonely Planet has to say:

The view of the mountains dropping away into the Amazon Basin here [Tres Cruces] is gorgeous in itself, but from May to July it's made all the more magical by the sunrise phenomenon that optically distorts the dawn into a multicolored light show with double images, halos and unusual tints.

Sounds pretty cool, huh? At the moment, I'll be going with two other couples, since I do so enjoy being the fifth wheel (insert sarcastic face emoticon here) and I'll freeze my you-know-what off camping, but I think it will be a good time.

Templeton update

2008-06-17T22:52:00.003-04:00

In the last week, my computer was in critical condition (it's been repaired and is now functioning again), my traveling pants died, but Templeton (the name I've given to that thing that lives under my floor) is, unfortunately, still alive. I've been told on at least 5 different occasions that the exterminators would be coming "tomorrow." Five tomorrows later, Templeton is still squeaking his way beneath my floorboards and keeping me from sleep. I'm tired. The rat must die.

Cusco is a changin'

2008-06-17T22:27:00.004-04:00

Since I first arrived in Cusco at the end of January, the city has undergone a complete change.

First of all, I arrived in rainy season. It rained at least once every day. Even if there was not a cloud to be seen in the sky, I still had to stuff my rain coat into my bag every time I left the house. It was a pain in the you-know-what. The surrounding mountains were lush and green as a result. Now, it's dry season. There is never a cloud in the sky (although the last few days have been very rare and overcast for a few hours in the morning), and it never rains. My rain coat is at the bottom of my drawer, hasn't been touched in months. The lush, green of the mountain has been replaced with brown. (The green you see in the photo is due to daily watering.)
The downside to the dry weather is just how cold it is. Due to my Chinese oven heating, my apartment is warmer than the average Cuscanean apartment in the evening, but by morning, I have a hard time getting out of bed due to the cold. (Remember, central heating does not exist here.) I bundle up to get to school in the morning, but strip off the layers by mid-day, as the sun is quite intense.

Dry season equals high season as far as tourism goes. The streets are packed, and gringos are everywhere. It's a good thing I moved so close to school. In February, I could hail a taxi in a second, now I hear horror stories of people waiting up to 30 minutes to find one. With the Inti Raymi holiday coming up next week, (the holiday devoted to the sun god, which culminates in a llama sacrifice at Saqsaywaman. I get to march in a parade and have a 4-day weekend.) there are about 10 parades a day in preperation. The streets are busier, the school is busier (I'm teaching 7 classes now), but the city is very alive and bustling.

R.I.P. Traveling Pants

2008-06-15T12:49:00.004-04:00

Yesterday, I lost an important member of my traveling community. My first pair of traveling pants. (Traveling pants. n. a pair of pants worn not for their attractiveness (which they don't really have) but for their practicality, and the ability to adjust and be rolled up and held in place with snaps or buttons to acommadate the weather, or activities such as biking.) The pants were already ripped due to extreme wear and tear, and yesterday, I put them on for the anticipated manual labor we would be doing at the playground. While putting on my socks, I heard a loud rrrrrip of the fabric. They were ripped beyond decency. It's time to put them down.

I bought the pants before Holli and I went on our backpacking adventure around the British Isles 3 years ago. They have been to England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Estonia, Denmark, Ecuador, and now Peru. They've biked the Dingle Peninsula, climbed an Alp (well, on one of those cable car thingys), crossed the Baltic Sea, salsa danced, and a whole lot of other things in the US that just don't sound that impressive. They have served me well, and will be sorely missed. Rest in Peace, Traveling Pants. You may not have looked good, but you worked good. (yes, I'm an English teacher. Yes, I know the proper grammer is "worked well," but worked good made the sentence flow better. Artistic liberty.)

In order to honor the memory of the Traveling Pants, I would like to make them into something else. Any suggestions?

Computer on life support

2008-06-14T16:12:00.003-04:00

I turned on my computer the other day and realized I was looking at The Blue Screen of Death. Currently, it's in a shop, and I'm waiting to find out if it's dead or just in a coma. However, if it's fixed on "Peru time" then I won't be getting it back. They told me to call back yesterday to find out about the price and timetable, but then told me to call back today. Templeton (the rat beneath my floor) was supposed to be dead on Tuesday, then Thursday, now Monday. Today we went out to build the playground we raised money for with the infamous teacher auction. The playground equipment was supposed to be delivered yesterday, then at 11am today. After we spent several hours mixing and pouring concrete and leveling earth, it still hadn't arrived. Now they say Monday. My students come to class without books, because for some reason, they won't buy them when they register for class. When I ask them where their books are, they always, always respond with "Tomorrow, teacher." I'm fast learning that "tomorrow" simply means anytime after today.

My blog and photo posting may be a bit slow for this reason this week. I'll try to get some new pictures up as soon as I can.

And please, don't call me Shirley

2008-06-10T10:49:00.005-04:00

I've said it before, but Peruvians have strange names. Obviously, nothing will ever top Hitler, but I have quite a few this month that make me chuckle a bit when I call on them. While there are no Mussolinis or Stalins or Castros, there are some that make you raise your eyebrows. (By the way, Hitler went from my class to Jake's class, but hasn't been seen in a few months. I could insert a few horrible jokes here, but I'll refrain.)

First of all, Peruvians have a lot of English names that haven't been in vogue for years. For example, my first class has two girls names Shirley, both of whom are younger than me. I feel like I should be talking to a couple of 74-year old women, not two girls who appear to be about 19. A rundown of some of the other strangeness:

Igor. I always feel the need to say his name in a low, ominous voice, followed by an evil cackle.
Liwi. I never imagined there to be a name that rhymes with "kiwi."
Kleber. This one is just plain stupid. It's like "clever" only it's not.
Valeria. (rhymes with "maleria") This one isn't strange. It's the Spanish version of Valerie. In fact, we have a teacher named Valerie, but we call her Valeria as a joke, because, well, it sounds like an STD you can only acquire in the jungle.
Alain and Alexis. Two men.
I have at least one Carlos, if not two, in every class, along with a handful of Joses and Luis'. If I can't remember a name, I just call on "Carlos" and see who answers.

I understand that these names don't seem so strange to them. I mean, everytime I called on Hitler, I'd look around to see if anyone else found it strange, but they didn't blink an eye.

Inca Trail revisted

2008-06-06T14:54:00.003-04:00

Remember that day my camera broke during my once-in-a-lifetime hike of the Inca Trail? Well I do. Here are the much anticipated, long lost photos from day 3 of that hike. Thanks to Kris for allowing me to hi-jack his camera, then send me so many via e-mail, a process I have no doubt was long and painful. As you can see, day 3 included the best scenery.

Things that go squeak in the night

2008-06-05T22:25:00.003-04:00

I have a problem with my new apartment. There is something living under the floor. I've been pretty lucky so far. Everything I read about South America before coming mentioned the large amount of cockroaches, and thus far *knock on wood* I haven't seen a one. They probably can't handle the altitude. At first I heard the pitter patter of 4 little feet scurrying beneath my own feet. I wasn't too happy about it, but I kind of ignored it- until I went to bed. While lying in bed, the scurrying sounds 3 times as loud. And then it starts squeaking. On Wednesday, I told my landlord about it. He said, "I'll talk to the Chinese." The Chinese being the people at the Chifa restaurant below me. (Note to self: Do not eat at this particular Chifa restaurant.) Last night, I didn't hear anything for a good long while, and was actually beginning to think that maybe the rat (or whatever it may be. Oh, dear. What if it's a bat?!) had already been caught. Then the squeaking started. And how. It was so loud I was convinced Templeton had to be in the apartment. It actually sounded like a puppy whining, but I know I'm not that lucky. I was afraid to get out of bed to go to the bathroom, and was really wishing my light switch wasn't on the other side of the room.

In the light of day, I scoured the floorboards, making sure there weren't any holes big enough for Mickey or Minnie to crawl through. There weren't. (And in the black of midnight, my imagination has conjured up images of a rat straight out of The Princess Bride.) Although if I ever do find two beady little eyes staring back at me, I'm sure my screams will be enough to jumpstart my landlord- who lives a mere 20 yards away- into action.

