La Virgen de la Merced

12 days

I´ve been in Cuzco for a whole week now, and that is the view that I generally wake up to. The hostel has been great - wonderfully friendly people, most of whom are also volunteering with the school program, and a generally cheery place. A couple of the other girls and I are thinking about trying to find an apartment to rent, though, which would be cheaper and more independent. BUT more importantly, I had my first week of volunteering at Aldea Yanapay.

My first day walking in to Yanapay, there was a young girl named May-Lin waiting at the door greeting each and every volunteer with a hug and a kiss - myself included, even though we´d never met. This is representative of the attitude of the place as a whole: a place where everyone is greeted with a kiss on the cheek, where adults hug children instead of order them about, and where everyone is equal. Kids come there from 3-7 pm, after regular school, and they can do homework, read, do art, play games, etc. It is a place for them to get to be kids instead of hanging out on the street or working with their parents or being locked in their houses. They range in age from 5 to 14, and are all incredibly adorable and sweet. The only "teachers" besides the two directs are volunteers, and they are from all over - Switzerland, Italy, Spain, England, Denmark, Australia, the U.S. and Peru - it´s a great group to be a part of.

For the second half of each day, from 3-5, we break into smaller groups (familias), and study whatever the topic of the weeks is. This week it was Christianity - something which none of the volunteers know very much about, but which all of the kids are experts in. So they taught us, really. (They´ve already studied Buddhism and Judaism.) We also prepare for the Show, which happens every Friday, where each group presents a little skit or something to do with the week´s topic. My group, las Uvitas (little grapes), put on a news show: breaking news, el Mesías was born last night in Bethlehem! We interviewed Mary, an angel, a star, two sheep, and two donkeys, each of whom told us their their role in last night´s events. The homemade masks were pretty spectacular, if I do say so myself.

Anyhow, it´s beautiful out right now, and a couple of the other volunteers and I are going to the Temple of the Moon and to see some of the other ruins around the outskirts of town. I´ve finally caught up on sleep, after going out dancing the past couple of nights - at one place the other night, they played a re-mixed "Grease" medley, which was a totally unexpected to throwback to the probably 5 productions I was in of that show when I was younger. Ciao, as they say.

the mountain in the distance says¨Viva El Peru, Glorioso, Cuzco.¨click for a bigger picture.

Estoy en Cuzco

I´m in Cuzco, as of yesterday afternoon. I had flew from Lima to here yesterday morning, a one hour flight, on a plane mostly full of Japanese tourists. I fell asleep for the first twenty minutes and when I opened my eyes, we were over the Andes...Unbelievable. Totally stunning. In case you can´t tell in that picture, those clouds are very very close to those mountain tops. I felt the altitude (about 11,000 feet) shortly after arriving at the airport, when I got a major headrush and could feel my heart pounding while walking briskly up a ramp to the bathroom. Luckily, it´s been nothing worse than that since. Anyhow, a girl named Rosemary from Aldea Yanapay - the place where I´m volunteering and living - picked me up and we took a taxi back to the hostel.

I slept most of the afternoon, and then went out to explore in the evening. When I arrived at la Plaza de San Francisco, a procession was just leaving the church - a representation of La Virgen de la Merced held aloft on the men´s shoulders, and a marching band of about 30 boys following with loud snare drums and solemn horns. Simultaneously, a wedding taking place inside the church was just ending. The wedding party and all the guests came outside amidst a showering of rice, and the bride and groom had their first dance right there, surrounded by their musicians and a crowd of onlookers. (I felt like an accidental wedding crasher.) But their cheerful music was almost completely drowned out by the nearby marching band, booming out their gloomy processional! I eventually ended up in la Plaza de Armas (the main square), and stopped on the way at a gigantic used book sale, which included Spanish translations of some of my favorites - El Gran Gatsby, Oliverio Twist, etc. I talked for a while with one of the boys selling books, and he told me his belief that in Lima there are a lot of good people (buena gente) and a lot of not-so-good people, but that Cuzco is full of good people. We shall see...

