So... yesterday I got peed on by a baby llama.
...my infatuation with the cutesy cuddly creatures has probably ended...
Daniel and I are in a mad tear to get to Maximo to get our taxi to the airport. We´re leaving for the amazon rainforest in two hours.... we´ll be back around lunch time Tuesday... but we wont have internet until then. So.... don´t worry !!!! As soon as i can get to internet on tuesday I´ll write even just to say we´re fine.
xoxoxoxoxo
Love you, Family!!!!!!!!!
-A.
Sunday, August 12, 2012
Friday, August 10, 2012
¨The Island¨ continued...
Haayyy,
I sit here, with Daniel, in Puno at Balsa Inn (not to be mistook for bolsa which means Bag... we are NOT at Bag Inn... I know, I´m almost as disappointed as you...) after what is almost definitely the biggest and best meal we´ve had since arriving in Peru two weeks ago. It´s taken us a long time to write anything since the last week has been haywire with business and trips and all sorts of lacking interweb. Presently, we´re waiting for a taxi to bring us to the bus for our 7hr bus ride back to Cusco... so now is as good a time as any to cram in everything possible.
The Cauliflower story: we´ve been trying to decide where to stay for our last night in Cusco, as our prepaid days at the homestay are up as of August 12. I´ve been kind of on the cheapskate end saying we should pay the extra 45 bucks american to stay at the homestay again, but Daniel´s been feeling a little under the weather with the food (or lack thereof) that we´ve been getting. On the final day there for lunch before heading out to Lake Titicaca, we were served three pieces of cauliflower. . . and a bun... over the course of an hour and a half waiting at the table.... so, after lunch we decided that maybe we´ll splurge the extra 40 bucks or whatever to get a hotel that has continental breakfast. And THAT, is how the cauliflower changed the course of our journey!
In the cauliflowers defense, it was grilled in a pan and tasted MIGHTY fine to me. Just sayin´. lol.
So we had our last day of construction which was lovely. Lots of lifting and plastering and getting wet cement stuff down the shirt n in the hair, eyes... whatever.... all in good fun though. We had a great time with the other volunteers, as they were always in great spirits so I really enjoyed my time being manly helping build a preschool/daycare.
We packed up and headed to Puno over a 7hr overnight bus, then got here at around 530am. We were given until 8am at a hotel to sleep, pee, eat breakfast, and hightail it to the next taxi to take us to the dock where we´d catch our boat to take us to the first of three islands in Lake Titicaca. The breakfast was pretty sweet... and neither of us got sick which is always a plus. The first island is one of those islands made entirely of reeds and floats around all weird like. it was cool to visit, but not to live haha. It took about an hour to get to in our LUXURIOUS boat that was STATE OF THE ART and ENVIRIONMENTALLY FRIENDLY.
HA. ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
The next island was ¨three¨hours away... but that took more around four because we broke down. Hilarious.
It is so funny to watch some random dude try to poke reeds out from this ole diesal gas guzzline motor creature that was backfiring everywhere with some random Stick that he found. All in good fun! Daniel and I hung out mostly on the roof of the boat where there were a few seats and took pics, but after the Reed Floating island, he was feeling pretty allergic to everything so it was kind of a sin for me to stay up there with him drippin out of every orifice. Poor guy.
The next island was where we were staying overnight. It had no cars, no horses, no cows (but one bull!)... no real running water... lots of outhouses and it was a mountain. As in... the entire island was a mountain. So when we got off the boat n met the man who would be our Padre for the night, we had to hike to his house halfway up a mountain with bookbags chocked full of clothes and water, in addition to our coats and sleeping bags since it gets REALLY cold on the lake. I genuinely thought I was gonna keel over... and Daniel was nice enough to take my sleeping bag so I didn´t have to carry so much. It sucks being so high in altititude since no matter how fit you are you get winded super easily.
Our room was WAY better than expected since it had beds and windows and a door with a lock AND a teensy little light! The doors here are all like... 4 feet high max so I bashed my head off the doorframe more than once going in and out but it was great. The food scared the crap out of us but we didnt have much choice in the matter (quinoa soup, ¨potatoes¨and ... rice I think...). We made our own tea from leaves they gave us. I was afraid I would get an epic parasite but apparently not! woot!
After supper the man and woman we were staying with kind of ambushed us with traditional peruvian clothes and sort of were all AHHH TAKE UR COAT OFF WEAR THE SKIRT NO PANTS WHEEEE so I ended up wearing like 20lbs of garments that were all kinds of almost... rainbowy-amish...ish... and Daniel had a 15lb grey poncho thing to wear. Then we wandered through the bushes and ended up at a dance hall in the pitch black where all the other tourists were equally foolishly dressed and a band played us random flute music and we danced and such. Great times!
Somewhere between landing, and eating supper, we climbed a mountain up to soething like 4130m above sealevel which was INTENSE and all things awesome. Lots of pics!!! Lots of ruins and ancient rock things. It was really super cool too cuz we got to watch the sunset up there. :D
The next day (being today) didn´t really work out as well.... but for better or worse we ended up at another island (after a LONG night being scared shitless from a moth... but we didn´t know it was a moth I thought it was a monster so man cut me some slack hahaha) where we climbed another mountain with two buns in our systems... but then some... Miscommunication we´ll call it... resulted in a bit of a botched lunch... which then kind of went a bit sour mainly because Daniel n I were in the mood to cause a scene.... so we´ll see how that all plays out. We may be getting some money back from the tour ppl... I hope so. If not, than ... well... we´ll see :)
So we ended up back on the AWESOME BOAT that steamed out all this black smoke from this huge pipe in the back whiich was HILARIOUS to all us passengers who were all BFFs by this point. We were getting passed by all the other boats as we ´chugged right along´ our best pace of maybe 5km per hour. hahahaha. Daniel was feeling a bit under the weather from the heat, so he stayed inside the hull of the boat and i went up on the roof again n lid down on a bench n kind of just chillaxed up there with some people from some random country who were all really nice and I got a lovely tan (burn) on my face. Yee! It seriously was an awesome boat ride... no joke it was hilarious and super relaxing as long as you kind of ignored the tour guide lol.
So we ended up back here in Puno where we ate this HUGE meal of cheeseless pizza, cheeseless garlic bread, two bellinis, and a cup of nutella (random but WOOO!!!!) over the course of... 3 hrs? Something like that. We had time to kill so we didn´t really mind the garb service.
So now we´re back at the hotel we started at waiting for the taxi.
A LOT more happened that I wish I could get into epic detail, but this is already super long and then i´ll have nothing exciting to ramble on about when I get home! Safe to say though, i cannot WAIT to be back to the land of toilets that flush without manually throwing a bucket of water into the bowl, and toilets that allow you to throw toilet paper into them... and showers... mmm... showers....
Daniel is feeling much better now that we´ve got a decent meal into us (as well as a few childrens multivitamins lol).
So TOMORROW is Maximo Nivel day where we explain to the company our... experience... with Lake Titicaca... and we´ll see if anything gets fixed up before we head off to the amazon rainforest on sunday. Which, btw, I´m kind of worried about cuz appaently the mosquitos are RIDICULOUS according to these Dutch(?) people we met on the boat. So... we´ll see. Fingers crossed all the bugs died between when those ppl went and when we get there.
Oh... and if you´re wondering about the title about The Island... it was a gem spoken by our dutch friends after our... Lunch... experience... which was all in good fun because really what are you gonna do in the middle of B.F. Nowhere (which, btw, is quite near Bolivia!) ... other than have a laugh and be happy for all the great experiences that make you really appreciative for being born and raised in Canada!
Until next time! Ciao!!!!!!! :)
I sit here, with Daniel, in Puno at Balsa Inn (not to be mistook for bolsa which means Bag... we are NOT at Bag Inn... I know, I´m almost as disappointed as you...) after what is almost definitely the biggest and best meal we´ve had since arriving in Peru two weeks ago. It´s taken us a long time to write anything since the last week has been haywire with business and trips and all sorts of lacking interweb. Presently, we´re waiting for a taxi to bring us to the bus for our 7hr bus ride back to Cusco... so now is as good a time as any to cram in everything possible.
The Cauliflower story: we´ve been trying to decide where to stay for our last night in Cusco, as our prepaid days at the homestay are up as of August 12. I´ve been kind of on the cheapskate end saying we should pay the extra 45 bucks american to stay at the homestay again, but Daniel´s been feeling a little under the weather with the food (or lack thereof) that we´ve been getting. On the final day there for lunch before heading out to Lake Titicaca, we were served three pieces of cauliflower. . . and a bun... over the course of an hour and a half waiting at the table.... so, after lunch we decided that maybe we´ll splurge the extra 40 bucks or whatever to get a hotel that has continental breakfast. And THAT, is how the cauliflower changed the course of our journey!
In the cauliflowers defense, it was grilled in a pan and tasted MIGHTY fine to me. Just sayin´. lol.
So we had our last day of construction which was lovely. Lots of lifting and plastering and getting wet cement stuff down the shirt n in the hair, eyes... whatever.... all in good fun though. We had a great time with the other volunteers, as they were always in great spirits so I really enjoyed my time being manly helping build a preschool/daycare.
We packed up and headed to Puno over a 7hr overnight bus, then got here at around 530am. We were given until 8am at a hotel to sleep, pee, eat breakfast, and hightail it to the next taxi to take us to the dock where we´d catch our boat to take us to the first of three islands in Lake Titicaca. The breakfast was pretty sweet... and neither of us got sick which is always a plus. The first island is one of those islands made entirely of reeds and floats around all weird like. it was cool to visit, but not to live haha. It took about an hour to get to in our LUXURIOUS boat that was STATE OF THE ART and ENVIRIONMENTALLY FRIENDLY.
HA. ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
The next island was ¨three¨hours away... but that took more around four because we broke down. Hilarious.
It is so funny to watch some random dude try to poke reeds out from this ole diesal gas guzzline motor creature that was backfiring everywhere with some random Stick that he found. All in good fun! Daniel and I hung out mostly on the roof of the boat where there were a few seats and took pics, but after the Reed Floating island, he was feeling pretty allergic to everything so it was kind of a sin for me to stay up there with him drippin out of every orifice. Poor guy.
The next island was where we were staying overnight. It had no cars, no horses, no cows (but one bull!)... no real running water... lots of outhouses and it was a mountain. As in... the entire island was a mountain. So when we got off the boat n met the man who would be our Padre for the night, we had to hike to his house halfway up a mountain with bookbags chocked full of clothes and water, in addition to our coats and sleeping bags since it gets REALLY cold on the lake. I genuinely thought I was gonna keel over... and Daniel was nice enough to take my sleeping bag so I didn´t have to carry so much. It sucks being so high in altititude since no matter how fit you are you get winded super easily.
Our room was WAY better than expected since it had beds and windows and a door with a lock AND a teensy little light! The doors here are all like... 4 feet high max so I bashed my head off the doorframe more than once going in and out but it was great. The food scared the crap out of us but we didnt have much choice in the matter (quinoa soup, ¨potatoes¨and ... rice I think...). We made our own tea from leaves they gave us. I was afraid I would get an epic parasite but apparently not! woot!
After supper the man and woman we were staying with kind of ambushed us with traditional peruvian clothes and sort of were all AHHH TAKE UR COAT OFF WEAR THE SKIRT NO PANTS WHEEEE so I ended up wearing like 20lbs of garments that were all kinds of almost... rainbowy-amish...ish... and Daniel had a 15lb grey poncho thing to wear. Then we wandered through the bushes and ended up at a dance hall in the pitch black where all the other tourists were equally foolishly dressed and a band played us random flute music and we danced and such. Great times!