Sometimes I Regret Teaching English...

2008-06-04T22:30:00.003-04:00

I taught "regret" for the 5th time today. Last month, I taught it three times in one day. The first time, I thought it would be a piece of cake. How hard can it be? When you did something you wish you hadn't. Easy, right? Apparently not to Peruvians. While I've had better luck each time, I'm still met with blank stares, although nothing compares to that first time.

The key to teaching a second language is examples, examples, and more examples. You can look a word up in the dictionary, but that doesn't give you context. While teaching regret, I thought I whipped out some solid examples that I thought they'd really relate to. I regret drinking so much last night. I regret dating him. I regret wearing these shoes. I regret buying that dress. I may as well have been talking to the wall. I was tempted to give the example "I regret teaching this lesson right about now." I can't figure out why it's so hard to understand. "Regret" directly translates to "lamentar" in Spanish, which also means "bemoan" or "wail." But do they use it the same way? Do Peruvians live with no regrets? Do they have such a hard time with the concept of regret because they just don't understand that feeling? Wow, what a concept! Can you imagine living life without any regrets, only ever thinking about what's happening, and not what happened? It makes me feel kind of guilty for introducing the concept.

My new casa

2008-06-01T19:20:00.004-04:00

I moved to a new apartment this weekend. For various reasons, we decided to say good-bye to Chester and move out of our super classy glass house. I wasn't really excited about the prospect of apartment hunting, and I was getting nervous as I had a week to go and still no prospects. I looked at two other apartments that had been inhabited by two other teachers who finished last month. Neither of them had kitchens, which I find pretty important. Frank kept trying to sell me on the cable tv. Apparently we have different priorities.

Luckily, I managed to find an adorable little studio apartment, only a 5 minute walk from school. No more hailing taxis before 7am! I'll have a surplus of change now. From the time I looked at the place to the time I moved in, it improved. They painted the walls and added some gorgeous artwork. Instead of tile, the floors are wood. This place is not institutional at all. And... I have a closet! I can actually hang up my clothes! And I have a microwave! I don't have to reheat leftovers on the stove anymore! Although I do prefer making popcorn the old-fashioned way on the stove, so I think I'll keep right on doing that. (Besides, a single bag of microwave popcorn costs more than an entire bag of popping corn.) It's the little things that are exciting here in Peru, let me tell you. I'm also excited that the pipe for an oven in the Chinese restaurant below goes right through my apartment. Heating! I am, however, confused by the machine of some sort that causes the entire room to vibrate for minutes at a time. I guess I'll just have to get used to that.

The Dreaded Teacher Auction

2008-05-31T16:31:00.003-04:00

Last night was the dreaded teacher auction. I´m just glad it´s over with. Over the course of the evening, I learned two things: 1. It´s much more fun to watch an auction than actually be a part of it, and 2. I apparently can´t get a real date even when I´m being sold as one. Let me explain.

First of all, the party was such a popular place, there was a long line outside of people waiting to get in. I had volunteered to cashier the bar, (there were two, so I was working with Liz behind the beer bar) and we were plenty busy all night. Before the party started, we drew names to determine the order we would be auctioned off. I was super excited to draw #10 out of 10, figuring people would have time to get warmed up and be less inhibited, and I might have a chance of making some money. Then Alayne kindly pointed out that all the good bidders could have run out of money by then, so then I was back to being extremely worried.

Watching the auction itself was hilarious. So that people could see us, we had to step up onto a table and into a spotlight. I tried to remember my sister´s advice that she ripped off from Tyra Banks: Be fierce. Unfortunately, the table was short, so there wasn´t much room to be fierce. Once I was up there, there was the question of now what? What do you do with yourself while standing on a table, waiting to be sold? Luckily, the lighting wasn´t great, so no one could see how red I was getting. I could feel my face getting hotter and hotter, and afterwards, I had to fan myself constantly to cool down. Anyway, I´m happy to report that I was not, in fact, the low bid. I probably had about 5 different people bid on me, (3 of whom I had never seen before, so apparently using Maribeth´s hair straightener worked) so I was relieved about that. In the end, I sold for 90 soles (bidding started at 20) to David, the boyfriend of Julie, one of the other professors. He was pretty much just trying to get the bidding up, but was too rich for the Peruvians. In fact, out of 10, only 3 people were sold to Peruvians, and one of them was Peter, whose Peruvian girlfriend bought him, so that doesn´t really count. They started the bidding, but always seemed to stop after 50 or 60 soles. David told me I could take whoever I wanted to dinner. I´m taking Maribeth, since she´ll be helping me move tomorrow.

It was an interesting night, to say the least. I guess I should be relieved. I wasn´t the low bid, and I don´t have to suffer through an awkward date with someone who calls me "teacher" the whole time. Although Maribeth said she can be awkward if I don´t want to miss out on the awkward date experience. I think I´ll pass.

Funny sentences, Part 3

2008-05-30T17:49:00.003-04:00

I've been really slacking on the funny sentences this month. Maybe it's because I'm such a great teacher, my students have just gotten that much better? Yeah, probably not. But here's some highlights from exam week:

My father is building his love for the wine underground.
Bob is Fred's brother-in-love.
Christina Aguillera is a bizarre woman. (I think she was thinking of Britney Spears)

And this last one is courtesy of one of Ashley's advanced students. While writing a letter congratulating their grandparents on their 50th wedding anniversary one student wrote:

"Thank you for your mutation."

We never did figure out what that's supposed to mean, but we did laugh about it for an awfully long time.

Book Review: Into the Wild

2008-05-28T18:09:00.003-04:00

I expected to admire the protagonist of Into the Wild, the real-life Chris McCandless. But now I just think he's a bit of a brat. In 1990, McCandless graduated from Emory, then left Atlanta for the west, never to be heard from again. He never told his parents what he was doing or where he was going. After hitchhiking around the country, he walked into the Alaskan wilderness two years later, and never made it out after starving to death. It's an entertaining read, but I couldn't help thinking that McCandless (who went by the name "Alexander Supertramp" during his journey) was just an idiot.

First of all, he was given everything, but resented his parents for it. Disappearing was his way of getting back at them. Selfish. Second, despite warnings from those more experienced in the Alaskan bush that he was not prepared, he insisted he was just fine, and refused to take their advice. Stupid and cocky. If he had just had something as simple as a map, he'd probably still be alive today. I just kept thinking "what an idiot" every time I turned the page. Even though it's pretty clear the author admired the man, he couldn't persuade me.

In 2018...

2008-05-27T13:44:00.002-04:00

From Eduardo, age 13 (practicing the future tense)

In 2018, robots will do homework. I will live on the moon. I will work in the center of the moon, and be married with Shakira.

There's a kid who reaches for the stars. (Literally)

I also enjoy sunsets and long walks on the beach

2008-05-25T21:38:00.002-04:00

The dreaded Teacher Auction is this upcoming Friday, and rumors have been flying around the school about who's buying who, and which teachers are in the auction. The official list of teachers comes out tomorrow, so my homework for the weekend was to write a biography about myself (I guess that's an autobiography, huh?) in both English and Spanish. It was not an easy assignment. It's not easy to write about yourself, so Maribeth, Ashley, and I got together to help each other out. Here's my bio. I think it sums me up pretty well, let me know what you think.

Mi cabello es rizado o lasio, depende de clima
Tengo una obsesion extrano con el color morado
Soy de Pensilvania (no Transilvania como Dracula)

Me gusta:

Bailar de salsa & salsa de aji
Tejer a crochet
Beisbol
Libros
Postres

No me gusta:

Champinonas
Alahas
Los persona que masticar con boca abierta
Rod Stewart
Demasiados de comas

Translation for those of you who did not understand a word of that:

My hair is curly or straight, depending on the weather (Editor's note: Maribeth insisted we start with a physical description, since that's really all they're probably interested in.)
I have a strange obsession with the color purple
I'm from Pennsylvania (not Transylvania, like Dracula)

Likes:

Salsa dancing & salsa the condiment
Crocheting
Baseball
Books
Dessert

Dislikes:

Mushrooms
Jewelry
People who eat with their mouth open (Editor's Note: This is important, since I have to eat dinner with them)
Rod Stewart
Comma splices

I intimidate men when I explain the infield fly rule (Editor's note: Did not bother to translate this one. Am convinced this is the reason I'm still single. Right, Holli?)

