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.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
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
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