Somewhere between landing, and eating supper, we climbed a mountain up to soething like 4130m above sealevel which was INTENSE and all things awesome. Lots of pics!!! Lots of ruins and ancient rock things. It was really super cool too cuz we got to watch the sunset up there. :D
The next day (being today) didn´t really work out as well.... but for better or worse we ended up at another island (after a LONG night being scared shitless from a moth... but we didn´t know it was a moth I thought it was a monster so man cut me some slack hahaha) where we climbed another mountain with two buns in our systems... but then some... Miscommunication we´ll call it... resulted in a bit of a botched lunch... which then kind of went a bit sour mainly because Daniel n I were in the mood to cause a scene.... so we´ll see how that all plays out. We may be getting some money back from the tour ppl... I hope so. If not, than ... well... we´ll see :)
So we ended up back on the AWESOME BOAT that steamed out all this black smoke from this huge pipe in the back whiich was HILARIOUS to all us passengers who were all BFFs by this point. We were getting passed by all the other boats as we ´chugged right along´ our best pace of maybe 5km per hour. hahahaha. Daniel was feeling a bit under the weather from the heat, so he stayed inside the hull of the boat and i went up on the roof again n lid down on a bench n kind of just chillaxed up there with some people from some random country who were all really nice and I got a lovely tan (burn) on my face. Yee! It seriously was an awesome boat ride... no joke it was hilarious and super relaxing as long as you kind of ignored the tour guide lol.
So we ended up back here in Puno where we ate this HUGE meal of cheeseless pizza, cheeseless garlic bread, two bellinis, and a cup of nutella (random but WOOO!!!!) over the course of... 3 hrs? Something like that. We had time to kill so we didn´t really mind the garb service.
So now we´re back at the hotel we started at waiting for the taxi.
A LOT more happened that I wish I could get into epic detail, but this is already super long and then i´ll have nothing exciting to ramble on about when I get home! Safe to say though, i cannot WAIT to be back to the land of toilets that flush without manually throwing a bucket of water into the bowl, and toilets that allow you to throw toilet paper into them... and showers... mmm... showers....
Daniel is feeling much better now that we´ve got a decent meal into us (as well as a few childrens multivitamins lol).
So TOMORROW is Maximo Nivel day where we explain to the company our... experience... with Lake Titicaca... and we´ll see if anything gets fixed up before we head off to the amazon rainforest on sunday. Which, btw, I´m kind of worried about cuz appaently the mosquitos are RIDICULOUS according to these Dutch(?) people we met on the boat. So... we´ll see. Fingers crossed all the bugs died between when those ppl went and when we get there.
Oh... and if you´re wondering about the title about The Island... it was a gem spoken by our dutch friends after our... Lunch... experience... which was all in good fun because really what are you gonna do in the middle of B.F. Nowhere (which, btw, is quite near Bolivia!) ... other than have a laugh and be happy for all the great experiences that make you really appreciative for being born and raised in Canada!
Until next time! Ciao!!!!!!! :)
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
The Cauliflower was the Deciding Factor.... Prt1
We bought peanut butter
Then we went to the Muse during Happy Hour and put it on a warm brownie with some pisco sours (43%alcohol) and had a lovely dessert.
In other news, Daniel will write you later before we catch our 12 hr bus to Puno.
Until then..... To Be Continued!!!!
Then we went to the Muse during Happy Hour and put it on a warm brownie with some pisco sours (43%alcohol) and had a lovely dessert.
In other news, Daniel will write you later before we catch our 12 hr bus to Puno.
Until then..... To Be Continued!!!!
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
50 Shades of Brown
Olah!
Today was our earliest rise so far... had to be at our work site by 9 which is wayyyyy out of the way, at least 20-25 minutes from where we are staying in Cusco by taxi. After the sketchiest 20-25 minutes of our lives (without really recognizing anything en route from the day before, and with pseudo-faith in our driver) we arrived at our placement!
Today was a really productive day, with very little down time and loads of manual labor. As soon as we got there Marco (the foreman) got us to bring up bags of cement mix (110 pounds a pop!) from the bottom of a huge hill to the top where our daycare is. After 10 minutes I was pretty much gassed, and then I got to bring 2 wheelbarrow loads of fine cement (for solidifying the foundation from the inside) from the storag shed (probably 100 meters from the daycare, nopt complaining!)
I filled in the inner foundation with another woman from South Africa, which was pretty tricky in`places because there were fairly deep holes in the cement we were filling in. But after a while we figured out the right consistency to mix up the cement so it was a lot of fun! Really similar to mixing up mortar for layin ceramic tile if you´ve ever done that before! This finer cement apparently burns your hands when it mixes with water so we had to wear gloves, and every time we mixed up a new batch (it dried quickly so had to mix A LOT of batches) dust would form a billowing cloud and there was no way to avoid breathing it in. Nasty stuff to say the least, masks would definitely not go astray.
Angie was on plaster duty all day.. she pretty much plastered her whole house so she was already an expert at it :P Only problem was the ceilings are at least 9 feet tall, and we don´t have a ladder so no one can really plaster the upper walls! She rigged up some bricks for steps but without a ladder, no one but Shaq was getting up there.
So tomorrow I guess we will figure out some way to get up there with the plaster..we are just touching up things tomorrow (chistling down imperfections in the walls and floors and plastering a ceiling) and the painting will be done once all the plaster and concrete dries.
After construction we followed our group to a random Combi we´d never taken before (different route). On our walk to the random Combi, we noticed how you could probably paint a picture of the entire region with varying shades of brown (with the exception of occasional greens or yellows).
And then we got lost.
Instead of ending up at the main Plaza, we got off close to our homestay (15+ minutes from the Plaza, lol) Apparently that Combi goes way, way out past the district of Cusco into another ¨Plaza de Armas¨, so for anyone planning on coming to these parts, theres a ¨Plaza de Armas¨ for every district. Wish we thought of that... almost ending up leaving the city! The district of Cusco is within the city of Cusco but there are different districts, or something along those lines.
So after 45 minutes of Combi riding, a 15 minute taxi ride and 15 minutes of walking around, we finally got to Jacks Cafe (our safe haven for cuisine in Cusco). At this point we were pretty well on the verge of collapsing from hunger so we ate a small feast before proceeding to the next destination. Christo Blanco.
It wasn´t as far up as we expected it to be, but a 30 minute trek up cobblestone steps after 3 hours of construction was pretty taxing to say the least! When we finally made it to the top there was huge white statue of Chirst himself (surrounded by a barbwire fence), many merchants selling the typical Cusco merchandise, and most importantly a llama to take pictures with. After we´d had our share of llama pictures and the city (we were at around 3600 m at this point, so we had an amazing view of the entire city!) we decided to head back and down and explore the side streets close to Plaza de Armas some more. We found a few gems for restaurants, including a hippy-ish restaurant/bar/swingers club called the Muse. Literally felt like we walked into an Austin Powers movie.. all sofas and poofy chairs, low tables, and a 5-song playlist with Kings of Leon and Radiohead playing on repeat.
After we finished up at Muse, we dropped into Maximo to finalize our arrangements for the trips to Puno/ Lake Titicaca and the Amazon (SOOO EXCITEDD!!!) We were still wearing shorts and t-shirts and it had dropped to around 5 degrees Celsius at this point, so we were basically on the war path to get to Maximo and then to get a taxi to avoid getting hypothermia, or at the very least buy some clothes off a street merchant out of desperation.
We had planned to meet up at Normans Tavern for a drink with the construction team, but only Angie myself and the woman who I was paired with at construction and her son showed up. We ended up having a drink at the pub (Angie daringly ordered a Pisco Sour, the countries drink of choice, with no egg white... it tasted like a Whisky Sour from ack homek, but 100000 times more sour) before coming back to the Muse later in the night to try and make it for happy hour. Turns out we missed it by around 10 minutes, so we decided to just split a bottle of Champagne between the 4 of us.
It tasted like dirt. But it was cheap as dirt. No harm, no foul I guess... I still drank close to half of it so no complaints here :P
And now its just after 1230 here and we are volunteering (final day tomorow! :( ) at 9 am so I s´spose I´ll head off to bed.. more to come tomorrow hopefully! Doubt there´ll be another post until Saturday after tomorrow as the Titicaca Tour sounds to be very old-school (a.k.a, nar bit of internet)
Until next time, Buenos noches and word to your moms!
(<3 u mudder!)
-DD
Today was our earliest rise so far... had to be at our work site by 9 which is wayyyyy out of the way, at least 20-25 minutes from where we are staying in Cusco by taxi. After the sketchiest 20-25 minutes of our lives (without really recognizing anything en route from the day before, and with pseudo-faith in our driver) we arrived at our placement!
Today was a really productive day, with very little down time and loads of manual labor. As soon as we got there Marco (the foreman) got us to bring up bags of cement mix (110 pounds a pop!) from the bottom of a huge hill to the top where our daycare is. After 10 minutes I was pretty much gassed, and then I got to bring 2 wheelbarrow loads of fine cement (for solidifying the foundation from the inside) from the storag shed (probably 100 meters from the daycare, nopt complaining!)
I filled in the inner foundation with another woman from South Africa, which was pretty tricky in`places because there were fairly deep holes in the cement we were filling in. But after a while we figured out the right consistency to mix up the cement so it was a lot of fun! Really similar to mixing up mortar for layin ceramic tile if you´ve ever done that before! This finer cement apparently burns your hands when it mixes with water so we had to wear gloves, and every time we mixed up a new batch (it dried quickly so had to mix A LOT of batches) dust would form a billowing cloud and there was no way to avoid breathing it in. Nasty stuff to say the least, masks would definitely not go astray.
Angie was on plaster duty all day.. she pretty much plastered her whole house so she was already an expert at it :P Only problem was the ceilings are at least 9 feet tall, and we don´t have a ladder so no one can really plaster the upper walls! She rigged up some bricks for steps but without a ladder, no one but Shaq was getting up there.
So tomorrow I guess we will figure out some way to get up there with the plaster..we are just touching up things tomorrow (chistling down imperfections in the walls and floors and plastering a ceiling) and the painting will be done once all the plaster and concrete dries.
After construction we followed our group to a random Combi we´d never taken before (different route). On our walk to the random Combi, we noticed how you could probably paint a picture of the entire region with varying shades of brown (with the exception of occasional greens or yellows).
And then we got lost.
Instead of ending up at the main Plaza, we got off close to our homestay (15+ minutes from the Plaza, lol) Apparently that Combi goes way, way out past the district of Cusco into another ¨Plaza de Armas¨, so for anyone planning on coming to these parts, theres a ¨Plaza de Armas¨ for every district. Wish we thought of that... almost ending up leaving the city! The district of Cusco is within the city of Cusco but there are different districts, or something along those lines.
So after 45 minutes of Combi riding, a 15 minute taxi ride and 15 minutes of walking around, we finally got to Jacks Cafe (our safe haven for cuisine in Cusco). At this point we were pretty well on the verge of collapsing from hunger so we ate a small feast before proceeding to the next destination. Christo Blanco.
It wasn´t as far up as we expected it to be, but a 30 minute trek up cobblestone steps after 3 hours of construction was pretty taxing to say the least! When we finally made it to the top there was huge white statue of Chirst himself (surrounded by a barbwire fence), many merchants selling the typical Cusco merchandise, and most importantly a llama to take pictures with. After we´d had our share of llama pictures and the city (we were at around 3600 m at this point, so we had an amazing view of the entire city!) we decided to head back and down and explore the side streets close to Plaza de Armas some more. We found a few gems for restaurants, including a hippy-ish restaurant/bar/swingers club called the Muse. Literally felt like we walked into an Austin Powers movie.. all sofas and poofy chairs, low tables, and a 5-song playlist with Kings of Leon and Radiohead playing on repeat.