Corpus Cristi

2008-05-22T21:46:00.002-04:00

Thursday was Corpus Cristi, which meant no school! It also meant loads of festivities going on in the Plaza de Armas and other plazas in town. There was a lot of processions and marching of saints around the square. I'm pretty sure everyone in Cusco was there. More than once, the three of us linked arms and were carried away by the crowd. We didn't really have much choice about which direction we were going, we were just not trying to lose one another. Luckily, we purchased brightly colored paper hats. There were people selling them everywhere, and they were just so ridiculous looking, we couldn't resist. We bought hats, and posed for pictures. I felt like such a tourist, but we were having a great time. After the picture, a student spotted me. It was a good thing she did, because she apparently thought we were having class that evening. That's when I realized I was still wearing the paper hat. Oh, well. Those hats turned out to be a very wise investment for 5o centimos. The sun was pretty harsh.

The traditional dish of Corpus Cristi is chiriuchu, but that includes guinea pig, so I of course declined. (But British Rob- as opposed to American Rob- saved a tiny claw for us. So sweet.) Walking around, there were all these tables stacked with roasted, whole guinea pigs. And today, on my way to school, I noticed plenty of vendors selling leftovers. Yum. Instead of cold cuy, I opted for coconut milk straight out of the coconut. Much better.

In the evening, we joined several other teachers for a sunset picnic on the hill overlooking the city. After a while, American Rob whipped out a frisbee, and eventually Peter managed to give himself a bloody nose. He bled through a tissue in no time, so I did the only other thing I knew to do- I shoved a tampon up his nose. He resisted a bit at first, but finally relented. Good thing, too, that wasn't an ordinary bloody nose. (Must be the altitude). Later he thanked me for saving him from bleeding to death. Glad I could help.

This can't have a happy ending

2008-05-21T12:36:00.004-04:00

Next Friday the 30th, the teachers of Maximo Nivel (that would be my school) are hosting a party as a fund raiser to build a playground for a local school. The party will feature a Teacher Auction, where the teachers will be auctioned off as dates, dinner for two donated by local restaurants. For some reason, I agreed to be auctioned off. I'm going to be sold to a Peruvian. This is going to be a disaster in so many ways. Let me count them:

I will be humiliated because no one wants to buy a date with me. I should really spend the next 10 days gettin' my flirt on. You know, drum up some interest.
Someone has to bring in the least amount of money. I fear that will be me.
I will be "sold" to Eduardo, an 18-year-old with a bad BO problem, who felt the need to write me a nice long love letter two weeks ago, despite the fact we've never spoken. Dinner for 2 in Hell, please.
Even if I am sold to someone other than the 18-year-old, it's bound to be the Most Awkward Date ever, what with the language barrier and me being purchased and all that. But hey, it's a free meal, and I'll get to eat meat.
I'll randomly draw dinner at the vegetarian restaurant. Thus, no meat.

No matter which scenario pans out, I'm sure it will be a hilarious tale to tell. (Unless it's option #1. That will just be sad. Does anyone want to call in and bid for me in case of an emergency?)

When I Grow Up

2008-05-19T15:17:00.003-04:00

Last week, I was discussing professions with my jovenes. Before asking them what they wanted to be when they grow up, I asked them what their parents did, and of course, they turned the question on me. When I told them that my father is a middle school principal, these middle schoolers seemed to get a little intimidated. Their eyes got wide, and they all went, "oooh." Then on Friday, they were eerily quiet. Too quiet. Could it be they suddenly think I have clout, that I can send them to detention? I know I'm not that lucky. They'll be bouncing off the walls on Monday again for sure, I just know it.

After learning their parents professions, it's clear that they come from the upper crust of Cuzcanean society. The doctors, lawyers, engineers, and accountants can afford to send their kids to extra English classes, so they can get into better schools and get better jobs. That's such a difference from being at the orphanage on Saturday. Many of the girls there have parents, they just can't afford to take care of their children. One of the girls got a visit from her father and brother on Saturday. Another girl asked me how old I was. When I told her I was 25, she told me I was the same age as her mother. And she's 10 years old.

Oh, to be young again

2008-05-16T10:17:00.005-04:00

With May came a new (and improved!) class schedule. The best part being done at 8pm instead of 9! v. exciting. I also teach the same class three times in one day, so instead of lesson planning for 6 different classes, I only have to plan for 4 classes. It's cut my planning time in half. The downside being I had to teach the perfect tense 3 times in one afternoon last week. That wasn't so exciting.

The biggest change is that I finally got the jovenes class I had been asking for ever since I got here. The four o'clock hour is reserved for teenagers, and I had wanted to teach them from the beginning. I loved my TABby cats, and thought it would be a lot of fun. All the other teachers hate teaching them, and thought I was crazy. Of course, teaching them is a bit different than just planning cool things for them to do in the library. During my first class, they all asked me to go to the bathroom at least once. That's when I started my "no bathroom" policy. Class only lasts an hour. They can hold it. Not all the students had books, so I asked one of the girls to share with a boy. The reaction: "Eeeewwwwww, no teacher!" Oh, right. I forgot about that. I told her he didn't have cooties, but I think cooties was lost in translation. They "shared" the book by sitting as far away from each other as they could.

The jovenes are much more likely to speak Spanish in class than the adults. They're also much more likely to talk in class than the adults. That's when I break out The Librarian Stink Eye to get them to shut up. It works for about 30 seconds, then the whispering and giggling starts up again. I've already seperated a few. (Actually, it's really just a pack of 4 girls. The rest of the class is just fine.) They're really preoccupied with finishing an assignment first. As soon as they finish an activity, they immediately yell "Teacher, finished!" "I don't care" is my usual response. I'm trying to teach them I want it done right, not fast. And I've never heard whining like I hear every day when I assign homework. (I know, I'm so mean.) As soon as I write the word "homework" on the board, I hear a chorus of "Teeaaacher, Noooooooo!" from behind me. "What are you whining for? You never do it anyway!" This is true. I'm lucky if two of them do their homework, and it's clear they only did it to get it done. (They get a treat at the end of the week if they did all their homework.)

The funniest moment came the other day when one of the boys pointed to the other boy and said, "Teacher, he wants to be your girlfriend!" Huh. Soooo many things have to change for that to happen.

The Comforts of Home

2008-05-13T12:23:00.003-04:00

I've been gone now for more than 4 months. I'm already halfway done with my teaching contract. It's kind of hard to believe, the time has gone so fast. No, I'm not homesick, but there are plenty of things about home that I miss. In no particular order... (this list does not include family and friends. That's a given. Plus, putting family and friends on the list is sentimental and a bit sappy, and that's not my style.)

Baseball. Missing an entire season is harder than I thought.
Water with ice. You'd never believe how accustomed I've become to room temperature water.
The rest of my wardrobe. I have basically one outfit for each day of the week. I really miss standing in front of a closet (I don't have one of those either), making a decision, mixing and matching, and- I'd never thought I'd say this- high heels.
MEAT. I only eat it when I go out, and I rarely go out. What I wouldn't give for a Bubba Burger on the George Foreman. With pickles. Mmmmmm....
Food variety. This may sound weird, because I don't eat a variety of food in the first place, but Peruvians take it to a whole other level. Half the cereal aisle is corn flakes, and they're the best bargain. Therefore, I eat cornflakes every morning. I'm pretty sure I'll never eat cornflakes again after July.
Cranberry juice.
Being healthy. I miss my gym routine and being healthy in general. I always seem to be just a little bit sick here. Must be the altitude.

Things I don't miss, not even a little bit:

Driving, and therefore, spending an arm and a leg filling up the gas tank.
The Show.

