Unas Fotos de Cusco

Here are some pics of where I am living in Cusco Peru

 My room in Cari Grande, San Sebastian

 La Iglesia de San Sebastian

 The view from my bedroom window on a sunny day.

 Taken from our roof.

 Clouds rolling in for more rain

 On my walk home, or from the roof, who can say?

 Taken from a secret location in the Plaza de Armas... 10 pts to the person who can guess where from...

 Taking down the Peruvian flag for the evening

 Soy una fanstasma.

 Cristo Blanco y Kelly oscura

 Plaza de Armas from Cristo Blanco

 Plaza de Armas por la noche

 Una otra de la catedral en Plaza de Armas

La iglesia de San Sebastian

Trabajo Voluntario II

Hola a todos!!

Above is a picture from the roof of the house where I live on one of the sunny days last week - when I burnt my face to a crisp! I will add more pics later.  I need to resize them or they will take an hour each to upload!

So today I went to check out a volunteer opportunity at a place called Aldea Yanapay. Google them, they have lots of pics on their website. 

It´s a community center for kids of low income families in Cusco.  I had a hard time finding it because from the outside it´s basically a giant metal door with a tiny metal door on a very dirty street up in the hills of Cusco.  I was wandering up and down the street in the rain until a funny little boy was running up to the metal door, looked at me, and asked me what I was looking for.  I told him Aldea Yanapay, and he said it´s right here!!  I followed him in and got to talk to Yure, the guy that started the whole project.  You can read his history on their website.  Basically inside, it´s a really cool looking place with a room for games, a room for art, a room with five computers so the kids can learn how to use computers and do homework, and a biblioteca (library) for them to do homework during the school year (they are on summer break right now) and general studying of subjects on their break.  They have the kids in the art room for 2 hours at a time, and moving around every 40 minutes in each of the other rooms.  What struck me while I was getting the tour was how much love the people that work there have for the kids. They are genuinely connected with them and the kids seem really happy to see them when they come in.  The kids themselves were the sweetest.  When we were looking in the library, they were kind of staring at my shyly, but when I smiled and waved they had HUGE smiles and waved back.  In the art room, they were more outgoing and asked me, ¨Where are you from? What´s your name?  Her name is Kelly too!!  Do you have a twin??¨ I didn´t have to explain that I don´t, but my sister and I are often confused as twins haha.

Anyway, I still have my lessons with FairPlay through February, and I may seize the opportunity to travel next week to la Selba (the jungle!!) with my friend and his family friends, but I plan to start working there in the afternoons next month and possibly the mornings (or both!) when my lessons with FairPlay end.

Thank you for your prayers. Please continue to pray that this will work out and that I can have a positive influence and learn from these beautiful kids and people. I can also use prayer as I search for a place to live that is safe, close, and not that expensive :).

To my work friends that so generously donated to that card before I left, as well as my family and friends that gave me money before coming here.... I think Yanapay could possibly be a place that could benefit from your donations.  I´m going to hold off for a bit, and see what needs they have instead of just throwing money blindly in their direction, but stay tuned!! It seems like a great place that is really making a difference in the lives of these children.

Take care!!  Kelly

Trabajar Voluntario

Hola a todos!

So this is week two of being here... I think I´m pretty much used to the altitude by now, except when I´m walking a couple of miles uphill.  I think I´ve dropped a few pounds just from getting around... not too shabby.  I´m still not used to the intense climate changes... it´s freezing in the morning, can get very sunny and burn you to a crisp if you´re not wearing SPF 90, then the clouds roll in and it´s starts pouring rain within 5 minutes.  Haha.  It´s an adventure in itself.  I´m also still not used to the GIANT spiders I keep finding in my room and freezing cold showers :).

So I wanted to update ya´ll on my search for a place to volunteer (and also a place to live).  I went up to this place called Niños Hotel today.  It´s one of the many orgs in Cusco that has a business to fund a program for kiddos before and after school.  They have two hotels that are on busy (too many taxis = hard to breath) streets, but are gorgeous on the inside.  They also have fairly cheap apartments which I wanted to check out because I only have next month covered in my homestay and I´m here until July.  The apartments are above the area with the kids, so I got to see them when I went to check it out.  Turns out they don´t take volunteers because they employ Peruanos to run the hotels and work with the kids.  That´s actually great, because then they don´t have the constant flux of workers with volunteers coming and going, so while I was disappointed, I´m happy for them.  The apartments were pretty nice, but they don´t have a fridge and the shared bathroom looked pretty creechy, so I told them I have other places to look.

Then I climbed a mountain, okay an extremely large hill, to get to South America Explorers which is a club for people travelling around.  You have to pay to be a member, but they have all kinds of resources on volunteering, apartments, jobs, etc.  It´s an interesting idea.  If I can find someone else to sign up at the same time, I´ll think about it, because it´s way cheaper, but for now I´m going to keep looking and talking to the head of Fairplay.