After we finished up at Muse, we dropped into Maximo to finalize our arrangements for the trips to Puno/ Lake Titicaca and the Amazon (SOOO EXCITEDD!!!) We were still wearing shorts and t-shirts and it had dropped to around 5 degrees Celsius at this point, so we were basically on the war path to get to Maximo and then to get a taxi to avoid getting hypothermia, or at the very least buy some clothes off a street merchant out of desperation.
We had planned to meet up at Normans Tavern for a drink with the construction team, but only Angie myself and the woman who I was paired with at construction and her son showed up. We ended up having a drink at the pub (Angie daringly ordered a Pisco Sour, the countries drink of choice, with no egg white... it tasted like a Whisky Sour from ack homek, but 100000 times more sour) before coming back to the Muse later in the night to try and make it for happy hour. Turns out we missed it by around 10 minutes, so we decided to just split a bottle of Champagne between the 4 of us.
It tasted like dirt. But it was cheap as dirt. No harm, no foul I guess... I still drank close to half of it so no complaints here :P
And now its just after 1230 here and we are volunteering (final day tomorow! :( ) at 9 am so I s´spose I´ll head off to bed.. more to come tomorrow hopefully! Doubt there´ll be another post until Saturday after tomorrow as the Titicaca Tour sounds to be very old-school (a.k.a, nar bit of internet)
Until next time, Buenos noches and word to your moms!
(<3 u mudder!)
-DD
Monday, August 6, 2012
Making Mud Pies
Hey,
It´s been a LONG and BUSY week since I last wrote. I came down with the ¨Cusco Cold¨ around the time of my last journal entry, and since then have pretty much been either MIA from the interweb in general, or too tired and crooked from blowing my nose and coughing up parts of lung to do much writing lol. Daniel was nice enough to write a bit ago... but lots has happened since then so I´ll do my best to keep this as brief (but as vibrant) as possible:
Last friday was our last day at the orphanage. We spent a lot of it playing hopscotch or running around or with soccer balls.... whatever we could find... but later in the day, Freddie (child prodigy) myself and Daniel all got together in where the piano is and had a jam session. His favorite songs were RHCP By The Way and One republic´s Apologize so I brought my iPod and made a mini playlist with those (among other coldplay songs) so we could all sing and have a time. My voice has been on and off since the flu started, so I sounded mostly like a happy walrus or something... but it was great fun until we told freddie that it was our last day.
I´m not a huge fan of sadness or crying.... especially when its in that type of situation... so it ended up being a rough Goodbye... I was kind of upset about it after we left so Daniel and I went to normans for wine and fries to cheer me up. Hopefully, freddie will be happy with the new volunteers. I hear that one of the volunteers (the one that introduced him to the piano, I believe) has been fund raising to build a scholarship for him so that he can go to music school. So i guess.... never think that being only One person isn´t enough to make a difference.
Ít´s always hard to say goodbye though. . .
ANYWAY....
Sautrday morning we headed out on our two day excursion to Machu Picchu which ended up being the most awe inspiring, beautiful.... i don´t have enough adjectives.... place in the world. I got to ride a train for the first time ever (that I know of.... Trinity Loop doesn´t count haha) and we stayed in a hostel in the town Aguas Calientes. the hostel was SICk cuz it had THE SIMPSONS in ENGLISH on a TELEVISION .... aaannnd we had THREE beds in the room to ourselves as well as a private bathroom. Of course... we didn´t really use much of our amnemities(sp) because we had to get up at 3:30am to boot it out into the unknown to find the bus stop that would take us to Machu Picchu.
Turns out that even thouh the first bus leaves at 5:30, you need to be lined up before 4:30 or you´ll be too far back in the line to make the first round of buses and in turn end up missing the sunrise. Luckily there was a third bus in the 1st series so we JUST made it!
Watching the sun rise in one of the biggest Wonders of the World through a metropolis of mountains while sitting amidsts thousands and thousands of steps carved by hand hundreds of years ago for pretty much unknown reasons.... I can´t explain to you how perfect that sun looked when it started sprouting the first few rays of light into the haze and a few minutes later its whole brilliance overtook everything .... everything was a golden color... It was perfect.
and then it got HOT (as balls) and after around 3 1/2 hrs of hiking on no sleep and no food (well... one bun for me and two buns for daniel that we rogued from the ¨breakfast¨at the hostel... breakfast being buns and jam . Daniel thinks she was going to cook us eggs. I was too tired to care. hahaha) we decided to Cheese it outta there onto the bus to take us down.... Careening down over the mountainside with reckless abandon, no guardrails and nothing but faith in dear Jesus to get us down in one piece.
There was a lot of religion found on that trip lol
BUT .... by the time we got back to Aguas Calientes it was like 11:30am.... so CLEARLY that was a good time to start bar hopping.
Later that day we caught a train that took four thousand years to get back to a place called Poroy (sp)..... actually it was about 4 1/2 hrs of train riding nonstop.... to course us through a Raging 92km.
.... yes. Ninety Two Kilometers.
I´m pretty sure I saw a sloth pass by us... and we all know how speedy those little buggers can be! (ba dum dum psssh).
Anyway Daniel fell asleep on the train like halfway through, leaving me to my own devices. My devices turned out to be me using the table in front of us, the window to my side, two cameras and my ipod as an imitation drum set and air-piano.... so for like an hour i was WAILING on this table like Beethoven or something havin a TIME and a half while the creepy non-english dude to my side stared incredulously at my complete insanity.
Then I decided to start taking pictures of myself throuhg my reflection in the window.... so here i was making all kinds of weird ole faces at myself with this camera perpetually flashing and me laughing away like a maniac...
I am pretty much the coolest person I know. ha.
THEN the guy that runs the tours picked us up in his family van (family included!) from Poroy and drove us the hour or so back to Cusco.... Only we had a road block half way through ....
...only the road block consisted of what looked like Cirque du Soleil on some kind of strike as expressed through Interpretive Dance.... There was tubas and drums and glocks everywhere... sequins and people dressed like Can Can dancers, clowns... I think I saw a dragon at one point.... Rannnndom!
And see.... okay.... you really need to BE in Cusco to understand this... but the roads are like... seven feet wide and between massive buildings made of concrete and adobe.... the roads are cobblestone and from what I can gather the only Road Rules that exist are ¨honk the horn all the time for no reason and every reason possible¨HONK PEDESTRIAAN HONK IM ON A ROAD HONK I LOVE TRAINS .... etc.
Anyway.... the van that picked us up was, much like the Machu Picchu bus, CAREENING around town in the middle of the night as if the Feds were on our tails.... and what happened!?!?!?!?
We ran into a ... building!
So all you hear is this RA RUMP CHQQQDHHHHSHHHH BANG!!!! and I was SURE we lost the full tire into the wall or the curb or something.
.... but do you think that slowed us down???? F no! HONK HONK I HIT A BUILDING HONK BEEP BEEP THERES A UNIVERSITY HONK HONK DOG HONK.... excellent.
TODAY we had our first day on the construction site in the middle of no where... actually no.... where we live is basically the middle of no where... the site is kind of like the ¨¨out around the bay¨of the ghetto in that it has less of what little is here.... meaning its pretty much just dirt and some random buildings that MAY be houses .... not sure....
On the way to catch the Combi (like a minivan but with like... seventy two people rammed into it and probbably built in the 60s)... WHO HAPPENED TO BE AT THE BUS STOP ON THE WAY BACK!!!!
The Circus striker folk!!!
Great to see you again you random glittery people with your stilts and your drums !! whee!!!
.... We made concrete out of dirt and rocks and some concrete powder on the floor-to-be with shovels and water.... its all manual labor all the time hardcoreness here! but it´s awesome! reminds me very much of Making Mud Pies in grade 1!!!! Tomorrow we´re plastering and I think us and the construction crew (80% of which are Canadian btw) are going out for Pisco Sours (the national drink... which has raw egg white in it... I haven´t had it yet because I don´t want worms or salmonella But hey.... when in rome!).
...Okay os this seems long enough. There´s UBER more to write about but seriously, I can´t expect anyone to read my ramblings when they trail on longer than what a short novel would be.
So, I guess in short, the main premise of this story is.... Daniel and I really miss the food at home.... and we can´t wait to show you our pictures!!!!!! YAYyAyyaYaYyYyy!!!!!!!
xoxoxo,
-A.
PS: I LOVE MY MOMMABEAR!!!!!!!!!!! :-D
It´s been a LONG and BUSY week since I last wrote. I came down with the ¨Cusco Cold¨ around the time of my last journal entry, and since then have pretty much been either MIA from the interweb in general, or too tired and crooked from blowing my nose and coughing up parts of lung to do much writing lol. Daniel was nice enough to write a bit ago... but lots has happened since then so I´ll do my best to keep this as brief (but as vibrant) as possible:
Last friday was our last day at the orphanage. We spent a lot of it playing hopscotch or running around or with soccer balls.... whatever we could find... but later in the day, Freddie (child prodigy) myself and Daniel all got together in where the piano is and had a jam session. His favorite songs were RHCP By The Way and One republic´s Apologize so I brought my iPod and made a mini playlist with those (among other coldplay songs) so we could all sing and have a time. My voice has been on and off since the flu started, so I sounded mostly like a happy walrus or something... but it was great fun until we told freddie that it was our last day.
I´m not a huge fan of sadness or crying.... especially when its in that type of situation... so it ended up being a rough Goodbye... I was kind of upset about it after we left so Daniel and I went to normans for wine and fries to cheer me up. Hopefully, freddie will be happy with the new volunteers. I hear that one of the volunteers (the one that introduced him to the piano, I believe) has been fund raising to build a scholarship for him so that he can go to music school. So i guess.... never think that being only One person isn´t enough to make a difference.
Ít´s always hard to say goodbye though. . .
ANYWAY....
Sautrday morning we headed out on our two day excursion to Machu Picchu which ended up being the most awe inspiring, beautiful.... i don´t have enough adjectives.... place in the world. I got to ride a train for the first time ever (that I know of.... Trinity Loop doesn´t count haha) and we stayed in a hostel in the town Aguas Calientes. the hostel was SICk cuz it had THE SIMPSONS in ENGLISH on a TELEVISION .... aaannnd we had THREE beds in the room to ourselves as well as a private bathroom. Of course... we didn´t really use much of our amnemities(sp) because we had to get up at 3:30am to boot it out into the unknown to find the bus stop that would take us to Machu Picchu.
Turns out that even thouh the first bus leaves at 5:30, you need to be lined up before 4:30 or you´ll be too far back in the line to make the first round of buses and in turn end up missing the sunrise. Luckily there was a third bus in the 1st series so we JUST made it!
Watching the sun rise in one of the biggest Wonders of the World through a metropolis of mountains while sitting amidsts thousands and thousands of steps carved by hand hundreds of years ago for pretty much unknown reasons.... I can´t explain to you how perfect that sun looked when it started sprouting the first few rays of light into the haze and a few minutes later its whole brilliance overtook everything .... everything was a golden color... It was perfect.
and then it got HOT (as balls) and after around 3 1/2 hrs of hiking on no sleep and no food (well... one bun for me and two buns for daniel that we rogued from the ¨breakfast¨at the hostel... breakfast being buns and jam . Daniel thinks she was going to cook us eggs. I was too tired to care. hahaha) we decided to Cheese it outta there onto the bus to take us down.... Careening down over the mountainside with reckless abandon, no guardrails and nothing but faith in dear Jesus to get us down in one piece.