A Life of Hard-Knocks

2008-05-10T16:19:00.004-04:00

On the two occasions I've spent my Saturdays volunteering, I couldn't get enough of the kids. They're so friendly, grateful for any attention you can give them, and just so darn cute! So I went to Eliza, the volunteer director at my school, and asked her for a regular Saturday volunteer position. I figured my little weekend jaunts have pretty much dried up, I've been to the Amazon, the Inca Trail, Bolivia, and almost every Inca Ruin around, so I may as well do something super productive with my Saturdays.

The volunteers who are working here for a few months generally don't want to work on the weekends, since they want to travel, so it was no problem to find an orphanage that was excited to have me on Saturday. I arrived in the middle of cleaning day, half disappointed the girls weren't heartily singing "It's a Hard-Knock Life" while performing a choreographed dance routine. I was given a quick tour, then told to do whatever I wanted. There was a group of girls in the back doing the laundry by hand, (and doing a way more thorough job than I ever do). I chatted with them for a few minutes, then went inside to see what was going on. Brenda, who's about 9 years old, gave me a hug as soon as I walked in the door. She was cleaning the floor by skating around on an old sweater. I helped by sweeping for a bit, then had Brenda sit on the sweater and dragged her around. Of course, she loved it, and kept requesting that I pull her "mas rapido!" Soon I had a line of kids wanting a ride on the old sweater. I was working up quite a sweat running around. (And some of the girls were bigger than others. That was rough.)

Then one of the girls I quickly labeled The Bossy One (there was a Bossy One in Annie, right?) demanded that we color. She even told me what colors to use. When I asked where the black colored pencil was, she pulled it out of Brenda's hand in mid-use. When she got tired of coloring, she literally closed the book on our hands and presented us with a puzzle to do.

I see-sawed for the first time since I was 5 years old (and if you're looking for a good way to tone up your legs, go to a playground, get on a see-saw, and do all the work yourself. I'm still sore). I bruised my hips going down a slide built for little girls with no hips. I got kicked in the head (an accident). One girl threw a rock at another. I smoothed things out as well as I could in Spanish. But I also gave and received an awful lot of hugs. Several girls just crawled right in my lap. They read books to me. Several of them pouted when I left. Must be rough growing up in an orphanage, when everyone eventually leaves you. I wondered if I was doing more damage than good, but I did promise them I would be back next week.

Lake Titicaca: The Long-Awaited Conclusion

2008-05-07T15:08:00.004-04:00

Internet issues have caused a delay in the posting of the conclusion to my Bolivia trip (hence the lack of pictures. Maybe later?). I apologize for any distress caused.

Saturday morning, we walked the 17km from Copacabana to Yampupata, a boat ride away from Isla del Sol, an island on Lake Titicaca. About a km in, Val and Jess decided they would rather take the two hour boat ride from Copacabana instead, but Peter and I perservered, and we were quite happy we did. The scenery was absolutely stunning. Plenty of coves and beaches, perfectly blue water. I forgot I was in South America. We walked through barely there Bolivian villages. The sun was intense. We stopped every hour on the hour to re-apply sunscreen. It was perfection.

When we got closer to Yampupata, a boy of about 8 years old offered to row us to Isla del Sol in 15 minutes. I knew he was lying, since it´s supposed to take an hour. One of the benefits of travelling through remote places is the ability for Peter and I to strategize without the kid knowing what we were saying. We decided that not only was he making promises he couldn´t keep, but we didn´t really feel all that comfortable with an 8 year old captaining the ship. We moved on while he continued his sales pitch.

Further down the road, we found an adult to row us. His name was Augusto, and he liked having his picture taken, eating our food, singing, whistling, and randomly bursting out with "Happy Happy!" Peter and I offered him part of our lunch- bread and bananas taken discreetly from the hotel breakfast buffet. After that, he asked us for any cookies or crackers we took out to snack on.

After a stop at a super-secret little cove, we set off for the island. Nice and relaxing, soaking up the sun in a row boat on a sparkling blue lake. The going was slow, but it got even slower as we got closer to the island. That´s when Augusto pulled out two more oars and handed one each to Peter and I. Once we got involved, we really started moving. I couldn´t help myself, I started a round of "Row, row, row your boat." Augusto dropped us off on a pile of rocks. We paid the man, said our good-byes, and scrambled up the rocks. We chose a path that we though would take us to some semblance of civilization, or at least some food and a place to sleep. We found both, plus another fantastic sunset.

During the night, I was having a dream that I could hear a donkey whining. I woke up to find that it wasn´t a dream, but in fact reality. On the way to the boat the next morning, I was following a herd (is that what you call it?) of 4 or 5 donkeys and passed several llamas and/or alpacas going the other way, and I wondered: When did this become normal? Because it was quite awhile before I thought anything of it.

Adventures in Traveling

2008-05-05T18:15:00.003-04:00

Friday was spent getting from our little island to Copacabana in Bolivia. (Sorry, not that Copacabana.) It was a little more exciting than I expected. We had to take the boat back to Puno, as it is impossible to get to Bolivia by boat. When we got to the docks, there were two boats. One that was virtually empty, save for a few tourists, and one that was already packed with locals and their huge bags of goods they were taking to the mainland. We, apparently, needed to be on the boat packed with locals. Problem was, there were no seats left. That doesn't stop Peruvians, though. They had us sit on the top of the boat, with the bags of fish, potatoes, and who knows what else. The wind made it very, very cold up there, and it wasn't exactly comfortable to sit on a sack of potatoes, or to have a front row seat for all the men urinating off the front of the boat, but I chalked it up to an experience you can't have anywhere else. To pass the three hours, Val, Peter, and I played that celebrity name game, where you name a celebrity, then the next person names a celebrity whose first name begins with the same letter as the previous celebrity's last name. I don't know how we did it, but we played that game for three solid hours. We just never stopped. We named every major celebrity, minor celebrity, dead people, and the entire royal family. "Good to know the royal family is good for something," said Peter.
After docking at Puno, we said our goodbyes to Al, who was off to La Paz, and headed for the bus station to catch a bus to the Bolivian border. The bus ride was supposed to take 2 hours, but we got stuck in a traffic jam on a dirt road when a truck got stuck in the world's largest pothole and had to be pulled out. While stopped, we watched in awe as a man got out of his bus or truck, walk into the field right next to the road, pull his pants down, squat... and take a dump. And how. I get performance anxiety when there's someone in the next stall, but this man has no problems going in a field with a line of traffic and literally hundreds of eyes watching him. I don't know if that's something to be admired or pitied. (I've been in South America too long to be all that shocked, sadly.)
We finally reached the border about 3 hours after leaving Puno. The first obstacle was to get out of Peru. Peter and I both had expired Visas, and therefore had to pay $1 a day over our 90 days. I went to hand the man my $9, but he told me I had to pay at the bank. Great, where's the bank? It was in the last town, and required taking a combi (a large van, or a very small bus, depending on how you like to think about it). We had less than an hour before the Bolivian border closed for business, so this was not good news. Peter and I hopped in the combi for the 5 minute drive back to the last town, which is truly a dead end town. The driver dropped us off in the town square, which was pretty deserted. We asked him to wait for us; he said he would wait for only a minute, but he sped off pretty quickly. Then, as if I we were in The Amazing Race, Peter and I took off in a run across the square to the bank. The woman in front of us turned around, saw us running, dropped all her bags in the street, and started running too. Peter yelled after her, "We're not trying to race you!," but of course she didn't understand. She thought it was hilarious, and burst into giggles when we got into the bank. Peter and I were not as amused. Finally, after returning to the border, being forced to go across the street to make three copies of almost every page in my passport, they let us out of Peru. Now it was Bolivia's turn.
Peter is British and Jess Canadian, so they got their passports stamps and were able to walk through. Val and I, however, are evil Americans and therefore must pay (literally!) for it. We had to show copies of a credit card, hotel reservations and a bus return (fabricated for us by the travel agency housed in my school), extra paperwork, and the kicker: $100 in cash. I wanted to tell them two things: 1. I voted democrat in the last two presidential elections (and in the first one, my vote apparently didn't even count). 2. The light is at the end of the tunnel! By next year, we'll have a new president and be a kinder, gentler nation! But I didn't think that would really help. The border guard took a little too much joy in taking our money. He even told Val that one of the twenty dollar bills she handed him wasn't good enough for Bolivia. Excuse me? You demand we pay you in our money, then tell us it isn't good enough? Drop the God complex, buddy. I handed over my $100 and can now come and go into Bolivia for the next 5 years. (Thank you, Mr. President. Your bill is in the mail.)
There were fiestas going on in Copacabana, so we had a bit more difficulty finding a hostal than we would have thought. We had to stay in a hotel for slightly more money, (about the equivalent of $5-6 more.) After a fantastic Mexican dinner (and if you think all food in South America is Mexican, you are wrong. Very, very wrong.), we walked around to check out the fiestas. It was basically several marching-style bands playing all at the same time, while local Bolivians danced around drunkenly. Peter and I, of course, decided to join them. The locals loved this. They taught us a few moves, we taught them a few moves, they gave us a few drinks. Several of them even asked to have their pictures taken with us. Instant celebrities.
Later, as we were falling asleep in the hotel room, Val suddenly said, "No one mentioned Julia Roberts today." Maybe next time. If there is a next time...

