One Monday night (June 14th?), Amy and I got invited to go to a yoga class by another FairPlay student, Will. We went to the class and afterwards we all went out for drinks at Paddy´s, an Irish bar in the Plaza...it´s very touristy and a really nice place to escape to if you are feeling overwhelmed by culture shock. Anyway, a group of us all hung out and this bar until about 12:30, at which point Amy and I decided it was time to go home because we had school the next morning. Upon arriving back at our house, we found the door to be locked. This was kind of a shock to us because we had never stayed out late before and whenever we came home in the early evening, the door was always unlocked. As a result, we felt no need to bring our keys with us and instead of being tucked away in our backpacks, they were inconveniently in our bedroom on the other side of the locked door. Ooops. I knocked on the door a couple times, but we heard no movement from inside the house (although about 3 dogs from various locations in the neighborhood started barking). I was really uncomfortable--we where making so much noise, and even though I wanted one of the family members to wake up, I also didn´t want to be the one waking them, so I stopped knocking. At this point, Amy sat down on the sidewalk and I came up with a not-so-brilliant idea.

"I´m going to go around the back, " I told her. She looked at me like I had told her the door had just opened on its own. "I´ll be right back!" I exclaimed, ignoring the obvious doubt all over her face, and disappeared behind the block of houses.

The first obstacle I encountered was a large adobe wall separating me from the backyards of the houses I needed to crawl through before finding my own backyard. With a mighty "hurrrugh" I pulled myself on top of the wall and jumped down onto the other side, landing on a cushion of soft dirt that squished disconcertingly beneath my feet and sloped toward a small creek that ran through the middle of the backyards. It was only at this point when I was away from all the streetlights that I realized I would be slinking through the backyards in the dark.

Cautiously I set forth, poking my toe at the ground with every new step before planting my foot firmly down. I knew there was a creek somewhere and I could feel the earth sloping towards it underneath me, but I couldn´t see exactly where it was/if at some point the slope just turned into a drop. Perhaps this is why I almost fell down into the ditch when the slope actually did turn into a drop. Fortunately, I was able to grab a tree to prevent myself from falling in.

As I clung to said tree, I decided that it would probably be best for me to cross the creek at not-so-scary point so that I wouldn´t have to worry about it anymore. Carefully, I let go of the tree and crawled to a point where the creek felt crossable. I flung myself across and grabbed onto the post of a fence on the other side--it wasn´t until I ran my hand along the wire attached to the post that I realized the fence was made of barbed wire. I was very grateful that I had grabbed the post of the fence and not the pokey in between.

Steadily, I kept walking, balancing myself on the small mound of dirt between the barbed wire and the creek. More dogs in the neighborhood were barking...I was not doing a good job of keeping quiet. Still, I kept going, climbing over a pile of tires until I came to the base of what felt like a hill made of old bags of cement. Looking up, I could see the top of my house and I knew I was almost there...all I had to do was climb this hill of cement bags and Í would be in the courtyard. I reached out and began scaling the wall. All was well until I was almost to the top...at this point things became rather slippery. To keep myself from falling, I grabbed the branch of a tree at the top of the wall. As I did, a pile of roofing tile next to me slid off the hill of cement bags and crashed to the ground below. Whichever dogs in the neighborhood that weren´t already awake and barking were definitely making a shit ton of noise now. But it was okay, because I was almost there.

And then I heard a sickening cracking noise and suddenly things weren´t okay anymore...the branch I was holding onto was about the break off the tree. With a high-pitched "eeee!" I grabbed onto another branch and hoisted myself up and over the wall in one swift but incredibly clumsy movement. I landed in a pile of junk on the other side, but I didn´t care...I was in the backyard! And I hadn´t woken anyone up but every dog within a mile of me! Quite proud of myself, I slunk around the corner into the courtyard...and the first thing I saw was Manchi looking down at me from the balcony with a terrified expression on her face. Oooops.

"Hola Manchi," I said sheepishly, coming out of the shadows. Her mouth dropped open. Before she could say anything, I said,"No llaves, lo siento," meaning, "No keys, I´m sorry." She just kept looking at me like I was a loony, so I walked to the front door and opened it for Amy. We fell asleep to a chorus of dogs barking for another 10 minutes and ate breakfast the next morning to the sound of Manchi laughing and telling us that next time, we should knock louder.

written by  kfox on July 2, 2010 from Cusco, Peru
from the travel blog: Peru Adventure!
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Kari Grande, the street we live off of.