There was a lot of religion found on that trip lol
BUT .... by the time we got back to Aguas Calientes it was like 11:30am.... so CLEARLY that was a good time to start bar hopping.
Later that day we caught a train that took four thousand years to get back to a place called Poroy (sp)..... actually it was about 4 1/2 hrs of train riding nonstop.... to course us through a Raging 92km.
.... yes. Ninety Two Kilometers.
I´m pretty sure I saw a sloth pass by us... and we all know how speedy those little buggers can be! (ba dum dum psssh).
Anyway Daniel fell asleep on the train like halfway through, leaving me to my own devices. My devices turned out to be me using the table in front of us, the window to my side, two cameras and my ipod as an imitation drum set and air-piano.... so for like an hour i was WAILING on this table like Beethoven or something havin a TIME and a half while the creepy non-english dude to my side stared incredulously at my complete insanity.
Then I decided to start taking pictures of myself throuhg my reflection in the window.... so here i was making all kinds of weird ole faces at myself with this camera perpetually flashing and me laughing away like a maniac...
I am pretty much the coolest person I know. ha.
THEN the guy that runs the tours picked us up in his family van (family included!) from Poroy and drove us the hour or so back to Cusco.... Only we had a road block half way through ....
...only the road block consisted of what looked like Cirque du Soleil on some kind of strike as expressed through Interpretive Dance.... There was tubas and drums and glocks everywhere... sequins and people dressed like Can Can dancers, clowns... I think I saw a dragon at one point.... Rannnndom!
And see.... okay.... you really need to BE in Cusco to understand this... but the roads are like... seven feet wide and between massive buildings made of concrete and adobe.... the roads are cobblestone and from what I can gather the only Road Rules that exist are ¨honk the horn all the time for no reason and every reason possible¨HONK PEDESTRIAAN HONK IM ON A ROAD HONK I LOVE TRAINS .... etc.
Anyway.... the van that picked us up was, much like the Machu Picchu bus, CAREENING around town in the middle of the night as if the Feds were on our tails.... and what happened!?!?!?!?
We ran into a ... building!
So all you hear is this RA RUMP CHQQQDHHHHSHHHH BANG!!!! and I was SURE we lost the full tire into the wall or the curb or something.
.... but do you think that slowed us down???? F no! HONK HONK I HIT A BUILDING HONK BEEP BEEP THERES A UNIVERSITY HONK HONK DOG HONK.... excellent.
TODAY we had our first day on the construction site in the middle of no where... actually no.... where we live is basically the middle of no where... the site is kind of like the ¨¨out around the bay¨of the ghetto in that it has less of what little is here.... meaning its pretty much just dirt and some random buildings that MAY be houses .... not sure....
On the way to catch the Combi (like a minivan but with like... seventy two people rammed into it and probbably built in the 60s)... WHO HAPPENED TO BE AT THE BUS STOP ON THE WAY BACK!!!!
The Circus striker folk!!!
Great to see you again you random glittery people with your stilts and your drums !! whee!!!
.... We made concrete out of dirt and rocks and some concrete powder on the floor-to-be with shovels and water.... its all manual labor all the time hardcoreness here! but it´s awesome! reminds me very much of Making Mud Pies in grade 1!!!! Tomorrow we´re plastering and I think us and the construction crew (80% of which are Canadian btw) are going out for Pisco Sours (the national drink... which has raw egg white in it... I haven´t had it yet because I don´t want worms or salmonella But hey.... when in rome!).
...Okay os this seems long enough. There´s UBER more to write about but seriously, I can´t expect anyone to read my ramblings when they trail on longer than what a short novel would be.
So, I guess in short, the main premise of this story is.... Daniel and I really miss the food at home.... and we can´t wait to show you our pictures!!!!!! YAYyAyyaYaYyYyy!!!!!!!
xoxoxo,
-A.
PS: I LOVE MY MOMMABEAR!!!!!!!!!!! :-D
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Riot Shields and Lemon Pledge
Hola!
Finally found enough energy to make a post.. been pretty exhausted during the nights but I think we are finally aclimatizing (after 20 odd coca teas and a box of Tylenol)!
Woke up this morning with a dozen empty water bottles that accumulated over the past 4 days, so took us 10 minutes to figure out how to cram most of the bottles ( along with the soccer ball and drawing supplies for the orphanage and our mini pharmacy we bring with us) into our bag to bring to Maximo Nivel to get rid of.
We walked to the corner around 2 blocks from where we are staying and 10ish minutes after we got there tracked down a taxi who knew how to get there ( a "legit" taxi stopped for us but neevr knew where Maximo was so we skipped on it). Finally got a taxi for 3.50 soles which is apparently the going rate unless you speak spanish as poorly as we do :P All others have been 4 soles or more so it was pretty good aside from the fumes, but it seems no matter where we go we´re followed by a shroud of smoke (in combination with the dry air our throats are a bit on the dry side).
Once we got to Maximo and I dumped out our quota of plastic in the "No Organico" can we went into our Spanish lesson and learned a bunch of adjectives. Me and Angie compiled a list of useful words and phrases to use at the orphanage for our teacher to translate for us which made communicating today somewhat easier! Angie wrote "We need more lemon pledge" on the translation sheet (a Family Guy quote) which I forgot about before handing our instructor the sheet. Bit awkward for me to explain, for Angie hilarity ensued. We all played a matching game (similar to the game in Mario where you memorize the cards that have been flipped and if you pick a pair you take the cards) Terrible explanation I know, but we played it with opposite adjectives (ie. black and white) which I am absolutely horrendous at :P Angie tied for first though, and her reward was to bring chocolate for tomorrow. I like this country.. I lose and get chocolate, weeoo!!
Then we went to a market just outside of the plaza.
Awesome (According to Angie, lol)
There were at least a dozen little shops that you had to walk down a small dark alleyway to get to, but once inside it all opened up (there was a small hub of market stands, all outside with overhangs over the majority of the stands), and holy ponchos!! Angie was lost in a sea of hobo llama gloves and handcrafted rainbow hobo bags (a type of purse...that is also awesome, according to A.). I´m not one for trinkets or souvenirs but the place was actually amazing.. definitely going to head back there later and barter for some hats/scarves/random Inca attire once we brush up a bit more on our espagnol.
Before we went to the orphange we grabbed a bite to eat at another one of the Irish pubs in the Plaza and had nachos (no cheese, vege chili on the side) and a plate of fries which were decent. We did order 2 bottles of water though which we weren´t too certain about.. the bottle said something along the lines of "natural Peruvan water" which made us a little nervous, but no problems so far!
The most interesting thing about lunchtime today was when we walked outside after lunch we were greeted by close to 100 policia with riot shields scattered around the outskirts of the Plaza. I panicked, thinking of brutal moments in Call of Duty, whereas Angie went and got her picture taken with one of the policia. Turns out the riot shields were more for show then anything else and they turned out to be really good humoured. She even got her picture taken, riot shield in hand! Was a little jealous after that.. may go in for a photo op if the opportunity arises again.
Today was an awesome day at the orphanage, and personally I found it to be the best day so far! It was a little bit slow starting off (the kids were all outside the orphange somewhere, and 10 minutes after we got there 30 kids came plowing through the front door, really caught us off guard). Angie found some chaulk at Maximo so she had the kids playing different games of hopscotch, which really took off! Hours later there were still kids playing and drawing out there own games with the chaulk, which was pretty neat to see. Angie also played 21´s with some of the kids (they LOVEEEEE cards!) and I ended up teaching some of the kids the difference between pull ups and chin ups. Angie did a pushup to demonstrate the difference between a plank and a pushup (apparently plancha is pushup in spanish) and shortly afterwards a posse formed around her. I guess they dont see many girls doing pushups around those parts.
The best part of the day for both of us with volleyball with a kid (probably around 16 years old) who we hadn´t met at this point who turned out to be a child prodigy with the piano. He played a bunch of Coldplay, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Cascada that he leanred by ear, as he doesn´t read sheet music, which we thought was incredible. He also played us a song that he is presently composing on his own. We told him we´d be back tomorrow with lyrics to the songs he played us. Angie found it rough to meet someone with so much talent and such a great personality in a place such as that. (Angie: It´s unfortunate that we can come so far and do so much, and indeed make a difference in many kids lives, but to have to leave knowing that there is so much more that needs to be done to allow these kids to grow as people and become the successes they deserve to be.)
Rat Tavern Round 3 (I think ?)
Had a few more drinks with Francisco as our server. Got him to try a chocolate covered piece of corn that Angie bought thinking it would actually taste good (it really, really wasn´t). He agreed.
Met a guy at supper tonight at our homestay whose been sick several times but told us antibiotics are fairly cheap here. Good to know in case we run out, hopefully it doesn´t come to that.
And my long winded first entry comes to an end.
Buenos noches
Daniel
Finally found enough energy to make a post.. been pretty exhausted during the nights but I think we are finally aclimatizing (after 20 odd coca teas and a box of Tylenol)!
Woke up this morning with a dozen empty water bottles that accumulated over the past 4 days, so took us 10 minutes to figure out how to cram most of the bottles ( along with the soccer ball and drawing supplies for the orphanage and our mini pharmacy we bring with us) into our bag to bring to Maximo Nivel to get rid of.
We walked to the corner around 2 blocks from where we are staying and 10ish minutes after we got there tracked down a taxi who knew how to get there ( a "legit" taxi stopped for us but neevr knew where Maximo was so we skipped on it). Finally got a taxi for 3.50 soles which is apparently the going rate unless you speak spanish as poorly as we do :P All others have been 4 soles or more so it was pretty good aside from the fumes, but it seems no matter where we go we´re followed by a shroud of smoke (in combination with the dry air our throats are a bit on the dry side).
Once we got to Maximo and I dumped out our quota of plastic in the "No Organico" can we went into our Spanish lesson and learned a bunch of adjectives. Me and Angie compiled a list of useful words and phrases to use at the orphanage for our teacher to translate for us which made communicating today somewhat easier! Angie wrote "We need more lemon pledge" on the translation sheet (a Family Guy quote) which I forgot about before handing our instructor the sheet. Bit awkward for me to explain, for Angie hilarity ensued. We all played a matching game (similar to the game in Mario where you memorize the cards that have been flipped and if you pick a pair you take the cards) Terrible explanation I know, but we played it with opposite adjectives (ie. black and white) which I am absolutely horrendous at :P Angie tied for first though, and her reward was to bring chocolate for tomorrow. I like this country.. I lose and get chocolate, weeoo!!
Then we went to a market just outside of the plaza.
Awesome (According to Angie, lol)
There were at least a dozen little shops that you had to walk down a small dark alleyway to get to, but once inside it all opened up (there was a small hub of market stands, all outside with overhangs over the majority of the stands), and holy ponchos!! Angie was lost in a sea of hobo llama gloves and handcrafted rainbow hobo bags (a type of purse...that is also awesome, according to A.). I´m not one for trinkets or souvenirs but the place was actually amazing.. definitely going to head back there later and barter for some hats/scarves/random Inca attire once we brush up a bit more on our espagnol.
Before we went to the orphange we grabbed a bite to eat at another one of the Irish pubs in the Plaza and had nachos (no cheese, vege chili on the side) and a plate of fries which were decent. We did order 2 bottles of water though which we weren´t too certain about.. the bottle said something along the lines of "natural Peruvan water" which made us a little nervous, but no problems so far!