Lake Titicaca

2008-05-05T12:39:00.004-04:00

On Wednesday night, I graded exams as fast as I could, with a little help from a few others. At 10:00 I boarded an overnight bus for Puno, on the shores of Lake Titicaca with two other teachers, Val and Peter, and Jess, a friend of Val's. We arrived in Puno around 5:30 in the morning. It was freezing in Puno, but the sun was INTENSE. I applied sunscreen almost every hour, but my nose still got fried. (And it did warm up during the day, by the way, but once that sun went down, it went back to freeeeezing.)
We caught a boat to the floating islands of Uros. It was a gorgeous morning. The blue color of the lake is unreal. And when we got to Uros, it was just plain surreal. I don't know how, but the islands were actually built by hand centuries ago, so people could escape the brutality of the Inca empire. They literally float. We got a demonstration of how that works, but I still don't quite get it. The ground squished when you walked on it. We talked to a local family and bought some fried bread that the woman had just made. We watched them catch fish for their dinner, and saw the fish struggle until it had wrestled it's way out of the boy's hands. I, of course, was kind of grossed out.
We took a traditional reed boat to the next part of the island, accompanied by two local girls, sisters, one of whom flashed me her panty-less bottom more than once. They impressed us by singing, even songs in English and French. Then, of course, they asked for propina. Val gave them cheetos.
Back on the other boat (that actually had an engine) we began the three hour sail to the island of Amantani, where we planned on spending the night. On the boat, we met an Australian named Al, who joined our group. We spent the three hour boat ride chatting with Al and playing UNO (yes, the UNO that came with my library care package.) When we got to the island, we found a family to house and feed all 5 of us. I was very impressed by our host family for the night. The father was so friendly. He proudly gave Peter and I a tour of his garden, and made sure we had everything we needed. The mother never stopped smiling. The plaster around the windows had peeled, revealing the mud bricks underneath, they had no electricity, an outhouse in the garden (no shower), but they were so happy. I thought all 5 of us would be sleeping in one room, but we were spread out in 3 different rooms (each room was basically a different building. Their house was a very small complex of mud huts), which made me wonder if all 6 members of the family slept in one room.
After lunch, we hiked up to the top of the mountain, where there were some pre-Incan ruins and an awesome view for sunset. We beat all the other tourists to the top, so we had the place to ourselves for a little while. While I was up there, two local girls in full traditional dress decided I looked like a volleyball player, and began setting a ball to me. We peppered for quite a while. There I was, in the middle of pre-Incan ruins on an island in the middle of the highest navigable lake in the world, playing volleyball with two Peruvian girls. Just your average Thursday night.
Then the sun set. It was awesome. Being in Cusco, I miss sunsets. With the height of the surrounding mountains, it just gets dark. But the sunset over the lake just kept getting better and better. You can't create colors like that. After the sun disappeared and so did all the colors, the stars came out. I don't think I've ever seen so many stars in my life. While looking for all those southern hemisphere constellations you can't see north of the equator, a shooting star went by. Ahhh, perfection.

Funny Sentences, Part 2

2008-04-30T17:06:00.002-04:00

This month's edition of funny sentences, courtesy of my students.

Why are you small?
I want to visit Venecia and walk in the gondolas.
Then I found Bryan Adams and drank a beer with him and cheers to 80s music.
Can you go on a date with me dear teacher?
I will get married with my mother's friend because she makes me crazy.
Could I dance with Shrek? (I should point out that these last two came during a game where I was awarding creativity.)
I pinch a cake.
The trouble is your mind.
Please could you give me a glad of milk please.
I holded your hand when you was sleeping.
I had been to club and I was boring.

Before I left for the Inca Trail, my students got a bit of revenge. First off, they didn't want me to leave (they were very happy to have me back. They hated the substitute.), and I had used Alberto, the only man in the class as an example for "used to" (as in "Alberto used to be a woman") and to introduce my gossip lesson ("Did you hear? Alberto used to be a woman.") Therefore, he and his partner wrote the following dialogue as gossip practice:
A: Did you hear? The teacher is going away this week to get married to Teacher Tom.
B: What? No, I wanted to marry her.
A: You can't, your girlfriend will be angry.
B: No she won't, she lives far away.

I'm leaving for Bolivia tonight. I'll tell you all about it on Monday!

Yes, I have chicken danced in the name of education

2008-04-29T22:41:00.005-04:00

The last week of the month is exam week, my favorite week of the month. It's smooth sailing for me. My students sweat it out while I read a book, and no lesson planning, which means my free time is actually free. (Today I read an entire book. Educating Esme. Thanks Meg! It was very inspiring.)

This month, though, I have 2 exams that involve speaking, which means I can't just sit there with my book. I have to actually listen to what they're saying. For whatever reason, they were the most concerned about the speaking part. One student asked me every day for a week what the speaking topic would be. I finally got annoyed and told him I wouldn't tell him anything if he asked again. I don't know what they were so worried about. They're only talking to me, who they've been talking to every day for three months now. I mean, I've stood up in front of the entire class (both of them) and done the chicken dance. How intimidating can I be?

That's what I don't like about exam week, is the whining. If you ever want to hear a group of adult Peruvians sound like children, tell them to put their pencils down and hand in their tests. But Teacherrrrrrr, 5 more minutes. Pleeeeeeaaaaaasssse! They're worse than I was when my mom would tell me to get out of the pool. And not only do I give the 5 minute warning my mom gave me, but I also give them a 30 and a 10 minute warning. They start whining as soon as I give those warnings, as if I have personally sped up the clock. They do the same thing with the listening CDs. I tell them ahead of time that I will only be playing the CD once, or twice depending on the situation, but as soon as it's over (and sometimes before that) they start begging me to play it again. What part of NO don't you understand? It's the same in Spanish!

And no matter what I do, I can't get them to spell my name right. I even write it on the board, but I still get a load of test papers with "Kelly" listed as the teacher. Today, I even saw a guy write it the correct way, look at it, decide it didn't look right, and change the "i" to a "y." Do you think I don't know how to spell my own name? The woman next to him didn't even bother. She just wrote "Kell."

But it was in my first class that I had the most unique misspelling ever. I've never seen this version of my name before, and I hope I will never see it again. One of my students, who is not the brightest crayon in the box, spelled it "Quelly". She got a 37%. (And before you can ask, that's the grade she earned, not one given out of spite.)

Book Review: A Thousand Splendid Suns

2008-04-29T11:03:00.004-04:00

We interrupt this travel/ESL teaching blog for another book review.

Last year, I finally got around to reading The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini, after it was recommended to me by several people. I didn't know that I could really get into a book about Afghanistan, though. It didn't really seem to be within my scope of reading tastes, but after the first few chapters, I couldn't put it down. A Thousand Splendid Suns, also by Hosseini, was the same way. I didn't want to stop reading and go to class. This one may be even better than The Kite Runner.

