esta cerrado. no esta abierta? japon! japon!, muchas lenguas!

You know its a good day when:

Your bowel movements are less of a rushing river, and more of a solid, slow landslide.

You discover the napkin in your back pocket you geniusly stored away weeks ago for just this moment in the bus terminal restroom where no paper is in sight and the faucet does not work.

You discover the shirt you just slaved away scrubbing all morning, has in fact NOT been stolen, but has only flown across two rooftops and is now in your hands, only once again, covered in dust and grime.

 The toilet has a seat for the weary traveler...beckoning you to ¨Take a load off my friend¨ ;)

 A few notes on traveling thus far:

 ¡Esta cerrado! Que? no esta abierto? Exacto. esta cerrado. Oo. Graciasss. (Mi experiencia con todo en Arequipa durante mi viaje alli)

 Necesito Japon? Que? Japon. Que? Japon...Japon! Para lavar? la ropa? Que? mmm...Oh! Jabon!? no...Olvidalo. (Regrese a la casa para lavar mi ropa a mano en Cusco :p)

 Juevon! Pinchete! Huevo? (Arequipa).
 Miercoles!! Mierdra. Piedra. No! Mierda, una mierda. Que Miercoles!

Quieres Juego? Que juego? JUego de naranja...JAJAJA, Jugo? ahhh...si. Jugo.

A Menu at a crepe joint in Arequipa--crepe with green cheese. (queso verde)...means like fresh, young cheese. hahaha. ew. green cheese please!

Yo despierte con muchas lenguas en mi cabeza. Lenguas?? QUE? lenguas diferentes... QUE? Ingles, español, palabras diferentes... Lengua..Ah. Idioma. Idiomas. ay dios. jajajjajaja. (Lenguas, en Mexico significa Languages. Aqui, en Peru, it means Tongues. Idiomas means Languages ;) )

 The dog`s name at the house in Arequipa: `Yurdoc`....Your Doc. Your dog. jajajaja :)

 AND REMEMBER! Donde el sitio es lleno, El almuerzo es bueno! (I made this up in Cusco :) translation: where the spot is full, the lunch is good. Much better in Spanish)

 Ahorrita, estoy la chica de la clase que esta sentado atras en el corner...un salon de computadoras y el profesor esta enseñado en Español. que chistoso. Pase mi almuerzo con chicos y chicas que tienen 13 años. Ellos me preguntaron sobre One Direction, The Beatles, Inglaterra, la comida de California, y que significa ¨Twist and Shout¨ :) Conoci los estudiantes de la escuela hoy, 5 clases diferentes, de estudiantes con 9-13 años. Voy a hacer una programa con ellos que va a empezar el Miercoles de este semana. Vamos a tener una programa de cuentos en Ingles, para practicar escuchando, leindo, y hablando ingles.

 Okay, muchas cosas han pasado hace la ultimo vez yo escribi. Bueno, estaba en Cusco para casi un mes. Yo fui afuerra en el valle sagrada para conocer sitios en la naturaleza, incluyendo Macchu Picchu...

 Since the last time let´s see: We had a big family reunion party with Guillermo´s family at the house of his parents in La Rappa, un barrio de Cusco. It was an absolute blast, we danced all night and played silly dancing games with a broom (rojo, verde! red light green light, make pairs, etc. muy divertido), and Guillermo´s family knows how to enjoy themselves. I laughed so much my stomach and cheeks were exhausted by 12am. :) A few days later, we went to Carla y Leon´s house, friends of Guillermo´s for a BBQ of chicken and veggies. What began as an innocent day of BBQ and refrescos quickly turned into a full blown CARNAVAL explosion of arina (white flour), colored confetti and charcoal faces. We ended our day looking like the walking dead, or at least ghosts with colorful hair :) On my walk home, I forgot I had flour all over my face and body and entered a shop to pick up some things for the morning, the cash register woman and the two guys up front gasped as I entered. I was surprised by them, then remembered I looked like the walking dead!! We all laughed.

 Guillermo returned to USA, and I moved to the area of San Blas in Cusco...the area that is arriba arriba muchas escaleras, many steps to reach it above the center of town. it´s a beautiful area, pretty touristy, and artsy, but my hostal was up really far and really tranquilo, calm, relaxed. We had a kitchen where I could cook and buy food from the market. Marie, my friend from Denmark met me there at the hostal, my second week living there. There we also made friends with a Russian visual-music-audio artist guy, named Bulat, and a Southern France caterer-clown-funny guy named Pierre. The four of us made up a little tribe of hostalers, and had a grand ol´time cooking together, drinking and playing music. One night we wearily created secret handshakes of all sorts,with the initial pound and ïnsert cool hand shake thing¨ only to be demonstrated in person I´m afraid. They included the fantastic original, the SQUID,the falling star, the Cactus, the hummingbird, and various others.