The most interesting thing about lunchtime today was when we walked outside after lunch we were greeted by close to 100 policia with riot shields scattered around the outskirts of the Plaza. I panicked, thinking of brutal moments in Call of Duty, whereas Angie went and got her picture taken with one of the policia. Turns out the riot shields were more for show then anything else and they turned out to be really good humoured. She even got her picture taken, riot shield in hand! Was a little jealous after that.. may go in for a photo op if the opportunity arises again.
Today was an awesome day at the orphanage, and personally I found it to be the best day so far! It was a little bit slow starting off (the kids were all outside the orphange somewhere, and 10 minutes after we got there 30 kids came plowing through the front door, really caught us off guard). Angie found some chaulk at Maximo so she had the kids playing different games of hopscotch, which really took off! Hours later there were still kids playing and drawing out there own games with the chaulk, which was pretty neat to see. Angie also played 21´s with some of the kids (they LOVEEEEE cards!) and I ended up teaching some of the kids the difference between pull ups and chin ups. Angie did a pushup to demonstrate the difference between a plank and a pushup (apparently plancha is pushup in spanish) and shortly afterwards a posse formed around her. I guess they dont see many girls doing pushups around those parts.
The best part of the day for both of us with volleyball with a kid (probably around 16 years old) who we hadn´t met at this point who turned out to be a child prodigy with the piano. He played a bunch of Coldplay, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Cascada that he leanred by ear, as he doesn´t read sheet music, which we thought was incredible. He also played us a song that he is presently composing on his own. We told him we´d be back tomorrow with lyrics to the songs he played us. Angie found it rough to meet someone with so much talent and such a great personality in a place such as that. (Angie: It´s unfortunate that we can come so far and do so much, and indeed make a difference in many kids lives, but to have to leave knowing that there is so much more that needs to be done to allow these kids to grow as people and become the successes they deserve to be.)
Rat Tavern Round 3 (I think ?)
Had a few more drinks with Francisco as our server. Got him to try a chocolate covered piece of corn that Angie bought thinking it would actually taste good (it really, really wasn´t). He agreed.
Met a guy at supper tonight at our homestay whose been sick several times but told us antibiotics are fairly cheap here. Good to know in case we run out, hopefully it doesn´t come to that.
And my long winded first entry comes to an end.
Buenos noches
Daniel
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
...and on the Third Day, there was green stew...
Hola! Or, as my friends the horses say.... HAAAYYYYYY!
Today started with the Return of The Shower. Surprisingly, nobody got electrocuted AND I finally figured out the hot water!.... sort of! Woot!
We had spanish at Maximo which is always a time and a half since 75% of us (by that I mean 3) are from canada so we´re all one big happy family. The first twenty minutes of class Daniel and I regailed the class with our escapades on being lost in the dark last night. Turns out where we were ´lost´ is like... 10 minutes or less from everything we know so we kind of felt like idiots.... or, at least I did! But now we know so hopefully no more getting lost! We weren´t taking our chances today though, so we left the orphanage a bit earlier so that we could get back to Maximo Nivel before dark. Other than the taxi that brought us there dropping us off in sort of the wrong spot and having to live on Daniels inherently amazing sense of direction to get to the orphanage....then being locked out of the orphanage for 15 minutes (which was well spent buzzing their buzzer which is AMAZINGLY annoying sounding to everyone indoors ... lol) ..... things worked out okay!
We went home for lunch between spanish and the orphanage, where we were greeted with green soup! ..... MmMmMmmMmMmmmmM!!!!!!............................
It was made of spinach. I think.
Anyway then Daniel and I both thought we were going to be sick (not sure if it was the soup or the random kiwis that I peeled us with my trusty, rusty pocket knife .... way less bush-league than it sounds cuz I totally sanitized it)...
I make it sound to be such terrible times but truly we´re both having an awesome trip! When we got into the orphanage the boys mobbed Daniel with hugs and stuff so that was kind of sweet. The boys tried to teach us some spanish but none of it was in our translater book (which i gave them to use to learn english while they taught us spanish) but we still all had a fun time! Turns out the kids here know how to play the card game ¨war¨that Stephanie (sister) and I played ALL THE TIME as kids at Nan´s... only here they call it Guerra (spanish for War... go figure). AND they know how to play blackjack! So it was sick ole times.. ALSO one of the boys taught us how to use a sling to shoot rocks at a tree which was pretty deadly I must say. I felt pretty cool hahaha.
We took some pictures with the boys.... but I got distracted part of the way through our volunteer when I saw these adults come in with a guy in a suit. one of my favorite kids from yesterday´s coloring spree was over with the adults so I asked the other boys who they were. They told me it was his parents and this is the only way they can see him since he was removed from his house for abuse of some form or another. So that was kind of sad because the mom was kind of crying and showing her son what he looked like in her mirror.... i dunno.... the other kids seemed a little down about it too. I wonder if their parents ever come see them.
Anyway! One other....awkward/odd thing about volunteer today was the ¨machismo¨we´ve heard about finally reared its ugly head at me when Daniel was playing ball with the boys. One of the older kids (maybe 15-17yrs old) sort of.... as mom would say ¨pulled a Neil¨on me.... in a suggestive manner (ie; I saw a bit/lot more than I wanted to...) after declaring something derogatory about my chest... so I sort of bee lined to Daniel and avoided the kid for the rest of our day. Daniel´s going to have a machismo talk to him tomorrow about how were ¨,married¨and I´m his ¨woman¨and therefore he´s the alpha male or whatever boys do in times like these... so I dont think it´ll be a problem any more.
After volunteer we went to Normans again... but Francisco wasn´t working so after some peruvian wine and fries we cheesed it outta there.... and thennnnn...
We finally went into Fallen Angel! .... and then we left! hahaha
We weren´t in the mood for alpaca, mystery fish, or guinea pig and apparently that was all that was cookin´so we kind of just wandered around until we magically found Jack´s (a restaurant all the travel books rave about). IT WAS SUPER AWESOME THEY HAD DIET COKE OMG (diet sodas of any kind are basically nonexistant here so we´ve been drinking nothing but cocoa tea and water) AND they made us NACHOES without cheese AND with vegetarian beans! AND with homemade salsa! the salsa was pretty much the best thing ever.
That pretty much sums up our day EXCEPT!!!!! Daniel found my camera charger!!! So we´re going to just get all photogenic for the rest of the trip i think!
Also, I finally fixed the comment section (i think) so feel free to write whatever or email us any time! We dont get the internet a whole bunch, but I´ll do my best to check what I can and so will Daniel! He says he misses everyone back home and as soon as he´s not too sleepy he´ll start filling my place in the journal-writing world :)
Until then..... Buenos Noches!!! (good night!)
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxx
-A.
Today started with the Return of The Shower. Surprisingly, nobody got electrocuted AND I finally figured out the hot water!.... sort of! Woot!
We had spanish at Maximo which is always a time and a half since 75% of us (by that I mean 3) are from canada so we´re all one big happy family. The first twenty minutes of class Daniel and I regailed the class with our escapades on being lost in the dark last night. Turns out where we were ´lost´ is like... 10 minutes or less from everything we know so we kind of felt like idiots.... or, at least I did! But now we know so hopefully no more getting lost! We weren´t taking our chances today though, so we left the orphanage a bit earlier so that we could get back to Maximo Nivel before dark. Other than the taxi that brought us there dropping us off in sort of the wrong spot and having to live on Daniels inherently amazing sense of direction to get to the orphanage....then being locked out of the orphanage for 15 minutes (which was well spent buzzing their buzzer which is AMAZINGLY annoying sounding to everyone indoors ... lol) ..... things worked out okay!
We went home for lunch between spanish and the orphanage, where we were greeted with green soup! ..... MmMmMmmMmMmmmmM!!!!!!............................
It was made of spinach. I think.
Anyway then Daniel and I both thought we were going to be sick (not sure if it was the soup or the random kiwis that I peeled us with my trusty, rusty pocket knife .... way less bush-league than it sounds cuz I totally sanitized it)...
I make it sound to be such terrible times but truly we´re both having an awesome trip! When we got into the orphanage the boys mobbed Daniel with hugs and stuff so that was kind of sweet. The boys tried to teach us some spanish but none of it was in our translater book (which i gave them to use to learn english while they taught us spanish) but we still all had a fun time! Turns out the kids here know how to play the card game ¨war¨that Stephanie (sister) and I played ALL THE TIME as kids at Nan´s... only here they call it Guerra (spanish for War... go figure). AND they know how to play blackjack! So it was sick ole times.. ALSO one of the boys taught us how to use a sling to shoot rocks at a tree which was pretty deadly I must say. I felt pretty cool hahaha.
We took some pictures with the boys.... but I got distracted part of the way through our volunteer when I saw these adults come in with a guy in a suit. one of my favorite kids from yesterday´s coloring spree was over with the adults so I asked the other boys who they were. They told me it was his parents and this is the only way they can see him since he was removed from his house for abuse of some form or another. So that was kind of sad because the mom was kind of crying and showing her son what he looked like in her mirror.... i dunno.... the other kids seemed a little down about it too. I wonder if their parents ever come see them.
Anyway! One other....awkward/odd thing about volunteer today was the ¨machismo¨we´ve heard about finally reared its ugly head at me when Daniel was playing ball with the boys. One of the older kids (maybe 15-17yrs old) sort of.... as mom would say ¨pulled a Neil¨on me.... in a suggestive manner (ie; I saw a bit/lot more than I wanted to...) after declaring something derogatory about my chest... so I sort of bee lined to Daniel and avoided the kid for the rest of our day. Daniel´s going to have a machismo talk to him tomorrow about how were ¨,married¨and I´m his ¨woman¨and therefore he´s the alpha male or whatever boys do in times like these... so I dont think it´ll be a problem any more.
After volunteer we went to Normans again... but Francisco wasn´t working so after some peruvian wine and fries we cheesed it outta there.... and thennnnn...
We finally went into Fallen Angel! .... and then we left! hahaha
We weren´t in the mood for alpaca, mystery fish, or guinea pig and apparently that was all that was cookin´so we kind of just wandered around until we magically found Jack´s (a restaurant all the travel books rave about). IT WAS SUPER AWESOME THEY HAD DIET COKE OMG (diet sodas of any kind are basically nonexistant here so we´ve been drinking nothing but cocoa tea and water) AND they made us NACHOES without cheese AND with vegetarian beans! AND with homemade salsa! the salsa was pretty much the best thing ever.
That pretty much sums up our day EXCEPT!!!!! Daniel found my camera charger!!! So we´re going to just get all photogenic for the rest of the trip i think!
Also, I finally fixed the comment section (i think) so feel free to write whatever or email us any time! We dont get the internet a whole bunch, but I´ll do my best to check what I can and so will Daniel! He says he misses everyone back home and as soon as he´s not too sleepy he´ll start filling my place in the journal-writing world :)
Until then..... Buenos Noches!!! (good night!)
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxx
-A.
Monday, July 30, 2012
...And On My Down Time I Got Married NBD (no big deal)
Today was a BUSY FRIGGEN DAY!
A day filled with hopes and dreams and spanish and children and dirt and vanity and a custom-made drink at Norton Rats Tavern (because the waiter guy, Francisco, is the best guy in the world so we keep going back) and every mothers nightmare.... getting lost.
Twice.
Today, we went to Maixmo Nivel to start our first day of Spanish lessons which started off confusing as balls and then progressed somehow into a card game that, try as he may, Daniel could just NOT figure out (he lost. terribly. if you ask him he will tell you otherwise lol).