It's also unbelievably heartbreaking. While The Kite Runner is about a friendship between two young boys, Suns is about the women of Afghanistan. The first, Miriam, is sent to marry a man she's never met by her illegitimate father at the age of 15. Laila is forced to become his second wife after her family is killed by the constant violence in Kabul. The novel chronicles the recent history of Afghanistan, from Soviet occupation in the 80's, to the Afghanis joy at the Taliban coming in to save them in the 90's. I was amazed at the American's determination to oust the Soviets (because nothing can be worse than communism, right?) and their ability to ignore what happened afterward (and paying the ultimate price for that ignorance a decade later).

At times, I had to put the book down out of shock and thank my lucky stars I was born where I was. According to the Taliban, women could not leave the house without being completely covered and with a man, couldn't have a job, could only use the worst hospitals, and could be beaten for no reason. Any domestic violence was considered a "private, family matter." And no one, man or woman, could laugh, dance, or sing.

Despite all that, it really is a beautiful book. You should pick it up.

Shameless begging works!

2008-04-25T15:24:00.004-04:00

I hit the motherlode with packages this week. Waiting for me when I returned from my epic Inca Trail journey was a package from my aunt Bridget that included a book, brownie mix (dark chocolate!), measuring cups (wow, people do read my blog!) and... the anxiously awaited Sports Illustrated baseball preview issue! Yesssss! I immediately opened it up to the NL East to see where my team was predicted to finish. 3rd. Hmmm....

In order to receive a package, you have to actually go to the post office, hand over your package notice, and wait for them to call you to the back, where they will demand to see your passport (the original, a copy will not suffice) and open your package, remove everything and log each item you received. I have no idea why. On Monday, I was only there for 20 minutes to pick up Bridget's package. Wednesday was a different story. I got another package notice, this one from the librarians of Dacula, my favorite librarians in all the land. I had to wait a full hour for my package, but I forgot all about the wait after I saw what they had done for me. Meg (the boss lady) had sent me an email asking for a wishlist, so I sent one, expecting a few things on the list. I got everything on the list and then some. The post office lady just kept pulling things out of the box, until she finally gave up. It was full of peanut m&m's (loads of them!) trail mix, not one but TWO jars of peanut butter, UNO cards, books, crochet patterns, beauty products, lots of travel necessities, chocolate chips for brownie baking (others are very excited about all the brownie baking possibilities) and another baseball magazine (this one says the Braves will finish 2nd. Getting better.) I was in tears, I was so touched. I'm sure my taxi driver on the way home thought I was crazy.

Thank you, thank you, thank you everyone! I send you all electronic hugs.

Inca Trail, Day 4: WOW!

2008-04-22T10:35:00.015-04:00

The wake-up call for Machu Picchu: 4am. After breakfast, we had to do a bit of night hiking to the last checkpoint before Machu Picchu. No problem for me, though, I was rocking the head lamp. (Although Kris and Armando will probably tell you I was a bit of a blinding menace with that thing on.) The checkpoint was scheduled to open at 5:30, but actually opened a few minutes early, which must be a first in South American history. After we got through the checkpoint, it was about a 90 minute hike to Machu Picchu. It wasn't exactly a sunrise, (since the sun doesn't really rise or set in the mountains, it just gets light and dark) but the sun coming up over the mountains was awesome. It was a clear morning, with only a few clouds surrounding the mountaintops.

The first view of Machu Picchu was from the Sun Gate, which our guide told us could sometimes be the cloud gate or fog gate, but on that morning, it was nothing but sunshine. I was in complete awe. The view was clear, and my camera was functioning. I was pumped.

From the Sun Gate, we hiked down to the keeper's house, which is the view you always see in pictures and postcards. After taking all the pictures we could, we walked down to the main entrance (where you enter if you take the bus) to put our stuff in storage for the day, including my trusty walking stick. While gathering my stuff for storage, I heard a familiar voice. I realized it was one of my former students, who is a trail guide. I asked him how he was, and he said he was doing great, and that he was able to be a guide because of me. He introduced me to the couple he was guiding, who told me I must be a good teacher, because his English is so good. He was only in my class for a month, though, I can't take all the credit, but it was very nice to hear.

By 7am, it was already a hot day. It was fabulous. The first thing we did was hike up Wayna Picchu, the mountain behind Machu Picchu. Only 400 people can climb Wayne Picchu in a day. We were numbers 82 and 83 at 8am. It took about an hour to get up, and it was steep. After hiking for 3 days, I kept asking myself "why am I doing this?" To get to the top, I had to crawl through a very small tunnel (those Incas were tiny!) then had to scramble up a few precariously perched rocks. The view from the top was fantastic. The only thing surrounding Machu Picchu is mountains and trees, with the river and train tracks waaaaaay down below. Coming down from Wayna Picchu, my already sore knee became quite painful. I had to limp around on a bum leg for the rest of the day.

Armando gave us a tour of the ruins afterwards. Despite my bum knee, I had a fantastic time walking around the ruins and taking it all in. Kris decided it was more interesting to look at from a distance. I told him he was more than welcome to keep looking at it from a distance, but I had every intention of exploring every inch. (I like to think I shatter the stereotype of whiney
Americans.)

After I had finished exploring every inch, we took the bus down the mountain to the town of Aguas Calientes, a town that exists solely to get to and from Machu Picchu. I was downright dirty, and I know I smelled bad, but I certainly wasn't the only one. While we were waiting for the train, Kris asked me where my walking stick was. Oops. It hadn't been returned with the rest of my stuff from storage. Oh, well. We intended to rest during the 4 hour train ride back to Cusco (it's not that far, the train is just that slow), but we ended up sitting with a very chatty and hilarious group made up of 3 Canadians, an Irish couple, and a clueless Australian girl. (When Kris told her he was from Norway, she seriously replied, "Where's that?" Thank goodness she wasn't American.) The conversation made the long ride not seem so bad.

All in all, the Inca Trail is one of the coolest things I've ever done. Maybe it was the buttload of karma I racked up volunteering a few weeks ago, but everything worked out perfectly. I wouldn't have changed a thing.

Inca Trial, Day 3: #@%&*! Camera!

2008-04-21T12:11:00.004-04:00

The second night was the coldest night, and my Peruvian long underwear wasn't quite enough to keep me warm. I woke up several times in the night trying to get warm and comfortable. The tents we had were apparently made for Incas, seeing as how short they were. They certainly weren't made for vikings, Kris barely fit.

When I opened the tent in the morning, there was a fantastic view of the clouds sitting low in the valley. I grabbed my camera, only to discover that it wouldn't work. I couldn't even turn it on. Somehow, I managed to get it to take a picture of that view, but if you notice, that's the only picture I have of the third day. I have to wait a few weeks for Kris to return to Norway and email me some pictures. Luckily (?) it was so foggy in the morning, it didn't matter. I couldn't see anything anyway, but the thought of going to Machu Picchu without a camera was enough to make me cry.

Camera or no, the third day was the best day on the trail. The first hour and a half were straight uphill, which felt a bit like deja vu all over again from the previous day, only this time I didn't have nearly as much trouble with it. Apparently day 2 gave me iron lungs. I should really run a marathon as soon as I get home. When we reached the second pass, we crossed into the cloud forest, and the weather immediately got warmer and very humid. Just before lunch, we came to some Inca ruins overlooking the valley that we couldn't see due to fog. While we were there, though the fog broke. I reached for my camera, only to remember that it wasn't working. Argh.

During lunch, it began to rain. I put on my purple poncho, and we hit the trail. Despite the rain, this was the best stretch of trail. It was the jungle, so the rain was not only expected, but it just seemed appropriate. The trail was original Inca stone that went uphill and downhill (and was flat at times!) with a couple tunnels to walk through as well. The views were spectacular. Mist-shrouded mountain tops, with the sun hitting the valleys below. (I promise I'll have some pictures in a few weeks. Stupid camera.) We hit the campsite around 5pm, making it a very long, but very rewarding day.