So, Amy and I wake up at 6:30 am every day to get ready for Spanish classes. We both moan and groan and Amy makes lots of homocidal faces because it is freezing here in the mornings and getting out of our sleeping bags seems like the worst thing ever...going into the bathroom long enough to brush my teeth is enough to make my jaw chatter like a jackhammer. Somehow we get ourselves down into the kitchen, where Manchi makes us each a fried egg for breakfast. We eat it with flat, white bread (bread in Cusco doesnt rise because of the altitude) and instant coffee (for some reason, Peruvians dont drink real coffee, but its not as crappy as instant coffee in the US). Then we catch either a taxi (if we are running late) or walk a couple streets over to catch a combi (Doradino and Arco Iris are the combis we use, but there are many different ones with random names like Batman). Usually getting off the bus is interesting because there are so many people on it that we have a difficult time seeing out the window and finding our stop. At times, we have been dropped off far enough away from the school that it takes us many moons to walk there and we end up late and sheepishly apologizing to our teachers. But then again, most of the time we are late coz we cant get ourselves out of bed, haha.

So, once we arrive at the school, I go into a classroom with my gramatica teacher, Mary Luz, and Amy disappears into a different classroom with her teacher, Ana. I like gramatica...Im a visual person so having everything im learning written out on a white board is much easier for me than conversation. Mary Luz is a tough teacher (she is one of the only profesoras who assigns homework and actually expects her students to do it), but shes very organized in her instruction and makes a lot of sense to me. And she knows bits and pieces of English, so if she says "perro" and I say "huh?" and she cant get her point across by barking like a dog, she will say the word "dog." Shes super cute...she is short and curvy and has freckles across her face. She has a 10 year old son. I like gramatica a lot.

After gramatica ends at 10 am, I have 2 hours of practica with my profesora Eliana. During this time, we stroll about Cusco and use the Spanish I have learned in actual conversations with each other, which is super difficult for me but also super important. Eliana has taken me many cool places during practica...she took me to the market (notice I uploaded a pic of the butchered cow heads), the Cusco cemeterio, a couple musuems, parades, Corpus Christi, and both of her childrens dance performances (she has a 15 yr old son and an 8 yr old daughter). Usually we have to push our way up Ave. El Sol, a main street in Cusco, to get to the Plaza from the school...pushing is required because for the last two or three weeks, there have been dances and parades blocking the streets EVERY DAY. Cuscos birthday is June 24th and every year there is a huge celebration in the Inca ruins outside the city called Inti Raymi where people dance traditional Peruvian dances and reenact an old Incan ceremony that celebrates the sun, which was very important in Inca culture. Anyway, we saw a shit ton of dancing...children, teenagers, adults, even elderly individuals....it was awesome but made it difficult to get anywhere fast because of the crowds. Anyway, Eliana is wonderful...she is also short, cute, motherly, and stretches her words out when she thinks I cant understand her Spanish. I ask her lots of questions, like "Why are there so many stinkin parades here?" and she gives me nice, slow answers. I feel more like an insider with her around.

After classes end at 12, Amy and I usually walk back to our homestay, which is a good 45-60 minute walk...it helps us feel like we are burning off all the starchy rice and potatoes we are being fed. We are always super hungry/hot/cant breathe by the time we get home because the days in Cusco are pretty warm and we have a bigass hill to climb up on the way back. We pass the street where people wash taxis all day and family-owned convenience stores where women peel apples and oranges to make juice and leave the peels sprawled out and spiraling upon the sidewalk. We pass several universities that, from the outside, look purely functional...no beautiful green campuses here. We pass vendors on the street selling chocolate bars and tabloid magazines and bootleg DVDs. We pass empty lots where holes have been dug and the dirt lies in gritty piles on the sidewalk, waiting to be turned into bricks for someones house or fence/wall. We pass walls where the family behind them could not afford to string barbed wire across the top so they have broken a million glass bottles and adhered the jagged shards to the top...its quite a violent-looking way of keeping people out. And we pass a million dogs, most homeless, all dirty, eating trash and sleeping in the sun. There is a dead dog in the canal near our house that has been there for over a week...once they fall in, the walls are too high for them to climb out. But no one has removed it, so it just lays there in the water, looking more and more dead. I am NEVER drinking water that has not been boiled here.