 Bulat, the Russian, Marie, and I went on adventures together around town including one up to Tambomachay, old Incan ruins above the city, where you usually have to pay to enter the official ruins, but instead we hiked above to a little pueblo and had a picnic up above in the trees-fields (where Marie taught us how to rub avocado on your face for your skin to be more healthy, very nice, very nice :) ). Bulat and I had found a way up to Sacsaywaman too one day, the main ruins in Cusco, that normally you pay to get into, but since we were only searching for muña (an herb to make tea with), and found ourselves somehow inside the ruins on the outskirts then continued our way to the main part of the ruins (since, heck, we were already inside!).

 The three of us also adventured to Andahuaylillas, a small pueblo to the south of Cusco, where our hostal manager lives with his family and adorable son and daughter. We took the bus, and sat up front (THE VERY FRONT window sill of the bus), packed in like sardines, taking turns holding this man´s baby son and a woman´s bag full of foods. We walked around the town with Freddy, our hostal owner buddy, saw a baptism happening in the church and the mummified body of an Extra Terrestrial in a tiny little museum. I believe it, dude, this little guy was very much an alien. We tasted real Chicha, a fermented drink made of maiz-corn, from a sweet old woman in her house off the side of the street. Mmm. We then enjoyed a big lunch of choclo con queso, which is corn on the cob but REALLY large corn kernels, from Freddy´s fields, and mango juice, and spaghetti con pollo. Afterwards Freddy´s son showed us how good he is at drawing, and then they took us to watch the women´s soccer games at the fields on the outskirts of town--it was awesome to see women playing soccer, as most of the times I´ve tried to find a place to play, or said that I like to play, I´ve been met with raised eyebrows, or shrugging shoulders, or directions to the field where the professional Cusqueño men´s team plays. After the game, we said our goodbyes, gifting Freddy with a big watermelon we had carted with us from Cusco in Bulat´s backpack (another thing we juggled while on the sardine packed bus!).

 Back in Cusco, my storytelling workshop began (fully in Spanish). I had two weeks of it, working with Cusqueños in IPNAC, an organization of Peru-norte america, that has lots of workshops in teatro, idiomas, dance, etc. Wayqui, our profesor, led us through different activities, games, to get us thinking and moving in our bodies, to get me to not think so much about my words in Spanish and just feel them. I fell in love with my compañeros, my workshop buddies, all were absolutely wonderful. And what a GREAT way to learn a language! Through theater and stories! My goal at the beginning of the workshop was to tell a story in Spanish at the end of it. To feel comfortable telling stories in Spanish and to learn more of the stories and legends of Peru. And...SUCCESS! Exito!

 I told my first story fully in Spanish on Friday, February 21st to my class. I told them the story of The Key Flower, a story that comes from Wales. First, in the first week of the workshop, I told a story of Yogi & Booboo bear :) it was a little difficult, as I didn´t have all the vocabulary for it. Marie and Bulat listened to me tell my Key Flower story in English on our picnic up to the ruins, and then the two of them and Pierre, our French friend, came to my official telling the night of February 23rd, a night of storytelling with all of my compañeros de clase. We each told our story, and I was the last one of the night! The whole night I was full of nerves, waiting, waiting, until finally AH! it was my turn to tell my story...in SPANISH. To a whole packed room full of SPANISH SPEAKERS! Hah. it was fine, I told my story, finished, with only a few words being lost-forgotten, one moment of complete terror and the audience helped me out with the word ¨recoger¨to pick up-collect! haha. A great experience. and such a rich one to tell stories with my friends from class, such a pleasure and a unique opportunity. My improv teacher was even there in the audience! Que chevere :) I had also given my special stone rock to my friend in the first row, as part of the story, and apparently he had passed it around to everyone in the audience, and in the end, I said, wait, where is my special stone??? and he was like, OH! I thought it was to share with everyone! Eventually I found it in the hands of my teacher, Wayqui, smiling, so it ACTUALLY is a precious stone (not just part of my story) :) Yes. Thank you! On leaving the event, my teacher passed out 10 soles to each of us who performed! My first time to be paid for my storytelling services! (besides getting paid in conference entrance or food). A very cool evening!

 After this, our cuatro amigos returned to the hostal to have a last cena together. We ate dinner at midnight. The next morning, Marie and Bulat and I finally made it to the cafe that has UNO, the card game, and we played a last game (Bulat had been talking about it for days), before Marie and I took off on our ridiculous adventure to get to Macchu Picchu (eventually). And that is a WHOLE other story in itself. Which, shall come at another time.