The last campsite included a lodge with electricity, and a shower for the cost of 5 soles. I passed on the shower, though, I'm hardcore. After dinner, I managed to fix my camera. (Hallelujah!) I was going to have to hold the shutter open myself, but at least it would function. I was more than ready to get to Machu Picchu.

Tomorrow: A Wonder of the World

Inca Trail, Day 2: Beware the Altitude

2008-04-20T12:37:00.008-04:00

Our wake-up call for Day 2 was at 6am. The plan for the day was to climb, and to keep climbing, so after breakfast I tried chewing on some coca leaves to help with the altitude. I didn't like them, so I gave up after a minute or two. The minute we left the campsite, we started uphill. The morning was chilly, but by 7:30, I had already worked up a pretty good lather, and was breathing pretty hard. The goal was to ascend 1,000 meters in only a few hours. It was pretty brutal. I was hot while I was walking and freezing when I stopped (which we had to do pretty often). I was also hungry every hour due to the amount of energy I was burning. Every time I looked up, I got pretty discouraged. It was so high. And far. And steep. Armando advised me not to think about the future, though, only the present. But it was really hard not to keep looking up. Around noon, I finally made it to the summit, at 4,200 meters. Finally! Five hours of going straight uphill in serious altitude isn't as fun as it sounds. As I reached the top, the Brazilian guys from our meal group were already there and cheering me on. I felt like I should make a speech. (First, I'd like to thank my walking stick, without which I wouldn't be here. I'd also like to thank my guide, Armando, for his words of encouragement and advice. Finally, I would like to thank Kris, for retrieving my water out of my unreachable pocket whenever I asked for it. Thank you all.)

From there, it was literally all downhill. Downhill is a bit rougher on the legs, but at least I didn't feel like I was going to die with every step. It started raining about halfway down, though, making the rocks a bit slippery, which of course means that I slipped and fell. I have a nice gash on my right knee to show for it. After that, Armando was constantly begging me to be careful.

We arrived at the second campsite a little after 1pm, and were done for the day. Good thing, too. My legs were too tired to go any further, and it rained the rest of the day. Along the trail, the bathrooms at the campsites didn't actually have toilets, but holes in the ground that required hovering or squatting over. Luckily, the second campsite actually had toilets (but no seats, of course), for which my very tired legs were extremely grateful.

The rest of the day was spent in the tent, listening to the rain and playing cards. We played several rounds of Tic, the official Rowedder family game (and the only game I really know) and I learned several Norwegian card games. Between our 5:30 tea time and dinner, we taught the Brazilians how to play "Spoons." (Okay, so I know 2 card games). While playing, we acquired an audience of Peruvian porters, who were fascinated by the fast paced game. After the first round, the Italians joined us, along with their guide. Spoons with Italians and Brazilians is a very, very loud game. But oh so much fun.

Tommorrow: Inca Trail, Day 3: Disaster strikes in the jungle. (I'm getting good at these teasers, aren't I?)

Inca Trail, Day 1: And we're off!

2008-04-19T16:35:00.009-04:00

I'll be posting my amazing Inca Trail experience in daily installments, kind of like an original Charles Dicken's novel. Or Bridget Jones' Diary for that matter. You'll just have to stay tuned for the next 4 days to get the full story. Enjoy! I know I did.

Day 1: Kris and I had to meet our guide in the main square at 6:30am. Sadly, this is only a half hour before I usually teach my first class, so I really didn't have to get up any earlier. Somehow, we managed to get a guide all to ourselves. We camped and ate meals with another group, but we had one guide and two porters just for the two of us. I don't know how I managed that, but it was really nice. We didn't have to wait for other people, or feel like we were holding anybody up. As our guide, Armando told us, we were the bosses.

When we arrived at the head of the trail, we had to show our passports at the checkpoint. Only so many people are able to enter the trail a day, and you have to make reservations ahead of time, so we had to show passports and paperwork before we could get started. Then we were off, while a Peruvian woman snapped photos of us beginning our hike. I felt like I had just entered an amusement park and would have the opportunity to purchase the photos at the end of the day.

The first day was the easiest day on the trail. The day was overcast, but perfect hiking weather, with snow covered mountains in the distance. There were a few Incan ruins along the way, and it was a fairly easy hike. A little up and a little down. I was most impressed with the porters racing by us. Tiny Peruvian men hunched over with the weight of tents, food, propane for cooking, and anything else hikers didn't want to carry. And many of them wearing nothing but rubber sandals (and very deformed feet).

We ended up arriving at the camp site a full hour before anyone else. It was pretty chilly, so I had to don the long underwear I purchased from El Molino a few days prior. (Somehow, I managed to figure out how to ask for long underwear in Spanish. Ropa termico, in case you were wondering.) Dinner was with a group of about 11 other hikers. Five Argentinians, two Brazilians, two Italians (who spoke Spanish with an incredibly strong Italian accent and talked about nothing but Italian food), a Chilean/Swiss, and a Swiss. The dinner conversation was in rapid Spanish, with everyone talking over each other, so I really didn't stand a chance. The Swiss woman was the only other quiet one at the table, so we talked to her for a bit. After dinner, it was bedtime at 8pm, but we were going to need all the sleep we could get. It was straight uphill for day 2.

Tomorrow: Inca Trail, Day 2. If the altitude doesn't kill me, that stink in the bathroom will.

Finally!

2008-04-14T13:35:00.003-04:00

For years, Machu Picchu has been at the top of my must-see list. Now that I've been here for almost three months, it's time to check it out. I'm taking the rest of the week off (which, by the way, is very distressing to my students. I was quite flattered by their reactions, and their wanting to make sure I would be returning.) and hiking the Inca Trail. The Trail will take 4 days, arriving at Machu Picchu on the fourth day. I'm hiking with Kris, a Norwegian friend I met in Ecuador. Since I've been waiting so long for this, I figure one of three things will happen when I finally see it.

I will be so overwhelmed at the sight and overcome with emotion, I will immediately burst into tears.
I'll have created such high expectations and seen so many pictures, that when I finally get there, I'll look at it and say, "That's it?"
Something in between scenario 1 and 2.

I'll be sure and let you know what happens in great detail when I return.

Peru-Turkmenistan Post

2008-04-11T14:14:00.002-04:00

As many of you know, Kelly, one of my favorite people in the world, is currently in Turkmenistan with the Peace Corps. We´re doing the same thing on opposite ends of the world, but in very different situations. Kelly´s internet access is extremely limited, so I sent her a letter via snail mail sometime in February. I´m pretty sure I made history as the first person in Peru to send mail to Turkmenistan. (And the second! Both trips to the post office produced the question "¿Donde es Turkmenistan?") I had no idea how long it would take my letter to reach her, but my best guess was about 6 months. I was a little off, though. I received a response from her within a month. I was pretty amazed at the things she had to say. I may be struggling to learn Spanish, but the people of her city speak a blend of Turkmen, Russian, and Uzbek, so it´s pretty much impossible to learn. I was most shocked and saddened, however, when she told me she had (temporarily) stopped the beating of first graders. Thank goodness I don´t have to deal with that. Soviet habits die hard, I guess. I´m glad she´s there to stop them.

Things really are backwards in the Southern Hemisphere

2008-04-08T15:22:00.004-04:00

The other day, I did something I didn´t think was possible. I bought vegetables. And cooked them. And ATE them. Granted, it was only peppers, and I put them in my pasta, but still. I don´t even know how to actually cook vegetables. I´ve been eating more and more vegetables since I got here, but not on purpose of course. The vegetables I´ve eaten have been in soups or dishes prepared for me. (However, I still refuse to eat the mushrooms, much to the delight of my roommates, since they get to eat what I´ve picked out. Mushrooms are a love/hate thing, there is no in between. You either love eating slimy fungus, or you don´t. I don´t.) I also eat avocado now, which I never did before. It all started when I consulted Dr. Mom about the horrible leg cramps that were waking me up at night, and she suggested I needed more potassium. I know bananas have potassium, but I did an internet search on the always reliable, never wrong Wikipedia, which said avocados also have lots of potassium. And since avocados are (almost literally) a dime a dozen here, I´ve been eating cheese and avocado sandwiches ever since, and have not had any cramping problems.