Once we arrive home, Manchi serves us lunch, which usually consists of soup (corn soup, noodle soup, potato soup, barley soup) and a main dish. The main dish ALWAYS has white rice and some form of potato, most often potato chunks covered in sauce...occasionally there will be other vegetables and about twice a week there will be meat. We eat, thank Manchi, feed Gatita, and spend the rest of the afternoon doing various things...going to museums or shopping, using the schools computers, hanging out with friends from school. Every so often we wash our clothes in our bathroom sink...we cant go to the lavanderias in town because of Amys detergent allergy, so we wash everything by hand. We take showers, probably not as often as we should because the water is either cold enough to give one hypothermia or scalding enough to burn through 10 layers of skin...its kind of a toss up. I am soooooooo excited about coming back to the states and being able to take a real shower...its one of the things im looking forward to most, sadly enough. Then at 7 we eat dinner (always the same thing we had for lunch) with John and the other homestay students, who are usually fun and interesting and always changing. We will sit and talk to them for hours, so grateful to be speaking to someone who knows English, haha. Then we either go out with friends (dancing or drinking or both) or sit in our room in our sleeping bags in bed doing our homework and freezing our asses off like two old people, haha. Whatever, we always have school the next day...2 am bedtime and 6:30 wake-up time are not a happy combination. Im pretty satisfied with our lives here for the most part...the only thing i really REALLY want is a normal shower. Can someone please send me one in the mail?

All that being said, my schedule is now changing rapidly. My last Spanish classes were Tuesday, thanks to studet loan-induced financial setbacks. Amys last day is Friday. After that, we are off to explore other parts of Peru! We will come back to Cusco around the 19th or so because Amys mom is flying in and we need to meet her. Im happy for a break though...as much as i like some parts of Cusco, its really kind of dirty and overwhelming at this point...i think im getting mid-trip homesickness, so hopefully new places will distract me from that. Anyhoo, I best be going now...have to meet up with my friend who will sadly be going home next week...she contracted typhoid and wants to be sick at home rather than here (by the way, the 60 dollar vaccination was TOTALLY worth it). Much love, more later.

written by  kfox on June 29, 2010 from Cusco, Peru
from the travel blog: Peru Adventure!
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The clinic I went to for my excellent medical care...before the lady doctor

By the way, the biopsy for the lesion in my mouth came back benign. Woohoo!

But back to last Wednesday...it became apparent I needed to go to a medical clinic. The first one I tried to go to that Lonely Planet recommended was for tourists...I went there because I thought they would speak English. To my disappointment, the clinic no longer existed. So instead, I went to the clinic fairly close to the FairPlay school that I had overheard John recommend to Amy when her altitude sickness was all wonky. It had a big friendly sign over it that read (in English): "Travel safe, come back soon!" I was pretty damn sure I did not want to come back soon, but the inside looked clean and the sign was in English, so I went in anyway. I asked for an appointment and was told by a very nice man that I would have to see a specialist. He said "The specialist is not here but we will give you a complimentary ride to her office in our car. Your friend can come too." I agreed (only because John said the clinic was legit) and Amy and I waited in a nice room with two hospital beds and a TV until the car was ready. We climbed into the car (the nicest/least smelly car I´ve encountered in Peru) and the nice man behind the wheel drove off. It wasn´t until we had been driving for about 15 minutes and it started getting dark and the driver twisted and turned through what seemed like progressively more rural/less clean neighborhoods (there were dirt piles in the middle of the road) that Amy and I looked at each other in the rearview mirror and thought "Oh god." The driver pulled up in front of an indescript door with no label on it, stopped the car, got out, and rang the buzzer. No one came. I turned to Amy and said, "So, how do you feel about being sold into slavery?" Leave it to Peru to have an unidentifiable medical specialist in the middle of bumfuck nowhere. At that point, a boy child of about 12 years opened the door. I said, "If he´s the doctor, I want my money back."

Luckily, he wasn´t the doctor. He showed us into a large, tiled waiting room where the smell of incense wafted down from the massage clinic above, and I relaxed/felt slightly less sketched out than I had outside. Then a woman walked up to me, shook my hand, and asked me if I was the patient...in Spanish. I balked a bit...the man at the other clinic had spoken English. I asked her if she spoke English and she said "Un poco" and I thought "Well shit, that means no." And that´s how, after only 2 and a half weeks of speaking Spanish, I ended up on my back in a bare, yellow-walled room in a third world country with a doctor between my legs babbling in Spanish and poking at my cooch. I suppose it´s a testament to FairPlay and its school that I was even able to communicate with this woman at all. But somehow, between broken Spanish and English, drawings, and much gesticulation, I was able to tell her the problem and she was able to tell me that I was fine. PHEW!!! And it only cost 80 soles (28 US dollars) even though the clinic was private. Now, you all are witnesses to this...I am BEGGING the universe for no more medical emergencies surrounding my trip to Peru.