 Quickly--Marie and I visited Macchu Picchu, hiked hours and hours up mountains (MOUNTAINS), did not make friends with the llamas (they make me nervous!), caught rides on the backs of motos, hiked again and saw salt pans, old pueblos, the ruins of Moray (old Incan experiments with plants like a laboratory in the shape of concentric circles-which were cool, but in the end I would say not necessarily worth the money and effort...the hike is worth it, the taxi ride from Maras to the ruins and the actual ruins, mas o menos, take it or leave it), relaxed in Ollantaytambo--the town of rest, Tambo means Descanso in Quechua, which means Rest in English--hitchhiked back to Cusco with a super friendly mom and son in their big truck and they told us of legends of the lagoons outside of Cusco where an old Incan ghost waits for people on the full moon to take their souls, and experienced an intense hail storm on our return to Cusco. Marie and I parted ways, with a ceremonial last sunset watching on some old ruin rocks near San Blas with helados (icecreams). Marie on her way to Puno and then on to Bolivia, and I on a night bus to Arequipa...

There I would experience my first serious stomach bug infection, enjoy the company of two very funny friends from Arequipa, watch a lot of Peruvian TV in Spanish, see an old monastery with some of the oldest books (handmade some of them) in Peru, and find most other places I wanted to see to be closed for vacations. :) Eventually getting to the beach, which is a desert! and trying my first Ceviche on the coast, and swimming in the Peruvian Pacific.

 THEN, LIMA. Now, I am in Lima. Everyone told me it was a big ugly city. It IS a big city, it actually reminds me in a lot of ways of NEw York, and its actually quite beautiful, right on the beach-Pacific OCean. its very big and chaotic, and busy and dusty and in the desert basically, but there are lots of pretty little parks, lots of different people and places and businesses and activities and such. I miss the natural beauty of Cusco and the history and culture of Cusco area, but Lima has its own culture and history, one that is more Spanish influenced, more European seeming, more Western and internationally influenced, which is interesting in itself, along with the history of colonialization and the former inhabitants-cultures, pre-españoles, y pre-Inca tambien. Peru feels in some moments very similar to the USA. Lima in particular is very much a big city like New York or San Francisco in a lot of ways. They just all speak Spanish! :)

I´m enjoying having home stays with friends of friends, getting to know the family values and realizing really how precious, how sacred family is to Peruvians. I appreciate it, as family is ever more and more important to me in my life. I adore seeing so many older adult men with their mothers, living with them, but also caring for them, truly, genuinely, fully. It illuminates my own internal conflict of desire to be independent and free to travel and be far away from what I know, and the desire to be close to those I love and care about, those who I have grown up with, my family,my family friends from childhood. Dependency, interdependency, independence-individuality.
 There is a big of a contradiction in North American culture, where we overly protect kids from stories of news in the world, stories where the ending is not happy, and yet then early on they see movies listen to songs that have adult content, movies of sex and scandal and horror and gruesome war scenes. Kids are told what to do and have to listen, until suddenly, at the age of 18, they somehow are supposed to have full responsibility and care for themselves, move away from what they know, and be separate in their own individual lives far from family. Here in Peru, the stories told to children don´t always have a happy ending. The realities of life are realized earlier on, and responsibilities are taken on earlier on as well. Except that then children of parents stay living with them until after 30 years old, even when they marry sometimes they will live just above in the second floor apartment of a building with their parents and kids. In both cultures there seems to be a contradiction of independence and dependence, individuality and freedom and communality and responsibility.
 Perhaps more about that later. Those are just initial thoughts on the mind at the moment.

 A few other thoughts---I find it frustrating when people assume that I am not street savvy or that I am innocent and don´t have travel smarts because I smile a lot or am friendly to strangers. Often those strangers (who then turn into the friends that tell me to be careful or that I need to be more discerning about who I talk to), are good people, and for this reason I talked to them. One thing I have realized is that probably the most important aspect of myself that I appreciate the most, is my ability to read people and to intuit their intentions. If I were to lose this or doubt this ability, Im really not sure who I would be. A very different person that is for sure. Of course, I`ve found myself in bad situations, where people turn out to be different than I originally though,t, but almost always I have had a feeling about them initially and the problem came from me not trusting or following that initial intuition about them.
For example, the man who robbed me on the bus in Cusco. I had a funny inkling about him, but I didnt follow it, I dismissed it, and then my wallet got dismissed. It just makes me sad that people assume that a person who is friendly and nice doesn`t know the world like they do. They think that if I knew the world like they did, I would be harder, meaner, less open to people. That is sad to me. I have been hardened at times, I`ve lost trust in people, been more jumpy, doubtful, distrustful. It doesnt serve me. What does serve me is to be observant, to trust my instincts, and trust with full common sense in effect. I trust that there are good people all over, and that there are people with bad intentions too. We`re all mixed together and some days the usually good intentioned are bad intentioned. That happens. It doesnt make me feel the need to stop being nice to people.
 A quote from a year ago while talking with Marie ¨Just because others are assholes, doesn`t mean I need to be one¨. I also find that friendliness in itself can be used as a very street savvy tool to diffuse certain situations and avoid others. That´s all on that for now too.
I will eventually get around to the epic Macchu Picchu adventure story, don´t worry! Until then! Hasta pronto, and remember! donde el sitio es lleno, el almuerzo es bueno...most of the time ;)

SQUID ouuuut