Don´t worry, though, I´m not a completely changed person. I was pretty horrified and disgusted on Sunday when I walked into the kitchen to find Alayne´s new novio cooking us dinner with chicken feet. I agreed to eat the dinner only after I was assured that my soup did not contain any leftover chicken parts, but Jake made sure to remove the chicken feet from his soup and wave them around my face several times. Real mature. (He got the stink eye.)

Building up the karma bank

2008-04-06T11:06:00.005-04:00

I really only believe in karma while traveling in far away places. Too many things can go wrong while away from home, and karma can be a real bitch sometimes. The easiest way to build up karma while traveling is by giving a donation to a church while touring. I'm sure there is something sac religious about giving money to a church to build up karma, but I'm a religious pluralist and think it's possible for them all to work. (Except the made up ones, like scientology. I don't really get that.) Besides, karma is essentially the same idea as the Christian practice of tithing. Give to God (or the universe) and God (or the universe) will give back to you.

That being said, I did not volunteer yesterday at a local school solely to build up karma, although I would be really happy if that helped. I was hoping to be able to volunteer somehow since I got here, I just wasn't sure how. On Saturday, several other teachers and I volunteered to help paint classrooms at a local school. I put on my oldest traveling pants (that I bought three years ago for the British Isles trip I took with Holli, which have now been to over 10 countries, don't have functioning pockets, and should really be put out of their misery) and got ready to work. We expected it to be about 3 hours, 4 tops, but it turned out to be 5. Our supplies were pretty limited. We barely had enough paint brushes to go around, and only two rollers for three rooms, and the rollers kept taking chunks of wall with them. I was assigned to a room with Alayne and Maribeth. There was a thick layer of dust everywhere. The walls really needed to be scraped before we started, but we had neither the tools nor the time, so we just had to paint over it. It wasn't long before we had a group of kids who really wanted to help out. So much so that they got into near physical arguments over the last remaining paintbrush and we had to step in to moderate. After we ran out of paint, we took a break to play soccer with the kids. I played soccer for one season in the third grade, so I'm not exactly good at it, but it was so much fun to play with them. I'd like to be able to do it more often. Maybe they need a recess monitor or something. After a little while the new paint arrived (although it wasn't exactly the same shade of white), and it was time to get back to work, which caused more arguments over paintbrushes, so we asked all the kids to go play soccer instead of painting. By the time we put one coat of paint in our classroom, I was pretty wiped out and HUNGRY (next time I'll be sure to bring a lunch), and all the kids had bailed to go home and eat lunch. Even if it doesn't help with karma, it can't hurt, right? Plus, talking to the kids helps me with my Spanish. They're just happy to be talking.

No more Hitler?

2008-04-03T14:11:00.003-04:00

Month #3 of 6 began this week (where did the time go?), and fortunately/unfortunately, Hitler is no longer my student. Fortunately, because, while he did improve over the weeks, he is still prone to mood swings and was certainly not my favorite student. Unfortunately, because the number of jokes I can tell has suddenly decreased. Actually, I didn´t even have to make a joke, everything I said about him just sounded funny because of the name. I´ve passed the pleasure of teaching Hitler onto my roommate Jake for now. For whatever reason, Hitler never took the final exam (or if he did, I never saw the end result) and is repeating the basic level. I don´t know why, but then again, who am I to understand the inner workings of Hitler.

My schedule is staying the same for the third month in a row. Now, however, I no longer have any classes in the basement. The basement is cold and smells bad. It also shares a hallway with a nightclub (although you and I might refer to this nightclub as a "strip club") so I no longer have to compete with loud sound checks and, er, dancers arriving to work for the attention of my classes. I moved up with all my classes, even that once dreaded basico class, even though only 2 are holdovers (and they´re good holdovers). Someone in that class asked me where in the United States I am from. When I replied with Pennsylvania, another student said, "Where Dracula lives." I then explained the difference between Pennsylvania and Transylvania. There are quite a few, you know.

Funny sentences, Part I

2008-03-31T21:57:00.003-04:00

Teaching a second language can produce some funny results. Last week was exam week (my favorite week of the month, since there is no lesson planning required) and I got some pretty funny answers back. Those prepositions are awfully tricky. Here are a few of my favorites:

Does she say please?
I'm know a smoking
What are you doing last summer?
Are you kiss me
Don't we like ron and soda? (Who or what is ron?)
I don't forget your advise and I had your portrait in my bed. (That's just creepy.)
Take it easy and get some (my personal favorite)

Happy Opening Day

2008-03-30T23:26:00.004-04:00

Today is baseball's Opening Day, and the Braves are opening the season in the Nationals new stadium. I was hoping I would get to see it since the game is on ESPN, and we do, in fact, get two different ESPN channels. But when I turned to see if it was on, one channel was showing tennis and the other rugby. Rugby? I can understand soccer, but rugby isn't much of a South American sport. I've seen NBA games, so I'm sure I'll see a few baseball games, but apparently not tonight.

However, I am very pleased that today I have seen not one but two analysts (Ken Rosenthal for FOX and Jayson Stark for ESPN) choose the Braves to win the World Series. I know pre-season predictions don't mean anything, and Jayson Stark did say Andruw Jones was the most overrated centerfielder of all time, but I'll take it. (Something like 10 out of 14 analysts on espn.com picked Johan Santana to win the NL Cy Young. Boy, that's going out on a limb there.) And as long as Sports Illustrated doesn't pick them to win, I'll be happy. Bad things happen to those who grace the cover of that magazine. (Although I wouldn't know who SI picked since no one has sent me a copy of the preview issue. Big FAT hint right there.)

And you know what? The Braves will win the World Series. You know why? Because I won't be there to see it.

But can you pick your friend´s nose?

2008-03-28T15:28:00.003-04:00

There are a few things that I´ve noticed are socially acceptable in Peru that are not nearly as accepted in the States. Public urination and defication certainly stand out, but I really only see that happening once or twice a week. The one that I see happening every day, however, is the nose pick. This isn´t just a nose scratch that could be mistaken for a nose pick either. I´ve noticed that many Peruvians are quite the gold diggers and will pick their nose at any time and any place. The other day I turned around to face my class after writing something on the board and one of my students had his finger so far up his nose I thought it would surely get stuck. It didn´t seem to matter that I caught him red handed (I´m sure there´s a joke there somewhere, I just can´t put my finger on it...), he had no shame. Then again, it seems to make sense. 97% of public restrooms (and even many private ones) have no toilet paper (or a seat for that matter, I´m a champion squatter now) so where can I expect them to get a tissue?

High Altitude Brownies, take 2

2008-03-26T10:42:00.003-04:00

Tonya was kind enough to send me a high altitude brownie recipe from a high altitude cookbook she found in the library. (Why residents of Dacula, GA would be in need of high altitude cooking advice is beyond me, but I'm grateful for it now.) I decided to test it out on Thursday evening before I left for the jungle. Fellow teacher Emma came over to assist (and to watch American Idol, which I never watched at home, but have been sucked into thanks to Emma). The first problem I have with cooking is that it asks for specific measurements of ingredients and a specific oven temperature. I don't have access to measuring devices, so I just have to guess. Our oven is either on or off, there is no temperature adjustment. I turn the gas on and light the oven with a match (which can be a little scary sometimes). I also don't have access to "dutch powder cocoa" and semi-sweet chocolate chips, so I buy huge blocks of chocolate and use the cheese grater. I use the smaller grate for powder and the bigger one for chips. No microwave either, so I have to melt the butter on the stove. Just like the good old days that I wasn't around for. I followed the recipe as closely as I could, and once again, the batter tasted delicious. I was just a little concerned about what it would taste like after it was cooked. The result: They were a bit greasy on the bottom and crispy on top. Emma thought they were delicious, but she's British and I've discovered brownies are a very American thing. I decided next time I should reduce either the amount of butter or eggs to make them less greasy. However, when I returned from the jungle, they tasted amazing. Nice and moist and very rich. Next time I'll just make them 3 days ahead of when I want to actually eat them and they will be perfection.