Also, Amy and I have adopted a cat. There was this little kitten running around our house who the host family said was a stray and they weren´t feeding her. However, she would not leave the house and she was the most emaciated little thing I have ever seen so Amy and I decided to buy her some food. Now every time we come home, she runs up to us and meows and after she´s eaten, she curls up on our laps and purrs and is sooooo cute. The only problem though is that (like most animals in third world countries), this cat probably has worms, which are transmittable to humans. Therefore, every time I see her, I am torn between cuddling her and running away to save my own insides. Amy says as long as we wash our hands after we touch her, we should be fine. But I worry, coz this cat is a little ball of the cutest disgusting I have ever seen...her fur is all thin and weird and uncared for and she smells like shit and looks like she´s on the brink of death from starvation. But she´s sooooo cute and small and will always be that way because starvation has stunted her growth (she´s actually about 2 and is not a kitten at all...Amy checked her teeth) and now the host family is saying she is our cat. We call her Gatita, which means "Little Cat." Mom, Dad, will you kill me if I bring her home?

written by  kfox on June 28, 2010 from Cusco, Peru
from the travel blog: Peru Adventure!
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Cemeterio, Cusco.

1. Granola bars: they are not made of granola. They are made of quinoa and other grains that remind me of the millet I feed my birds at home. They have the texture of styrofoam but are cheap and comparatively healthy.

2. Markets: there are some traditional supermarket type establishments, but most Peruvians acquire their food from "mercados," or big flat, cemented areas covered by plastic roof sheeting. Under this sheeting are hundreds of individually run stalls. Some sell produce, some sell chocolate, some sell ponchos and hats and other articles of clothing. Some will whip up any kind of fresh juice, or jugo, you want in a blender (very tasty but not very sanitary...the vendors "wash" the glasses in a bucket of water with no soap and fruit debris...I realized this after drinking a jugo de mango and my shit hasn´t been solid in a week...sorry for the crudeness, Mom and Dad). My favorite, however, are the meat stalls...they smell delightful and you can buy any kind of raw meat you want. I´m talking massive piles of cow intestine, skin, and feet with hooves still attached. The most frightening thing for me, however, had to be the cow heads...the top portions and the skin were missing but, as Eliana informed me, you could buy the jaws with teeth still intact. What you do with this, I have no idea.

3. Toilet Paper: you don´t put it in the toilet. Apparently Peru has very fragile plumbing and putting toilet paper in the toilet itself causes all sorts of unsavory problems. Therefore, every toilet has a little plastic bin next to it in which the toilet paper should be deposited. I keep accidentally putting it in the actual toilet and then freaking out that I´m going to clog my host family´s toilet...that would be embarrassing. Also, many establishments such as restuarants are not equipped with toilet paper...you gotta bring your own. Also, most toilet paper is fragranced due to its being put in a bin instead of flushed away where it can´t offend anyone.

4. Dogs: there are dogs everywhere here perusing the streets. Some have homes and some don´t, but they all look about the same...dirty. I want to pet them but the thought of rabies and worms (Amy says most animals in third world countries have worms) deters me. Even the pets have diseases because most Peruvian pet owners can´t afford to take their animals to the vet or don´t prioritize veterinary care. I suppose if you live in a place where your people are starving and your buildings are falling down, pets come as less of a priority.

5. White girls: here, being a white girl gets you extra attention. Known as gringas, we have a reputation for being supposedly more exotic/sexually open than Peruvian women, who are supposed to be more Catholic and chaste. Therefore, in combination with the higher prominence of machismo in Peruvian culture, the men here believe that it is okay to honk their horns and make comments and/or kissy noises whenever a white woman passes them by. Amy and I have even been told "I love you!" by one especially sexually frustrated man. Amy doesn´t get as many comments because she has dark hair, so from behind she looks more Peruvian...I am considering dying my hair black.