In terms of beauty, Cuzco certainly lives up to the hype that it receives. Narrow streets made entirely of stones, ancient Incan walls, and mountains on all sides. It´s really quite something. At night there are lights going up into the hills on every side, marking the houses nestled there. Though all the tourists add that level of self-awareness to the place and it´s sad to see how it exploits itself: mass amounts of alpaca sweaters, hats, scarves, gloves, brightly colored bags and belts, Quechua women posing for pictures for money. It´s refreshing that not that many people here seem to speak English; and it still surprises me when I meet people travelling here who don´t speak a word of Spanish. Anyhow, it´s not hard to get away from the tourists if you walk more than 5 blocks away from la Plaza de Armas, and I am happily living farther (further? shoot.) away than that.

There are tons of children here, in the streets, with parents, with siblings, by themselves, small small kids. A little boy, Carlitos, befriended me today while I was sitting in la Plaza de Armas. His mother was sitting on a bench near me, selling dolls, and he came over and started tying his ribbon around my book, around my leg...he had snot all over his face and was unbelievably adorable. I saw him and his mother and sister again later on, and he came running over. It made me excited for the upcoming volunteering with children. There are also a lot of dogs, like the one on the right, who I pass by most days.

photos from Lima

the pushcarts aren´t like the pushcarts in New York

maíz morado

part of an awesome anti-logging art show outside the public library of Barranco. check out more here: http://www.salonhumorperu.com/MUESTRAS-SALON-HUMOR-PERU-2009/album/index.html

One Hostel, in Barranco

Greetings from Peru

Well, I´m in Peru. And I´m doing the travel blog thing, which makes me feel like a jerkface for becoming another member of the self-centered internet unisphere. Oh well.

Today was my third day in Lima/Peru/South America. And as nervous as I was beforehand, coming here has turned out to be much less scary and sad than moving to Syracuse, NY was (earlier this summer) - and that time I even had my dad with me. Nearly everyone I´ve met here so far has been very warm, welcoming, and sincere - and pleasantly surprised that the American can speak Castellano. It turns out that all those years of bad Spanish classes have paid off. After arriving around 11pm in Lima from Boston, I talked with my taxi driver on the way to the hostel - he´s been a taxi driver for 42 years and told me, "Eres de los Estados Unidos pero hablas español perfectamente..me confundiste." I made friends with the two brothers, Dennis and Erick, who run the hostel I stayed at. Their friendliness and helpfulness certainly made the transition much easier. The next morning - my first full day in Lima - I ate breakfast with a washed up Australian, and we ended up sharing a cab down to Barranco - the quieter, more bohemian district of Lima where I´ve been staying since. note: the driving in Lima is the craziest driving I have ever, ever witnessed or been a part of; not for nervous nellies. it´s the norm for cars to be about six inches away from each other, and from pedestrians. lane markers don´t mean much, and stop signs mean even less.

Everything in Lima is extremely colorful, except for the sky which has been the same shade of gray since I arrived. But the buildings are bright yellows, reds, blues, teals...nothing like any American city I´ve ever seen, except maybe New Orleans. It´s busy busy busy and full of people, people, people, stuff and more STUFF. Everywhere you go, someone´s trying to sell you something: hats, mittens, long underwear, hair brushes, pirated dvds, stove-top knobs and other bits of appliances... I wandered through market area where I was definitely the only gringa around. While I did get some stares, at least I´m not 5¨11¨and blonde, like one girl from the hostel (¨I´m a lighthouse,¨she said). It is sort of nice to be an average height in the general population, for a change.

So many new experiences already, so many new people. I was taken out by the Japanese-Peruvian family of a zumba teacher I met in Maine this summer; they were unbelievably friendly and drove me around the city at night, and then took me to eat anticucho, a typical Peruvian meal that is cow´s heart on a kebab - so much for vegetarianism. The mother of the family, Toshi, has told me to call her when I get to Cusco and get a cell phone, to call her if I have any problems whatsoever, and to call her when I´m back in Lima. Chicha is my favorite drink here, made from the native purple corn. Being by the shore of the Pacific. Coming across the changing of the guard in front of El Palacio del Gobierno, house of President Alan García. I talked for a while with a primary school phys. ed. teacher in Lima Centro, who dóesn´t speak a word of English and has never left Peru. I´ve been staying at a wonderful hostel that´s run by a family in a beautifully converted old home in Barranco, where the daugher Melissa mans the desk most of the time and her parents are in and out. And there have been plenty of other stumblings and bumblings in this new city.