Bien, now where did we leave off. I think it was
Thursday. Or wed.. anyway, I think i´m getting used
to this whole altitude thing although I might be sick
tonight. i just ate a whole banana split and drank a
pisco sour. Speaking of drinking, a bunch of us went
out to this place called Indigo where lots of
extranerjos hang out listening to American music and I
drank three beers and a pisco sour. My back had been
hurting earlier in the week, i think fro,m the cold,
and even though it feels better now, on thursday i
went to get a massage at a place my host other, Sarah,
recommended. It was my first massage so it was kind of
weird, they made me take all my clothes off and
….just kidding, just the shirt. she worked alot on
my arms and hands, trying to get my joints to work
properly but they´ve always popped so I asked her,
Puedes trabajar en mi espalda abajo? and she said si
and we started to have a convesation in spanish, which
was cool. I also talked to a cab driver about
american politics, tourists and business being lento.
Habla no hay muchos touristes como en el ano pasado
por que de the earth quake. People are afraid to come
down.

Anyway, I guess the massage was good, I have no
frame of reference, but i´d say i don´t really need
them all that often. At the end of the massage, she
had me sit up and started messing with my neck and
trying to do some cyropractic numbers and I was like,
that´s okay, no necessito. In fact, my neck kind of
hurt after the massage, but then like 10 minutes
later, it felt really good and i felt like dancing.

Despues de masaje, fue a la fontana en la Plaza de
Armas a encontrarmecon mi amiga Jenny, la chica de
Alamania. We went to a club called Uptown and arrived
just in time for the free salsa lessons. I´ve had a
few lessons back in the states and typically it´s like
here´s the basic steps and a couple of turns, but the
3RD move he showed us involved me flipping my leg over
the girls arm and spinning her underneath me. the next
one, I grabbed her neck, turned her and she fell back
towards me and i held her up and picked her back up by
the neck. they were some crazy moves but so awesome, i
felt like a real salsa dancer. now if i can only find
some form of rythm. I´ll have to show off my moves
when i get back.

Bailamos hasta doce y media cuando fue a la casa. I
had to get up early to go to class again, which has
been going quite well. I like my teachers and having
the group in the morning and the private lessons in
the afternoon really helps. Plus living with the host
famly makes me use it more then I would cause they
really don´t speak english. Oh, and when I got home
from dancing, mi familia was watching Spirited Away en
espanol. I understood someof it. Sam and I are going
to go see a movie later on this week to help with the
spanish.

Oh, also on Thursday, there was a little music class
after school and a guy came to talk about Peruvian and
incan music history, all in spanish of course. The
last half of the class, we got to play the zamponia
which is basically two pan pipes, roped together, one
has 6 holes (the ira) and one has 7 holes (the arka).
With the instruction of the professor, we didn´t sound
half bad. Ayer, compro un zamponia y apprendo tocar
¨Hey Jude¨.

On Friday after class there was a salsa
class which I went to but didn´t think it was as good
as the one at Uptown. Afterwards, we went to CUziCuy
for dinner, the same place we went the first night for
the welcome dinner, to have some cuy, which is the
local dish of Peru. In case you don´t know, cuy is
guinea pig. So that little Fluffy you have at home,
they eat him in Peru. The service was really slow
cause there was one guy for the whole restaurant, but
finally we got our fried cuy, legs,claws, head and
all. They even put a little tomato on his head as a
hat. Most people were grossed out, but as I said,
carne es carne andI ate most of it. The vegetarians
wouldn´t touch it. the meat was like chicken but
had more of a rabbity flavor, it was hard to get the
meat off of all the bones. it´s like crab, not worth
it in my opinion. But we did have fun taking pictures
with it´s head and stuff.

Despues de cena, fuimos a Uptown para mas bailar.
They had the salsa lessons againa dn we learned even
more crazy moves, they look so cool, i hope i still
remember them when i get back.
Entones, fuimos a Mythology un otra club. They played
more hip hop and I was less into it. I left around 2
and came home to sleep. Hoy es Sabado, entonces,
duermo hasta diaz. I needed that cause I´m always
tired here, not in a sluggish way, it´s just like you
know how I go into food coma in the states, well here
it´s even worse, of course I´m also eating less. Your
digestive system is slower at these higher elevations
and so the peruvians have a medium sized breakfast, a
large lunch, like three courses, and a small dinner,
just soup or something, otherwise you´ll have bad
dreams, which happened to me the first couple days.
Tengo pesadillos en el Lunes pasado. I dreamt that
all these nurse came into my room and needed to be
taught, but I couldn´t teach them cause I didn´t know
spanish. it was that same sort of dream I had when I
first started my job. I think i was just stressed
from trying to get out of my fast passed life and into
a new groove. I sleep fine now and have ear plugs to
knock out at least some of the noise from the road
outside.

This morning, Sarah said she was going a el mercado y
Raquel y Marlena hablan they wanted to go too, so I
also joined in. We thought we were just walkng up the
street a mercado de la esquina pero Oscar pulled up in
the car and off we went.

We first went to go visit
the cemetary to see the grave of Sarah´s other cause
it was the day that she goes and visits her. She just
died two years ago, so she cried a little when she was
showing us her grave. How they do the graves here is
a bit different, instead of burying people in the
ground, they have these huge walls erected in which
they put the bodies.

On the outside of the walls,
there is a tiny inlet covered by a decorative frame in
which you can put pictures, flowers, have the epitaph
on the back of, etc. It was amazing to see and I felt
kinda bad, but I had to take a couple pics of it. I
just made sure no one saw me.

They also have maseleos
(masaleums) inside but nstead of the gothic style of
the states, some of them lookmore like bathrooms. the
outside is tiled and some have clear clouded doors on
the outside. It was really interesting to see. In
the inlets, people put things that sort of describe
the persons´s life.

For instance, some of them had
little tables with dolls sitting at it and tiny crates
of cervezas y huevos y otra casos, that person was a
restaurant owner. There was one maseleo which had a
huge torka (gear) stuck in the side of it and that
belonged to an engineer.

Afterwards, we stopped by a
lot of shops and picked up some groceries, ending
finally at the market. Marlena began cooking cause
she made a german dish for us which was basically
potato pancakes with onions and other stuff, they were
good but really heavy. While they were preparing the
food, I went into town to use the internet, but ended
up meeting Sam and Marleen at Jack´s Cafe and stayed
and talked for a while.

I went home, had a big lunch
which was the papa panqueques y pollo y papas dulce
con marshmellows, y, yucca cual es no me gusta. I
took a little nap and then went back into town with
Oscar to meet Sam and Marleen and arrange our
excursion tomorrow. We´re going to take a bus to
Pisaq to see the ruins there and other places so it
should be fun.

Afterwards, I was supposed to go home,
but ended up once again getting some desserts and
pisco sour with Marleen and Sam. It´s difficult to
make plans here. In other places I´ve visited, I´ve
lived in hostels with other people, so it´s really
easy to make plans cause you all live in the same
place, but here, we go home to our respective houses
for most meals, so we actually have to plan beforehand
and hope that other person comes through. Sofar it
hasn´t been a problem.

After the pisco sour, I came
here to the internet, payed all my bills (life still
goes on back home), wrote this log and now I´m going
home to relax, maybe watch a movie or draw, and
hopefully not get sick.
Ciao mi amores.