6. Cemeteries: yes, for those who know of all my morbid fascinations, my practica teacher Eliana took me to a Peruvian cemetery!!! It was huge! There were mausoleums galore and even some crypts! What I found most interesting though was the way the majority of the dead are buried...actually, they´re not really buried at all. The cemeterio is actually one giant labyrinth of cement walls with hundreds of bodies encased within. The body is placed into a hole in the wall and the hole is sealed with more cement. This is the part I like though: the cement does not completely fill the hole, so outside of each grave is a little hole in the wall, the bottom of which serves as a ledge. On this ledge, the families place personal items of the deceased...photographs, small figurines, flowers, crucifixes. Some families go even further though...they´ll put in miniscule bottles of Coca Cola or cerveza (beer) or miniature models of food if the deceased was a special fan of such things. One women must have been a restaurant owner because her ledge was covered in dollhouse-sized kitchen furniture, including a table and chairs, an oven, and stacks of mini Coca Colas. Anyhoo, these ledges are then closed behind glass doors, kind of like the doors on fireplaces, and only the families have the keys. I like this personalized approach...it seems like a better way to remember the dead for who the person was.

7. Potatoes: they are in EVERYTHING, followed by rice. It´s tasty, but not exactly a low starch diet. Also, when you order french fries, many restaurants will bring you a little dishes of mustard, ketchup, and this delicious white substance that I decided was my favorite. After consuming a shit ton of it on my fries, I realized this tasty Peruvian delicacy was mayonaise.

8. Weather: the day is hot, but the nights and mornings are FREEZING. I wear my long underwear to school, take it off once my lessons are done for the hot walk home, eat lunch, go back into town, and by the time I´m ready to go home for dinner, they are on again. I never know what to wear. I brought too many pairs of shorts (by that, I mean I brought two).

9. Trash: it´s everywhere. The streets are dusty, and trash lives in this dust. Sometimes the trash is shoved into cracks in the walls. There is a huge pile of it at the bottom of my street that the dogs sniff through every day. Once again, I guess if your people are starving, trash disposal is not on the top of your priority list.

10. Tea: most people here drink coca tea, tea made from coca leaves, the same leaves from which cocaine is derived. The tea, however, is very...unconcentrated as far as cocaine goes. Most people here drink it to help relieve altitude sickness, which is common at 11,000 ft.

11. Streets: most are made of cobblestones, not asphalt. Also, many are very narrow with miniscule sidewalks, so walking down one with a car driving up two inches away from you can be slightly disconcerting.

12. Schools: all the kids here wear uniforms and ride the crazyass combis to school.

That´s about all I can think of for right now, but I´m sure there will be more. ¡Hasta luego!

written by  kfox on June 21, 2010 from Cusco, Peru
from the travel blog: Peru Adventure!
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Machu Picchu!!!

Sooo, other points of interest at which I could understand our guide...one was the living quarters where important guests got to stay...these were the only quarters in the city with bathrooms because the Incas thought it was impolite to make their important guests hike out to the terraces and shit out in the crops, haha. Anyway, these bathrooms consisted of a room with a hole in the floor that connected to the city´s system of water channels...hopefully not to the drinking water. This system of water channels was actually pretty advanced...I guess the Incas had two water systems, one that went through the city and one secret well underground that the Incas could drink from if they ever suspected that an enemy had poisoned their water supply. Cool, huh?

Other things that are noteworthy...the Temple of the Condor was really cool. This was a building in which a flat slab of stone in the ground represented a condor (it didn´t look like a condor to me, but I´m willing to give the Incas the benefit of the doubt since they were mighty and brilliant and whatnot). This is where the Incas brought their dead to mumify them/sacrifice llamas. Once a llama had been sacrificed, the spirit of the condor would carry the spirits of the deceased up into the sky. Then the mummies were places into rectangular crevaces in the wall until the Incas could bring them up into the hills to be properly buried. Once again, cool, huh? We also saw these circular reflecting pools that the Incas used to study the stars...apparently it was sacriligious for them to look directly at the stars, so they studied the stars through their reflections in these pools. We also went to the Temple of the Moon, the rock quarry from which the Incas got all of their rocks to build with, and a giant sundial the Incas used to study the sun. It was cool to hear about all these places, but mostly it just felt kind of magical to wander through the ruins and stare out at the mountains surrounding them and think about the people who used to live there and what their lives were like and what they would think if they knew this city they had worked so hard to build was now one of the biggest tourist attractions in the world and 2,500 people come to see what was normal to them every day. I wonder if our cities will ever be cherished and studied and picked apart the way Machu Picchu is today.