Afterward, we walked up to Plaza de Armas for some snazzy lunch at this place that Frodors (the tourist book we bought at Chapters a month before we left to come to Cusco) said was the bees knees, called Fallen Angel (apparently it´s also the gay rights bar... but thats cool too I didn´t tell Daniel that when we went.... he´s actually only learning this now as I write this blog....awkward.......). Sadly, the place wasn´t open so we will try again tomorrow. Instead, we ended up at the ORGANIC RESTAURANT because its ORGANIC and therefor AWESOME.... called Greens.
Greens was not awesome so much as it was a crock of llama poo.
We asked the waitress for two bottles of water, no glass, no ice (a sentence that i practiced for weeks prior to coming here), but when we got the bottles they were a) open, b) ¨dusty¨and c) all scratched up like the kind some bottle collector from the 1980s would have in a back room somewhere. So we asked for new bottles that still had stoppers. This triggered some other guy, presumably the owner, to come out and tell us that they JUST ran out of ALL the bottled drinks of ALL KINDS that they have.
...right.
So we ended up just not drinking anything and being twerps about the bill when they tried to bill us for the waters that they obviously scammed from the tap. It was not a good time.
Their bathroom was pretty nice though: There were pretty rocks in the sink and junk. I was impressed. They even had paper towels, which is a hot commodity around these parts!
We almost got picked off by a few more cars which is perfectly normaly around these parts since there doesn´t seem to be any road rules and everyone drives willy nilly all over all the streets with no working spedometers and tourists and peruvians walk whenever because nobody heeds the crosswalks. interestingly enough we only almost got hit when we walked up to San Blas where Fallen Angel was. This street was a street made entirely of cobblestone stairs to infinity and its about MAYBE eight feet wide. So everytime a car miraculously drove down the hill we had to ¨think thin¨and suck up to the walls to try to not lose a kidney or something from the side view mirrors. Sáll good. We also saw a KFC (The Portal of Meat!) and mcDonalds (no word on the existance of a McGuineaPig lol).
We had our first day on site at the orphanage. Four other girls and myself left daniel to fend for himself in a sea of boys aged 4-17 as we all went to the girls section which is locked off from the other parts to prevent interaction. There were only eight girls there, most of which weren´t from Cusco apparently, and only one of us girls knew how to speak any spanish other than the most meagre of language pieces. So... apart from teaching them a new card game (since I had to pictionary every conversation), I didn´t feel very needed. I left the girls about an hour and a half into it to go help save Daniel from the hooligans.
I don´t even know the chaos. Can you imagine being locked in a playground with a billion youngsters who are all hopped up like sugar-rush children? it was great times! !!!!! I pushed four boys on swings until I couldn´t breathe, and then tried to ask them to come coloring with me on the ground where I didn´t have to move much. Apparently, though, I asked them to draw pictures of MEEEEE because IM SO AWESOME.... so now I have like.... a dozen stick-angies´in a kaleidescope(sp) of crayon colors. They wouldn´t draw Daniel... but several of them did draw me ¨Ëgg Man¨after I arbitrarily got their attention by going LOOK AHGHH LOOK !!!!!! HUEVO!!!!!! (egg). This, somehow, resulted in several fist fights. Excellent. I love boys.
So after all our fun anf games, Daniel played soccer/futbol with some of the kids and then we lost pretty much all our supplies (where lost means the boys stole it and wouldn´t tell us where they put it).... and nobody at the orphanage spoke a lick of english... and apparently our translator book doesn´t have translations for ¨don´t spit on each other¨and ¨stop kicking him in the face¨.....or even crayon! So we kind of just cheesed it outta there.
THEN.... we got lost. In the dark . In the middle of god only knows where there were no white people (which, althouh racist, is one of the only ways to determine if you´re in tourist district). So we wandered around and got more lost and kidn of panicked a little... then we found a grocery store we´ve heard of called MEGA (MEGAAAAAA) so we went there and asked some peruvian ladies where the hell were we and how do we leave.... then I found some caucasian girls and I asked them how to get back to plaza de Armas.... and about 15 minutes later we ended up back at Norman Rat´s Tavern!
We got a taxi home to where we stay (Villa Periodista) but the cab driver got lost so Daniel and his keen sense of direction got us home from the other end of the middle of nowhere.... where we walked in and had some form of rice with pumkin something....and dessert. nom nom.
OH and somewhere in the midsts of all that we picked out a ring and bartered an inbelievable price for myself to wear to stave off any Machismo boys who want to pick me up and carry me off or something like that.... So if anybody asks, weré totally married and this is not a ring I bought myself in a corner alleyway market for like 11 dollars canadian. lol
A FUN FUN DAY!
I hope everyone home is having a wonderful summer since we left like four days ago....
....and if anyone is wondering, the pterodactyl is back on stage tonight for a third encore of its rendition of techno-cindy-lauper mixed with loud honking noises and perhaps some Pit Bull because, why not??? DALEEE HA HA PITBULL MRWORLDWIDE etc etc etc.
oxxooxxooxxoxoxoxoxoxoxo
-Angie
PS: to pronounce X in spanish, its pronounced ¨a kiss¨... now you know! ALSO apparently Zapata means Shoe? Random.
A day filled with hopes and dreams and spanish and children and dirt and vanity and a custom-made drink at Norton Rats Tavern (because the waiter guy, Francisco, is the best guy in the world so we keep going back) and every mothers nightmare.... getting lost.
Twice.
Today, we went to Maixmo Nivel to start our first day of Spanish lessons which started off confusing as balls and then progressed somehow into a card game that, try as he may, Daniel could just NOT figure out (he lost. terribly. if you ask him he will tell you otherwise lol).
Afterward, we walked up to Plaza de Armas for some snazzy lunch at this place that Frodors (the tourist book we bought at Chapters a month before we left to come to Cusco) said was the bees knees, called Fallen Angel (apparently it´s also the gay rights bar... but thats cool too I didn´t tell Daniel that when we went.... he´s actually only learning this now as I write this blog....awkward.......). Sadly, the place wasn´t open so we will try again tomorrow. Instead, we ended up at the ORGANIC RESTAURANT because its ORGANIC and therefor AWESOME.... called Greens.
Greens was not awesome so much as it was a crock of llama poo.
We asked the waitress for two bottles of water, no glass, no ice (a sentence that i practiced for weeks prior to coming here), but when we got the bottles they were a) open, b) ¨dusty¨and c) all scratched up like the kind some bottle collector from the 1980s would have in a back room somewhere. So we asked for new bottles that still had stoppers. This triggered some other guy, presumably the owner, to come out and tell us that they JUST ran out of ALL the bottled drinks of ALL KINDS that they have.
...right.
So we ended up just not drinking anything and being twerps about the bill when they tried to bill us for the waters that they obviously scammed from the tap. It was not a good time.
Their bathroom was pretty nice though: There were pretty rocks in the sink and junk. I was impressed. They even had paper towels, which is a hot commodity around these parts!
We almost got picked off by a few more cars which is perfectly normaly around these parts since there doesn´t seem to be any road rules and everyone drives willy nilly all over all the streets with no working spedometers and tourists and peruvians walk whenever because nobody heeds the crosswalks. interestingly enough we only almost got hit when we walked up to San Blas where Fallen Angel was. This street was a street made entirely of cobblestone stairs to infinity and its about MAYBE eight feet wide. So everytime a car miraculously drove down the hill we had to ¨think thin¨and suck up to the walls to try to not lose a kidney or something from the side view mirrors. Sáll good. We also saw a KFC (The Portal of Meat!) and mcDonalds (no word on the existance of a McGuineaPig lol).
We had our first day on site at the orphanage. Four other girls and myself left daniel to fend for himself in a sea of boys aged 4-17 as we all went to the girls section which is locked off from the other parts to prevent interaction. There were only eight girls there, most of which weren´t from Cusco apparently, and only one of us girls knew how to speak any spanish other than the most meagre of language pieces. So... apart from teaching them a new card game (since I had to pictionary every conversation), I didn´t feel very needed. I left the girls about an hour and a half into it to go help save Daniel from the hooligans.
I don´t even know the chaos. Can you imagine being locked in a playground with a billion youngsters who are all hopped up like sugar-rush children? it was great times! !!!!! I pushed four boys on swings until I couldn´t breathe, and then tried to ask them to come coloring with me on the ground where I didn´t have to move much. Apparently, though, I asked them to draw pictures of MEEEEE because IM SO AWESOME.... so now I have like.... a dozen stick-angies´in a kaleidescope(sp) of crayon colors. They wouldn´t draw Daniel... but several of them did draw me ¨Ëgg Man¨after I arbitrarily got their attention by going LOOK AHGHH LOOK !!!!!! HUEVO!!!!!! (egg). This, somehow, resulted in several fist fights. Excellent. I love boys.
So after all our fun anf games, Daniel played soccer/futbol with some of the kids and then we lost pretty much all our supplies (where lost means the boys stole it and wouldn´t tell us where they put it).... and nobody at the orphanage spoke a lick of english... and apparently our translator book doesn´t have translations for ¨don´t spit on each other¨and ¨stop kicking him in the face¨.....or even crayon! So we kind of just cheesed it outta there.
THEN.... we got lost. In the dark . In the middle of god only knows where there were no white people (which, althouh racist, is one of the only ways to determine if you´re in tourist district). So we wandered around and got more lost and kidn of panicked a little... then we found a grocery store we´ve heard of called MEGA (MEGAAAAAA) so we went there and asked some peruvian ladies where the hell were we and how do we leave.... then I found some caucasian girls and I asked them how to get back to plaza de Armas.... and about 15 minutes later we ended up back at Norman Rat´s Tavern!
We got a taxi home to where we stay (Villa Periodista) but the cab driver got lost so Daniel and his keen sense of direction got us home from the other end of the middle of nowhere.... where we walked in and had some form of rice with pumkin something....and dessert. nom nom.
OH and somewhere in the midsts of all that we picked out a ring and bartered an inbelievable price for myself to wear to stave off any Machismo boys who want to pick me up and carry me off or something like that.... So if anybody asks, weré totally married and this is not a ring I bought myself in a corner alleyway market for like 11 dollars canadian. lol
A FUN FUN DAY!
I hope everyone home is having a wonderful summer since we left like four days ago....
....and if anyone is wondering, the pterodactyl is back on stage tonight for a third encore of its rendition of techno-cindy-lauper mixed with loud honking noises and perhaps some Pit Bull because, why not??? DALEEE HA HA PITBULL MRWORLDWIDE etc etc etc.
oxxooxxooxxoxoxoxoxoxoxo
-Angie
PS: to pronounce X in spanish, its pronounced ¨a kiss¨... now you know! ALSO apparently Zapata means Shoe? Random.
That Pterodactyl next Door Loves his Karyoke!
Sorry I didn´t get to a computer yesterday to let you know what´s been up since our first day; by the time we got home it was around 830pm and I was so tired I just went right to bed! But I´ve for about 20minutes before we leave for Maximo Nivel (the home-base of our spanish lessons as well as our volunteer placements) so I´ll do the best I can to cram it all in now!
