Kerri

So it's been a while since I wrote. I haven't been doing anything TOO exciting since Rachel left, but I have a few interesting (and terrible and annoying) stories...

When Rachel left me in Lima, I was worried I wouldn't make any friends during the day I had to kill there. I woke up, ate breakfast alone, watched some Peruvian news about the EU-LAC summit that was going on in Lima that week (60 heads of state, 48 snipers around the city, and a lot of road blocks!), and wondered what I'd do that day since I'd already seen most everything I wanted to see with Rachel. Some guys sat down next to me and were speaking in English. Yes! A few minutes later they asked me if I spoke English, we became instant friends, and they invited me to spend the day being their Lima guide. As we were preparing to leave the hostal, we started talking to three librarians from Idaho (they are going to school for this, I swear) and suddenly our group turned into 6! I took them to Old Town where we marveled at the thousands of pigeons at the Monestario de San Francisco, were served lunch by the French nuns at L'eau de Vivre (and my Canadian friends got to practice their perfect Quebequois french with the nuns), then we headed to Miraflores where we checked out the photo exhibition in Parque Kennedy. After a while, I decided to go to the department store nearby and buy a coat for the cold weather that was awaiting me in Cusco. Bad move. This is the moment I lost everyone. I told the guys where to meet me when they were done looking at the pictures, but we never ran into each other again. I found out later that they had waited in front of the store entrance for me for a while but I guess I took too long trying on coats! I was only worried that they wouldn't make it home without me because earlier they'd said they only had a $5 bill, but when I got home I found them there safe and sound.

That night we all made mojitos in our hostal kitchen and our favorite resident hostal worker, Leonora, took us all out to the bars nearby in Barranco. We danced the night away and soon enough it was 6am... and I had to leave for the airport at 9am. Oops. The same taxi driver who had taken Rachel to the airport the evening before came to pick me up for my 45 minute drive to the airport. He took a different way than before, however, and soon we were in a slummy area that didn't look so safe. Since I was running on little sleep and I had never heard back from Rachel that she had actually arrived safely back in the US, I was convinced that he had kidnapped Rachel the night before and dropped her off in the middle of nowhere and I was going to suffer the same fate. Eek. But then we arrived at the airport and all was well. This time my flight to Cusco was not as turbulent as before, so luckily I did not have to think I was going to die on the plane alone and crash in the Andes. The airport in Cusco was filled with fun Andean pipe music like last time, what a great touristy welcome. Once everyone collected their baggage the musicians stopped until the next crowd arrived.

I had lunch at The Muse cafe in San Blas (cute neighborhood where I live and go to school). It's a really cool, artsy cafe, as are all the other places in this area. The music was even my style (I miss my music, remind me why I didn't bring an iPod and everyone else did). I was sitting alone, probably looking very awkward because I was just twiddling my thumbs and staring at the wall. A guy was also sitting alone across from me, but he looked less awkward because he was actually reading a magazine. He noticed my awkwardness and introduced himself and invited me to join him for lunch. He's a 29 year old from London who has spent essentially all of his 20s traveling around the world. We exchanged email addresses so that we could meet up later on to share more travel stories. Yay, my first friend. Went to my first Spanish lesson after lunch, which went pretty well even though I was fairly tired... I got compliments from the professor on my non-American accent!

Cusco this time around is a LOT colder than before. I discovered this that first evening after my Spanish lesson when I had to wait around in the cold, cold, cooold weather for someone to finally bring me the keys to my apartment so I could go home and sleep and put on warmer clothes (the previous tennant had taken my keys with her on accident).

Once I finally got home at around 7:30pm I was a bit annoyed at the whole key problem. I was so cold (it was at least 30 degrees outside) and I wasn't sure where anything was in my neighborhood, so I just ended up having a piece of leftover bread (from lunch) for dinner. It was a bit pathetic.

The next morning I asked my room mates (a 20 year old German couple) where I could buy some groceries so I wouldn't have to nibble at pieces of stale bread. They invited me to join them for breakfast and then on the way they'd point out where the grocery store was. Nice! Well, it didn't turn out that way. Somehow I instead ended up following them to a tour agency so they could pay for a jungle tour, then we had to walk 15 minutes down to the main road to the LAN Peru office to buy their plane tickets, but then discovered after waiting for 20 minutes that we had to walk down further to a different travel agency and buy their tickets there. After 10 minutes more of waiting around, the German guy looked at me and said, ¨Well, actually we have plans at 12pm to go see some ruins with our other room mate, so I'm sorry but maybe you should just go eat on your own now.¨ I asked which ruins and pulled out my Boleto Turistico (tourist ticket needed to visit most all museums and ruins in and around Cusco) and he pointed them out. He said he just had one day left on his ticket and wanted to us it. I said I just had one day left, too. However, he didn't invite me to come with them and just said goodbye, so I took that as my cue to leave. Nice first meeting with my new roomies. Things with them just got so much better as my time in Cusco went on... cough cough. I think all my problems with them deserve their own entry. That will come later.