Sooooo, now that I´ve gone on a philosophical rant, once again I must stop for the day. Even more (I know, right?) to come.

written by  kfox on June 17, 2010 from Cusco, Peru
from the travel blog: Peru Adventure!
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Doesn´t even need a title.

Having said that, I did something AMAZING this Saturday! After lusting over the idea for a very long time, Amy and I finally saw Machu Picchu! We weren´t planning on doing it this weekend originally...Amy´s mom is coming at the end of our time here and we wanted to go with her. But then a girl from Fairplay, Katie, asked us if we would like to go with her coz she didn´t want to go by herself. She is nice/seemed a bit lonely/it was her last weekend here/she provided us an opportunity to indulge in our lust so we said "Sure!" This was Thursday and we decided the best time to leave for our trip would be the next day.

Funnily enough (but not surprisingly), it takes a bit of planning to go to Machu Picchu. Whoops. But in proper Whirlwind-Kirsten fashion, Katie, Amy, and I were able to pull everything together at the last minute. We bought online train tickets from Ollantaytombo to Aguas Calientes, the town one must go to in order to catch a bus to Machu Picchu, on Friday morning during our Gramatica classes (ooops but Mariluz didn´t seem to mind). Then during Practica class, Amy and I got Carmen and Eliana (our respective profesoras who teach us how to do useful, practical things in Spanish) to show us where to find the bus terminal so we could catch a bus to Ollantaytombo that afternoon...apparently you can grab a combi to Ollantaytombo for only 5 soles...the only problem is that you have to survive a two hour bus ride on a combi. Once we knew where the terminal was, we met Katie at the school, raced home in a cab (well kinda...there was a parade blocking traffic...there´s always a fucking parade, haha), inhaled a quick lunch, threw our things into our backpacks (for some reason both Amy and Katie managed to put everything in their small bags while I needed my entire huge backpacker´s bag...I am a pathologically heavy traveler, even for weekend trips) and took another cab to the bus terminal. From there we caught more of a taxi/minivan than a combi (thank god...it had seatbelts!) and spent the next couple hours winding through the hills surrounding Cusco, which was beautiful...the Andes/the more rural towns we passed through all seemed very refreshing after a week in dirty Cusco. Around 4 we reached Ollantaytombo, a small Andean town with a set of ruins itself. There we went to the Heart Cafe, an awesome little cafe in the Plaza that was founded by a British woman who was appalled by the poor living conditions those living in rural Andean towns had to face. She started the cafe to raise money for more nutritious food, water purification systems, birth control, antibiotics, and a shelter for battered women and children. Check it out at www.livingheartperu.org. Anyhoo, Amy got to have a salad there, which was her first salad in a week...here is Peru most people subsist off of rice, potatoes and other starches and Amy´s salad had lettuce, beets, carrots, avacado, tomato, onions, scallions, and potatoes, all washed in disinfected water...I swear, the girl almost had an orgasm. :P

Anyhoo, back to our journey...after our dinner, we walked to the train station in Ollantaytombo. Usually at this point, tourists get onto a train. Unfortunately, part of the train tracks washed out in a flood earlier this year so part of our journey had to be undertaken via bus on the dirt backroads of several Andean mountain towns...we drove through so much brush that I felt like I was on the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland, haha. It was cool, albeit slightly nauseating. I was glad when we finally got onto the train. There I had a Spanglish conversation with a man from Spain...he told me my Spanish was excellent for only knowing Spanish for a week. I felt all warm and fuzzy inside. Thanks Mariluz and Eliana!

After another hour and a half, Katie, Amy, and I arrived at Aguas Calientes, a small touristy town that feels a lot like Disneyland (touristy and slightly contrived but without the magic feeling and rides) and even has the same disturbingly high prices for food. The three of us checked into a hostel and went out for food. I got ice cream and a Pisco sour, the national Peruvian mixed drink. It consists of Pisco (liquor from fermented grapes), two egg whites, cinnamon, and something else I can´t remember blended into foamy, alchoholic goodness. Amy got some nachos, which was basically warm chips with cold, shredded goat cheese on top...she was not amused. Apparently nachos are actually an American food, not Latin American. Then we went to bed around 12, knowing we would have to be up again in about 5 hours in order to beat the crowds. At about this time, construction work began roaring outside our window, haha.