So yesterday began with me finally realizing how big of a dirtbag I´ve been since I hadn´t had a shower since last thursday (yesterday was sunday) which meant time to get my face and body all full of diseased water in an attempt to be clean once more! We have ¨hot¨water here!!!!! (Hot apparently means so-friged-im-surprised-ice cubes-didnt-come-out) which meant the worlds quickest shower! I did, however, stay in the shower long enough to learn all about the wonders of ëlectric¨showers. Water here is heated up with a big clunky cylinder connected to the shower tap. The cylinder is heated using a livewire so that, in theory, your water will come out warm. At 5´7¨, I´m above-average height here and so when I went to scrub shampoo into my hair I just happened to put my finger RIGHT ON the livewire. You can imagine how awesome it felt to have electricity kind of zzzzap through my hand (althouhg it was only a little tingle, but moreso the fear of the fact that I was soaking wet):I was standing on a plastic mat, however, and so because my feet werent touching the metal pieces on the drain I got out with no problems other than an awful huge fright! I haven´t been back in the shower just yet.... lol
The altitude sickness started to creep up on us yesterday, what with the wonders of travel finally wearing off. I have had an incessant ringing in my ears for two days and every now and again my heart goes wacky because here in Cusco there is 30% less oxygen, as we are around 3500m above sea level. Daniel has had paresthesias (tingling in the hands and feet) since we got here, so we´re gonna go ahead and blame the altitude sickness pills on that too hahaha. But todya hopefully will be better. They say it taked 3-4 days to acclimatize and this is day three so... fingers crossed!
The dog count (wind dogs are like pidgeons around here) for yesterday was 31. Whee!
I also realized that i forgot my camera charger. So.... shit.
We had orientation about our first week of projects. Today im starting my placement at an orphanage. I´m in a wing of the orphanage where about 10 girls ages 13-16 live who have been taken from their families as they were used for prostitution. My job is to help rebuild their self-esteem enough to get them to be able to go to a coed classroom to learn skills to be successful when they leave the orphanage. So I get to play with the girls and do whatever i can think of to help them, including I guess be someone to talk to (although the language barrier is a definite problem) if they decide they want to open up about what they´ve been through. I´m going there around 2:30 today, the same time Daniel goes to the same orphanage but goes with the boys. he´s the only volunteer with abour 40 boys ages 4-17, so he´s got his hands full! I´m hoping to teach my girls how to make balloon animals sometime... maybe once I get over the altitude sickness and can breathe without wanting to black out lol.
We also went to Plazas de Armas (Tourist central) for a little while yesterday and went to our second Starbucks in Peru! They serve the food to you and have security dressed like James Bond inside the starbucks so its awesome and kind of hilarious. The best part is there´s toilet paper and soap in their bathrooms!!!! We also went to a place called Norman Rat´s Tavern and ate fries. Mmm. Americanized Peru.... So that was great as well! We got 2 Corona, 2 bottles of water and a plate of fries for about 8 dollars canadian total. :-D
Last night a girl was sick here. We were serenaded by the lovely noises of dry heaves well into the night and then woken up again at 4am to these other two girls having some kind of party in their room across the hall from us. It was SuPeR. I think they were going home, and I think they missed their taxi to get there this morning. :-P
Lastly, the name of this journal. You see... our windows in our room dont REALLY close all that well. Theyre glass panels you can push to one side or another but dont stick in any one place. The place next door must be a club or something because all hours of the night you can hear the most random 80s/90s music and people singing the wrong words. These songs are always interrupted every 30 seconds with a screach of something that soudns akin to the worlds biggest pterodactyl. This... while at first annoying... is now pretty much the most funny part of our stay. I said to daniel when we were tryin to sleep ¨man! That pterodactyl must really love his karyoke!¨and Daniel (who sleeps like a sloth here every spare minute we get) started cracking up for like.... 10 minutes.
Well! I´ve got to head out for our first 2hr spanish lesson and then to a place called San Blas for lunch (the artsy district... we havent been there yet!) then to our placements... so hopefully Ill be able to write again tonight! Until then.... Ciao!!!!
xoxoxoxoxox
-Angie
So yesterday began with me finally realizing how big of a dirtbag I´ve been since I hadn´t had a shower since last thursday (yesterday was sunday) which meant time to get my face and body all full of diseased water in an attempt to be clean once more! We have ¨hot¨water here!!!!! (Hot apparently means so-friged-im-surprised-ice cubes-didnt-come-out) which meant the worlds quickest shower! I did, however, stay in the shower long enough to learn all about the wonders of ëlectric¨showers. Water here is heated up with a big clunky cylinder connected to the shower tap. The cylinder is heated using a livewire so that, in theory, your water will come out warm. At 5´7¨, I´m above-average height here and so when I went to scrub shampoo into my hair I just happened to put my finger RIGHT ON the livewire. You can imagine how awesome it felt to have electricity kind of zzzzap through my hand (althouhg it was only a little tingle, but moreso the fear of the fact that I was soaking wet):I was standing on a plastic mat, however, and so because my feet werent touching the metal pieces on the drain I got out with no problems other than an awful huge fright! I haven´t been back in the shower just yet.... lol
The altitude sickness started to creep up on us yesterday, what with the wonders of travel finally wearing off. I have had an incessant ringing in my ears for two days and every now and again my heart goes wacky because here in Cusco there is 30% less oxygen, as we are around 3500m above sea level. Daniel has had paresthesias (tingling in the hands and feet) since we got here, so we´re gonna go ahead and blame the altitude sickness pills on that too hahaha. But todya hopefully will be better. They say it taked 3-4 days to acclimatize and this is day three so... fingers crossed!
The dog count (wind dogs are like pidgeons around here) for yesterday was 31. Whee!
I also realized that i forgot my camera charger. So.... shit.
We had orientation about our first week of projects. Today im starting my placement at an orphanage. I´m in a wing of the orphanage where about 10 girls ages 13-16 live who have been taken from their families as they were used for prostitution. My job is to help rebuild their self-esteem enough to get them to be able to go to a coed classroom to learn skills to be successful when they leave the orphanage. So I get to play with the girls and do whatever i can think of to help them, including I guess be someone to talk to (although the language barrier is a definite problem) if they decide they want to open up about what they´ve been through. I´m going there around 2:30 today, the same time Daniel goes to the same orphanage but goes with the boys. he´s the only volunteer with abour 40 boys ages 4-17, so he´s got his hands full! I´m hoping to teach my girls how to make balloon animals sometime... maybe once I get over the altitude sickness and can breathe without wanting to black out lol.
We also went to Plazas de Armas (Tourist central) for a little while yesterday and went to our second Starbucks in Peru! They serve the food to you and have security dressed like James Bond inside the starbucks so its awesome and kind of hilarious. The best part is there´s toilet paper and soap in their bathrooms!!!! We also went to a place called Norman Rat´s Tavern and ate fries. Mmm. Americanized Peru.... So that was great as well! We got 2 Corona, 2 bottles of water and a plate of fries for about 8 dollars canadian total. :-D
Last night a girl was sick here. We were serenaded by the lovely noises of dry heaves well into the night and then woken up again at 4am to these other two girls having some kind of party in their room across the hall from us. It was SuPeR. I think they were going home, and I think they missed their taxi to get there this morning. :-P
Lastly, the name of this journal. You see... our windows in our room dont REALLY close all that well. Theyre glass panels you can push to one side or another but dont stick in any one place. The place next door must be a club or something because all hours of the night you can hear the most random 80s/90s music and people singing the wrong words. These songs are always interrupted every 30 seconds with a screach of something that soudns akin to the worlds biggest pterodactyl. This... while at first annoying... is now pretty much the most funny part of our stay. I said to daniel when we were tryin to sleep ¨man! That pterodactyl must really love his karyoke!¨and Daniel (who sleeps like a sloth here every spare minute we get) started cracking up for like.... 10 minutes.
Well! I´ve got to head out for our first 2hr spanish lesson and then to a place called San Blas for lunch (the artsy district... we havent been there yet!) then to our placements... so hopefully Ill be able to write again tonight! Until then.... Ciao!!!!
xoxoxoxoxox
-Angie
Saturday, July 28, 2012
No entiendo (part dos)
Where did we leave off....?
Oh yes, after our nap which took us to 12 noon, we went for a wander around to see if we could find somewhere to buy bottled water (water isn´t okay to drink here, so I would imagine most of my money will be spent on bottles beyond bottles of the stuff) which resulted in more broken enlish conversations with random people... but it worked out for the best!
My heart felt really tight/pressured when we first landed, which we attributed to the altitude (we´re around 3800m above ground.... we actually flew over the andes mountains which were judding out over the clouds that the plane was above... what a monstorously massive and beautiful sight!!!!!) and once we got to the store it came back in addition to some serious desires to black out for no good reason. So we decied to waste some time walking as slow as 94yr old men with peg legs so that I could get back up to speed enough to walk back to our place.
Tonight we had supper with all the volunteers; one of the girls is going home tomorrow. She informed us of the way of the world in the land of dairy and eggs... (she´s been here 5 weeks and has had food poisoning 3 times...and is vegetarian!), so when they gave me supper of stirfry with egg, and peppers&green onions (vegetables in which neither can be peeled so they may be contaminated with Hepatitis)... needless to say I didnt end up eating much more than the appetizer (a super delicious deep fried won-won type thing with soy-meat (kind of like mushroom) and more cocoa-tea (which is turning out to be an amazing commodity that is always readily available and is theoretically great for you and your crappy altitude sickness...so they say)...
...So tomorrow Im telling our lady who prepares the meals that we are ´vegetariano restricto´ (no more dairy of any kind, and definitely no eggs seeing as they dont refrigerate them). That means tomrorow we will also be making a trip to the farmacia (pharmacy) to buy probably iron and calcium pills... we have already bought electrolyte water so hopefully well stay relatively healthy without getting sent to a hospital or something from crazy stomach bugs and parasites. We´ve taken to using our chlorine water purification tablets in water that the others say is ´filtered´from the tap (mainly because Im afraid of the leptospirosis outbreak going on and Im not sure when they say filter I dunno what size sieve they use and so I dont really trust it), which we then use to brush our teeth. To further lesson the exposure to potentially dangerous water we´re using babywipes as face cloths (although I have yet to think of a way to avoid getting any of the water in my eyes or mouth during showers...but Ill cross that bridge when i get to it tomorrow morning).... and Ive started taking the preventative-dosing of pepto bismol to try to stave off any crazy illnesses that the food may (and probably will) give me.
Anyway, its been a long two days but hopefully tomorrow´s orientation proves to be helpful and we dont get sick and the world keeps on spinnin with us being healthy and oblivious to the terrors of Cholera or beaver fever or whatever is in the water here.
night night !!!!! xo
-A.
Oh yes, after our nap which took us to 12 noon, we went for a wander around to see if we could find somewhere to buy bottled water (water isn´t okay to drink here, so I would imagine most of my money will be spent on bottles beyond bottles of the stuff) which resulted in more broken enlish conversations with random people... but it worked out for the best!
My heart felt really tight/pressured when we first landed, which we attributed to the altitude (we´re around 3800m above ground.... we actually flew over the andes mountains which were judding out over the clouds that the plane was above... what a monstorously massive and beautiful sight!!!!!) and once we got to the store it came back in addition to some serious desires to black out for no good reason. So we decied to waste some time walking as slow as 94yr old men with peg legs so that I could get back up to speed enough to walk back to our place.
Tonight we had supper with all the volunteers; one of the girls is going home tomorrow. She informed us of the way of the world in the land of dairy and eggs... (she´s been here 5 weeks and has had food poisoning 3 times...and is vegetarian!), so when they gave me supper of stirfry with egg, and peppers&green onions (vegetables in which neither can be peeled so they may be contaminated with Hepatitis)... needless to say I didnt end up eating much more than the appetizer (a super delicious deep fried won-won type thing with soy-meat (kind of like mushroom) and more cocoa-tea (which is turning out to be an amazing commodity that is always readily available and is theoretically great for you and your crappy altitude sickness...so they say)...