At this point, I didn't have much to do and I was alone for the day. I started to wonder why exactly I'd come to Cusco on a Friday, when I had the whole weekend with nothing to do and didn't quite know anyone yet, and my 5 cool Canadian and Idaho(ian?) friends were still in Lima. Plus I apparently missed an amazing, free Mouse on Mars concert in Parque Kennedy (it's a really neat German psychadelic trance type band)! Boo. From what I remember I didn't do that much during the weekend except spend hours trying to get ahold of my friend Matan from my Galapagos trip, who was supposedly in Cusco. It's very annoying trying to make plans through email, especially when nobody is ever online at the same time. I finally decided to just walk to his hostal and hope he was there... and he was! He invited me to go to an all night, open air party an hour outside of Cusco with all his Israeli friends that night, and since I had nothing else to do, I figured it would be fun. It ended up being a fairly bad idea. My night consisted of a cold, hour long bus ride to a mystery area near Urubamba with a bunch of Israelis. Then we entered the party, and I discovered more Israelis. I listened to a lot of Hebrew that night, sat by the fire and tried to keep it going, and wondered when 6am would come around so that we could take the bus home to Cusco. I ate a cold soy burger, drank some watery hot chocolate, and watched as a 40 year old crazy man came up to Matan and demanded he give him his tea because the world was amazing and we should share everything. I also met a girl from Utah and we bonded because neither of us understood Hebrew. Fun night.

The rest of my time in Cusco has been spent going to Spanish lessons for 2 or so hours a day, and for a while when my Canadian friends were here before their Machu Picchu trek we hung out during the day and did a short hike to Sachsaywaman ruins above Cusco and went out at night to go dancing. I've gradually learned more and more complicated things in my Spanish lessons, although it's all been really quick!, but now I can say I at least have some sort of grasp on the past, future, and conditional verb tenses... and today I learn the imperative. Only thing left to do is practice mucho! My teachers all know that I like conversation, so we've done quite a lot of talking instead of just lectures and grammar. At one point I was discussing global warming, women's lack of rights in Peru, the problems in Middle East, and what I would propose to do for the US if I were a president hopeful... all in Spanish! Basic Spanish, but it is still pretty cool that I can now say more than just hola. The funny thing about my teachers is that they have all assumed that I am from Europe. One of my teachers asked me where I was from in Germany, and just yesterday another one thought I was Dutch (as did an actual Dutch woman who started to speak to me in rapid fire Dutch). When the teachers found out I was from the US, they were shocked because apparently they don't think I have an American accent when I speak Spanish. That's great to hear! Maybe it's because I was sick and had a hoarse voice? Haha. Anyway, four more hours of class today and I'm done for the rest of my trip. I actually went to the doctor yesterday and managed to describe all my symptoms in Spanish and tell him about my past history with asthma... so I think all the lessons I've had so far have been really helpful.

So back to Sachsaywaman... we hiked up a bunch of tiny Inkan steps at the back of San Blas area and after much huffing and puffing (and drinking a Powerade), we made it to the top where the ruins were. We first hiked up a different hill to a giant white Jesus statue that overlooks the entire city of Cusco. It was such a beautiful view! I even made a new friend while I was up there, some 14 year old local boy who was for some reason just hanging out up there with a jacket on and a roll of toilet paper in his pocket. He was pretty nice and must have thought I was, too, because he asked for my email address. I gave it to him, because he said he really wanted to practice his English, but he hasn't written. So sad. On the walk back home from the ruins, I was telling Mike and Ivan (Canadians) about a really hilarious dog that I'd seen in Cusco the last time I was here... it had the body of a dachshund and the head of a golden retriever and I couldn't have even dreamed up a funnier looking dog. Right after I told him, we turned a corner and saw a black version of the same dog! He tried to take a picture but the dog kept staring at him for a few seconds and then turning and waddling away right when he'd click the shutter. We also passed a few llamas and donkeys carrying a ton of long grass on their backs.

On the 22nd, there was a giant holiday celebration here in the city for Corpus Christi. I've never seen anything like it. My area of town was a bit quieter that day, but during the days leading up to the 22nd, there were fireworks going off every day, at all times of day, and often random dances at night in the streets or small religious processions. But on the day of, man was it insane. I walked down to the main plaza and discovered that it was packed to the max with thousands and thousands of people. There were bands playing in the middle of it all, dancers, floats of religious figures, and for some reason a guy was crowd surfing on a giant table (??). It took me at least 20 minutes to cross the plaza because the crowds were so tight and I had to cross a few parade lines. I almost felt a little claustrophobic. I was also getting annoyed because everyone kept bumping into me and pushing me, as if I could somehow go faster that way. I had one small woman half my size literally trying to ram me into the person in front of me. The traditional dish of Corpus Christi is called something like Chirichu (spelling is probably wrong), which is a dish of seaweed, caviar, chicken, mystery sausage meat, and fried guinea pig complete with it's hair, toenails, and teeth still intact. I decided not to try it. I walked up to the other smaller, nearby plazas and discovered that there were stalls upon neverending stalls of this stuff. It seemed to be the only thing people wanted to eat that day. Plus beer. I was all alone, though, since I wasn't able to get ahold of any of my friends via email since we were never online at the same time... it's so frustrating that we don't all have cell phones. I spent the rest of my afternoon eating an overpriced pizza at a touristy restaurant on another plaza because I was so hungry I didn't want to bother looking for a cheap place among all the crowds of people. I had about 50 people come up to me during my lunch to try to sell me finger puppets, paintings, phone calls, and more paintings. I finally got up and went to sit on the steps of the plaza to people watch, only to have a small girl come up to me trying to sell me grape candy.

....aaand more to come later when I have free time to write, but you blackmailed me so I had to post this now!