At 4:30 am, our alarm went off. Amy, the champ that she is, went to buy bus tickets for the ride up the mountain to Machu Picchu while Katie and I moaned and groaned and tried to force ourselves out of bed. Upon arriving at the buses, we realized we had to also buy an entrance ticket for Machu Picchu and spent a bit of time wandering around trying to find where we could do that. After paying 126 soles each (which seems like a lot but actually only adds up to about 40 US dollars) we found the buses again, hopped on one, and stared in awe as the bus switchbacked up the mountain. The further up we went, the more we could see the mountains surrounding us...they were INCREDIBLE. I´ve been to the Sierra Nevada and the Rockie and even the Swiss Alps, but in my opinion, the Andes dwarfed them all. This is just a guess based on past geology field trips I have gone on with my father, but the Andes were so sheer, each mountain a sharp peak that only connected with the other mountains at the very base...I think that means they are fairly new mountains that have not had as much time to erode as other mountain ranges have. And Machu Picchu is right smack in the middle of all of them...it feels like a very tall island surrounded by a sea of air and clouds (the Incas called it the Cloud Forest) and off in the distance you can see other mountainous islands but between you and those islands there are steep 1,000 foot drops with rivers the size of your pinky finger snaking along the bottom...it´s BREATHTAKING and enough to make anyone with a fear of heights pee their pants.

Poo...as usual, I have to go again before I can finish...Fairplay´s Peruvian cooking class is about to start! :D I´ll finish my Machu Picchu story soon.

written by  kfox on June 16, 2010 from Cusco, Peru
from the travel blog: Peru Adventure!
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A combi...if you look close, you can see it´s stuffed with people

Don´t get me wrong though, the classes are very helpful/fun most of the time. Monday morning, Amy and I woke up at 7, had breakfast, and were met by my grammer teacher, Mariluz (don´t know if I spelled that right), who picked us up at the homestay. She walked us into town and showed us how to catch a bus, or "combi." Or rather, she chattered at me in Spanish and I smiled a lot. Amy knows more Spanish than me so she was actually able to converse with Mariluz, whereas at that point, I knew a grand total of 5 words so I just nodded like a bobblehead and tried to convey that I was terrified of getting on the combi because I thought I would probably throw up. These combis are not real buses; they are Peruvian death traps. Each "bus" is actually an old giant van (like the kind Sierra College uses for their field trips) that has been gutted and had 3-4 short rows of seats put inside. If you are lucky enough to grab one of these seats, you can look out the window and observe the combi nearly running into everything within ten feet of it (I think there´s some law of magnitism at work here that is fairly inclusive...we´re talking about cars/people/other combis/dogs here...they care as much about pedestrians as Bush cares about the environment). Usually the combi gets within a foot of whatever it is about to hit so that you wince and latch on to something "sturdy" because you are certain that you will be hearing the sound of crunching metal in about half a second. And then that sickening sound never comes and you are so happy to be alive...until it all happens again 5 seconds later. This is if you´re fortunate enough to be sitting. If you are one of the unlucky 20 people standing (yes, 20 in one van, it´s packed tighter than the freaking New York subway) then you are clinging to a handrail bolted to the top of the van, swinging into the people surrounding you (if you´re lucky enough to have enough room to swing rather than nudge) and wondering why the hell there are so many car horns honking outside and why the driver stopped so suddenly. There is also the matter of the side sliding door which allows people to enter/exit and is monitored by a Peruvian man or woman yelling "Baja baja baja!" whenever the bus pulls up to a stop. This Peruvian then opens the door to let even more people in and often doesn´t shut it again until the van is in motion, meaning that if you have just gotten in to a crowded combi and have to stand near the door, you must be careful not to fall out of it. So, in short, this is why I was afraid of vomitting, as Amy kindly explained to Mariluz.

Anyhoo, somehow I managed not to throw up or die! Mariluz, Amy, and I arrived at the Fairplay school safe and sound and I had my first gramatica lesson. Unfortunately I don´t have enough time to write about it because I´m leaving for Machu Piccu today! I´ll be back Sunday, unless I have died from happiness.

written by  kfox on June 10, 2010 from Cusco, Peru
from the travel blog: Peru Adventure!
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At the start of our adventure!