...So tomorrow Im telling our lady who prepares the meals that we are ´vegetariano restricto´ (no more dairy of any kind, and definitely no eggs seeing as they dont refrigerate them). That means tomrorow we will also be making a trip to the farmacia (pharmacy) to buy probably iron and calcium pills... we have already bought electrolyte water so hopefully well stay relatively healthy without getting sent to a hospital or something from crazy stomach bugs and parasites. We´ve taken to using our chlorine water purification tablets in water that the others say is ´filtered´from the tap (mainly because Im afraid of the leptospirosis outbreak going on and Im not sure when they say filter I dunno what size sieve they use and so I dont really trust it), which we then use to brush our teeth. To further lesson the exposure to potentially dangerous water we´re using babywipes as face cloths (although I have yet to think of a way to avoid getting any of the water in my eyes or mouth during showers...but Ill cross that bridge when i get to it tomorrow morning).... and Ive started taking the preventative-dosing of pepto bismol to try to stave off any crazy illnesses that the food may (and probably will) give me.
Anyway, its been a long two days but hopefully tomorrow´s orientation proves to be helpful and we dont get sick and the world keeps on spinnin with us being healthy and oblivious to the terrors of Cholera or beaver fever or whatever is in the water here.
night night !!!!! xo
-A.
No Entiendo
So we finally made it to Cusco as of around 7:30am this morning (Saturday, July 28th) after leaving newfoundland 7am yesterday and having an 8hr stopover with the lovely Sina Selahi who was nice enough to drive us around and bring us for arbitrary foods (because why not have your last two meals in Canada be Peruvian and Mongolian? lol). The flights were fine, although Air Canada stiffed us out of our bits n bites on our first flight which was not cool since I was starving but whatever! The second Air Canada flight had a really nice flight attendant guy from Toronto who gave me a mini bottle of wine and a huge glass of rum for free... and the people with TACA gave us some kind of bread-cheese object with coffee and peach juice.
Since we´ve been here we´ve realized that not knowing fluent Spanish is a MAJOR detriment as everyone and their dog speaks that and no english. Speaking of dogs, Cusco is apparently homeless-dog capital of the world! the dog count of strays I saw since we got here was, I believe, 22. The most amazing coincidence was that at the place we´re staying the owner has a dalmation living here... who is pretty much the coolest and best dog i´ve met in quite a while. He just comes over to where youre sitting and puts his head on you shoulder and just sits there hangin´out like a baller.
Daniel and I are staying in a homestay, meaning we are on the outskirts of Cusco living at a very nice lady´s family house with a few other volunteers (mostly from the US from what I can gather). We have our own room, which is amazing, although we cant lock the door because apparently we dont have the key (a fact that we didnt know until after we locked it and were stuck outside in the living quarters for 4-5hrs waiting for the lady who owns the plac eto come home and let our sorry tired asses back in).
We almost died on the way to Maximo Nivel which was a sketchy welcome but the lady who picked us up was nice. We had to run acorss the street to get to the building in which Maximo Nivel is based out of, but unfortunately for us while we were in the middle of the street (there was a little 1-foot wide cement wall between the traffic) two buses decided to hover past like two bats out of hell so we had to get onto the cement wall )like 2feet tall MAYBE) and think-thin so to speak... one bus gave us a little ´toot toot!´which sounded way more friendly than it needed to, given the dire circumstances but whatever we made it so nbd (no big deal).
We slept for a while after getting dropped off since we havent had a chance to do so in two days. The three hour sleep was pretty rough and tumble thanks to (I imagine) the malaria pills (malarone) and their crazy dreams. But once we got up there was a really nice lady downstairs who spoke absolutely no english but was there to help us with the kitchen! Yayyyyyy..... thus the name of this post.
´hola!´
hóla!´
´´¿tu come?¨
´No... bebe....?´
áqui!
¨...¨(stares at random tap water envisioning the worst kinds of bathroom antics to ensue) ¨...no.... ahh.....botella?¨
¨Caliente!¨ (points to tea kettle)
¨sigh............. Si.¨... yeah, whatever give me some tea who cares.
¨¿COME?¨
¨no no......¨
¨Muchos????¨
¨.....no....ah....umm..... (makes hand gesture for very little)¨
¨Nods voraciously.... then gives me a massive jesus bowl of Yellow something¨
¨.....gracias?¨
Anyway then there was a dalmation so everything went to the wayside.
Suppers ready so we havce to head down..... ¿more later?
xoxoxoxxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxopx
Since we´ve been here we´ve realized that not knowing fluent Spanish is a MAJOR detriment as everyone and their dog speaks that and no english. Speaking of dogs, Cusco is apparently homeless-dog capital of the world! the dog count of strays I saw since we got here was, I believe, 22. The most amazing coincidence was that at the place we´re staying the owner has a dalmation living here... who is pretty much the coolest and best dog i´ve met in quite a while. He just comes over to where youre sitting and puts his head on you shoulder and just sits there hangin´out like a baller.
Daniel and I are staying in a homestay, meaning we are on the outskirts of Cusco living at a very nice lady´s family house with a few other volunteers (mostly from the US from what I can gather). We have our own room, which is amazing, although we cant lock the door because apparently we dont have the key (a fact that we didnt know until after we locked it and were stuck outside in the living quarters for 4-5hrs waiting for the lady who owns the plac eto come home and let our sorry tired asses back in).
We almost died on the way to Maximo Nivel which was a sketchy welcome but the lady who picked us up was nice. We had to run acorss the street to get to the building in which Maximo Nivel is based out of, but unfortunately for us while we were in the middle of the street (there was a little 1-foot wide cement wall between the traffic) two buses decided to hover past like two bats out of hell so we had to get onto the cement wall )like 2feet tall MAYBE) and think-thin so to speak... one bus gave us a little ´toot toot!´which sounded way more friendly than it needed to, given the dire circumstances but whatever we made it so nbd (no big deal).
We slept for a while after getting dropped off since we havent had a chance to do so in two days. The three hour sleep was pretty rough and tumble thanks to (I imagine) the malaria pills (malarone) and their crazy dreams. But once we got up there was a really nice lady downstairs who spoke absolutely no english but was there to help us with the kitchen! Yayyyyyy..... thus the name of this post.
´hola!´
hóla!´
´´¿tu come?¨
´No... bebe....?´
áqui!
¨...¨(stares at random tap water envisioning the worst kinds of bathroom antics to ensue) ¨...no.... ahh.....botella?¨
¨Caliente!¨ (points to tea kettle)
¨sigh............. Si.¨... yeah, whatever give me some tea who cares.
¨¿COME?¨
¨no no......¨
¨Muchos????¨
¨.....no....ah....umm..... (makes hand gesture for very little)¨
¨Nods voraciously.... then gives me a massive jesus bowl of Yellow something¨
¨.....gracias?¨
Anyway then there was a dalmation so everything went to the wayside.
Suppers ready so we havce to head down..... ¿more later?
xoxoxoxxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxopx
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Angie
As of Today!:
-The tickets to Cusco (Peru) are purchased (through a travel agent) (~$2100.00 CAN). The flights are through Air Canada and LAN (I think... Daniel has the tickets at his house for now)
-Travel insurance is purchased (via WorldNomads) - ($122.66 CAN)
-The registration fee (but not the program fee) for volunteering with IVHQ (International Volunteer Headquarters) is purchased ($243.53 CAN).
-Overnight trip to Machu Picchu (Vistadome package via Maximo Nivel's PATAS organization) is covered ($611.51 {$305.76 each CAN)
-SOME vaccinations (we haven't got Yellow Fever immunizations yet) are purchased and floating around in my blood stream.......... (Hep A/B {Twinrix}, Typhoid) (~$124.00 CAN)
I'm/we're trying to figure out what other tour(s) we're going to have time for during our trip. We are scheduled to volunteer from July 30, 2012 - Aug 10th but we're leaving to head down on July 27th, and come back August 15/16th. PATAS (The Peruvian Association for Travel and Adventure Services) is the only company we've been in serious conversations with about the tours.
*We still need Yellow Fever vaccines (~$127.00 CAN)
*We need to pay the program fee (one week of construction/renovation and one week of working with {hopefully} street kids - (US$470 + 5% currency conversion and transaction fee - 493.50 US)
*We need to get prophylactic medications from our doctors to bring with to prevent any bad things from going down as best we can (acetazolamide for altitude sickness since Cusco is around 3500m above sea level and Newfoundland is basically ON the ocean!; antibiotics, antifungals, antivirals, possibly anti-travelers diarrhea). The water is supposed to be unfit to drink, especially with the Leptospirosis outbreak due to a flood up north which is a sickness carried through water contaminated with infected animal urine... so I don't know how that's going to go yet.
*Loperamide (Imodium), gravol, benadryl, 40% non-aerosol DEET, fenofexadine (day time allergy medication), unscented baby wipes in case there's no toilet paper or showers, unscented deodorant (does that even exist?), more wool socks, super cheap light colored longsleeve shirts and light pants.... I'm sure there's more I haven't yet thought of...
*I need to get copies of every bit of paper work we've ever seen (and some that we haven't yet) and give them to my mom. Passport and license, provincial/national health cards, insurance, plane tickets, immunization records, that police check I needed for my work term, the program information including contact numbers/addresses and receipts..... etc?)
Hopefully everything goes perfectly either way!!!
I guess we'll see...
-The tickets to Cusco (Peru) are purchased (through a travel agent) (~$2100.00 CAN). The flights are through Air Canada and LAN (I think... Daniel has the tickets at his house for now)
-Travel insurance is purchased (via WorldNomads) - ($122.66 CAN)
-The registration fee (but not the program fee) for volunteering with IVHQ (International Volunteer Headquarters) is purchased ($243.53 CAN).
-Overnight trip to Machu Picchu (Vistadome package via Maximo Nivel's PATAS organization) is covered ($611.51 {$305.76 each CAN)
-SOME vaccinations (we haven't got Yellow Fever immunizations yet) are purchased and floating around in my blood stream.......... (Hep A/B {Twinrix}, Typhoid) (~$124.00 CAN)
I'm/we're trying to figure out what other tour(s) we're going to have time for during our trip. We are scheduled to volunteer from July 30, 2012 - Aug 10th but we're leaving to head down on July 27th, and come back August 15/16th. PATAS (The Peruvian Association for Travel and Adventure Services) is the only company we've been in serious conversations with about the tours.
*We still need Yellow Fever vaccines (~$127.00 CAN)
*We need to pay the program fee (one week of construction/renovation and one week of working with {hopefully} street kids - (US$470 + 5% currency conversion and transaction fee - 493.50 US)
*We need to get prophylactic medications from our doctors to bring with to prevent any bad things from going down as best we can (acetazolamide for altitude sickness since Cusco is around 3500m above sea level and Newfoundland is basically ON the ocean!; antibiotics, antifungals, antivirals, possibly anti-travelers diarrhea). The water is supposed to be unfit to drink, especially with the Leptospirosis outbreak due to a flood up north which is a sickness carried through water contaminated with infected animal urine... so I don't know how that's going to go yet.
*Loperamide (Imodium), gravol, benadryl, 40% non-aerosol DEET, fenofexadine (day time allergy medication), unscented baby wipes in case there's no toilet paper or showers, unscented deodorant (does that even exist?), more wool socks, super cheap light colored longsleeve shirts and light pants.... I'm sure there's more I haven't yet thought of...
*I need to get copies of every bit of paper work we've ever seen (and some that we haven't yet) and give them to my mom. Passport and license, provincial/national health cards, insurance, plane tickets, immunization records, that police check I needed for my work term, the program information including contact numbers/addresses and receipts..... etc?)
Hopefully everything goes perfectly either way!!!
I guess we'll see...
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)