At the airport, we were met by Mimi, a member of the host family that Amy and I would be staying with courtesy of our program, Fairplay. We all took a cab to the homestead, only costing us a total of 4 soles (about $1.33!). From the street, the homestead just looks like a ten-foot pink wall with a door and some tinted windows in it. Once you walk through the door, however, you walk into a cement courtyard that belongs to the Huanac Cabana family, the family we are staying with. The courtyard is surrounded on three sides by rooms, kind of like at a motel, and one of these sides is four stories high! Mimi showed us to our room/bathroom on the second story, which is good because the fourth floor is very high up and looks slightly unstable. The entire homestead is this random conglomeration of colorful tile, wooden planks, and metal spiral staircases, non of which match. Compared to the other homes I have seen in Cusco (many of which have sheet metal for walls/roofs)however, it is quite nice. We live there with John, the program director of Fairplay, his wife and kids, and the wife´s sisters and mother, Manchi, and their husbands. There are also a couple of other students like us (Brittany, an American with a penchant for cake, and Arne, a Belgian with a penchant for hallucinagins) living in the homestead. That is good because almost none of the Peruvians we live with speak English...I´ve been smiling and nodding a lot, haha. Fortunately though, I have also been picking up on Spanish pretty quickly out of pure necessity. I make awkward and stilted conversations with Manchi, who cooks the Fairplay students breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day. She knows how to cook so that we don´t contract any diseases!!! :D Our room is very nice with bright green walls, orange curtains, a wardrobe, table, and a double bed. Amy and I have been telling people/acting like we are just friends, however, because Peruvians are pretty uncomfortable with the whole homosexual thing. It´s been interesting walking around without holding her hand or giving her little kisses, but it´s bearable. We get to cuddle once we are locked away in our green and orange room. We also have a bathroom with a toilet you can´t put toilet paper in (apparently all toilets in Peru are like that...they clog easily so every toilet has a trash can you can deposit toilet paper into next to it) and a shower that dumps freezing cold water onto us whenever we feel brave enough to turn it on. Overall, it is a very nice set-up and I am very pleased.

Ok, computer time is up...more about Cusco and Spanish classes later!

written by  kfox on June 8, 2010 from Cusco, Peru
from the travel blog: Peru Adventure!
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My "cancerous" lip

First of all, can I just say how unfunny it was of the universe to make it necessary for me to have bodily tissue removal about 20 hours before I left the country? The plan for Thursday was to go to a dentist appointment at 9 am for a teeth cleaning, say good-bye to my grandparents, finish packing my things, and be picked up at 1 by Amy and her mother, Melisa so we could drive to San Francisco in time to exchange currency, make an REI stop, and see Wicked (which Melisa so generously bought us tickets for), spend the night at Amy´s grandmother´s house, and then wake up the next morning for our flight out of SFO at 11:20 am. So, you can imagine my distress when my dentist tells me I have a "precancerous lesion" in my mouth and that he recommends I see an oral surgeon. I call the oral surgeon and tell his secretary that I am leaving the country tomorrow, so could I please have an appointment for that day? All she can offer me is one at 3:30 pm. It will totally throw off the day´s plans, but Amy, Melisa and I all decide it´s important enough to make adjustments for. They pick me up around 2 and we run around Auburn trying to exchange currency (no success) and buy hiking boots (success!). Then we wait in the waiting room of the oral surgeon´s practice until 4:15, at which point i am rocking back and forth wondering how we will make it to SF in time to see Wicked. Then the doctor calls me back and tells me there´s no way of telling if my lesion is cancerous or not unless we do a biopsy. He suggests that I just let him cut the whole thing off even though it probably isn´t cancerous. I ask, "What will happen if I don´t?" and he says worst case scenario is that it will be malignant and grow bigger while I´m in Peru and then he´ll have to cut off part of my lip. I promptly freak out and tell him to chop the freakin thing off. It costs $400, which my insurance does not cover (thankfully I have wonderful parents who want me to be cancer free). He gives me a local anesthetic, cuts it off, catarizes my cells, stitches me up, writes me a prescription for painkillers and antibiotics, and sends me on my merry way. By the time we start driving to San Francisco, it is after 5:30 and half of my bottom lip is as big as the Titanic. Somehow we make it to Wicked on time and I enjoy it soooo much, despite the fact that I am loopy from the painkillers and look like the Elephant Man. Yeah...not funny universe. *shakes fist*

Well, that´s about all I have time for right now...more to come later though. Hugs to all you back home!

written by  kfox on June 5, 2010 from Cusco, Peru
from the travel blog: Peru Adventure!
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