Then I went to the cafe for Yanapay, which is a really cool looking community center for kids in Cusco.  Their restuarant funds their center and the food was really good.  I asked the girls working there if Yanapay needs voluntarios and they said yes and gave me a map.  I´m going to go check that out tomorrow!

Tonight we have a cooking class at Fairplay.  Usually they teach you how to cook typical comida Peruana, but today I think we´re making pasta with pesto.  JAJA.  Benissimo! 

Well, I´ll let you all know how the Yanapay thing goes.  Hasta luego!

AY!  I forgot to say on my way home I was buying chicha morada candies to break a bill into smaller change for taxis, when I noticed that the girl at the counter was working on something.  I asked her, tarea (homework)? She was working on English!  So smiled and pointed at my workbook and told her I was working on Spanish.  We laughed and had a nice conversation (with my limited spanish).  I´ll have to go back to see how it´s going for her. 

La Fiesta de San Sebastian

Hola a todos!

So a couple of corrections from last time... my grammar teacher´s name is Nely, not Anna.  Not sure where I got that.  And I live in Cari Grande in San Sebastian, not Sebastion.

Anyway, I was sitting in my room last night journaling, watching fireworks (fuegos artificiales) from my window, smiling like an idiot while I pondered how awesome this city is.

Armando, the father of the house in which I´m staying was kind enough to take us to the fiesta de San Sebastian yesterday.  It´s a celebration of Saint Sebastian, the saint of my neighborhood, and it lasts 4 days.
It was raining and freezing, but it was amazing.  There was a parade in front of the church with hundreds of dancers in the brightest, most elaborate costumes I´ve ever seen.  If you´ve seen the bag I carry around from Cusco that is bright purple with lime green, hot pink, and various other blindingly bright colors, times that by hundreds of people dancing with huge smiles and laughing.  There are also dancers wearing bird masks or masks with creepy old man faces.  You can really see the blending of the culture of the Andean people with the Catholic tradition at these fiestas.  The dancers were interspersed with bands that were playing awesome drum beats with a lot of horns.  Just to give you an idea of the intensity of this music, I live about a mile away, up the hill with many buildings between the plaza and my house, but I can still hear the beats from my room.  The dancing was intense... i don´t know how they kept that up for as long as this parade went on.  They probably apreciate the freezing weather.  It was really nice of Armando to take me and Braydon (another student at the language school from Australia that lives with us now) over there even though it was pouring and he could watch it on TV.  He doesn´t speak much english, but is super friendly and patient, so it´s actually pretty easy to communicate with him.

ALSO, my teachers told me that next week they will take me to some places to check out volunteering so I don´t have to wait until March when Fairplay is getting their afterschool program started!!!  Please pray that God will make a place for me, because I´m loving being here, but I didn´t come to go on one long vacation!!  By then, I´m sure I won´t be sick anymore, so I can work with the kiddos.  I just have a stubborn lingering cough that I will probably have for the next month or so. 

PS Aunt Sue - this is the Fairplay website:  http://www.fairplay-peru.org/content/14613 I´m staying at homestay option 2 but I don´t see my room on there. 

Hasta luego!
Kelly

Viviendo a Cusco

Hola!!

So I´m in Cusco now.  This is my third day here and so far, I love it!

I´m living in a house in Cusco that has 3 levels.  From the street, it´s just a high wall with windows from the second floor up and a heavy wooden door.  Inside there´s a courtyard, with the kitchen and a big room on the ground floor and the rooms on the floors above, all facing the courtyard.  I live there with a Peruvian family, Armando and Maicha, as well as some of the teachers and the owner of the Fairplay where I´m taking Spanish lessons.  From my window, you can see some of the hills surrounding Cusco with all the houses built into them.  At night it looks like the silhouette of a mountain, covered in lights.  It´s beautiful.

So I got a terrible cold the week before I came here, and unfortunately it´s still stubbornly hanging on.  It must be getting better though, because today I actually have a voice and I don´t cough nearly as often.  All that is to say that I won´t be able volunteer with kids until I get totally healthy, because I don´t want to pass anything on to the kiddos.  It´s okay though, because I also need to learn a lot more Spanish before I do that.  This is a good time to acquaint myself with the city and get used to the altitude.  So far it hasn´t been too bad.  I just get tired very quickly from the altitude and my sickness.

The lessons are really fun.  From 8am to 10am, I walk around Cusco with Nayut, one of the moms that works for Fairplay.  She has a young son and a 9 month old daughter.  She´s really fun and we have a nice time.  We went to the lavanderia today so I could drop off some stuff (you don´t do your own laundry, you give it to the people and pick it up the next day.  I felt weird about having a stranger wash my clothes, but what are you going to do?).  Then we took a bus, which is an experience itself to go to all kinds of markets.  She told me this side of Avenida El Sol is where the Cusqueños shop, on the other side, gringos.  On the bus I pulled out a World Vision pen that I have for Nayut and she told me her two kids are sponsors through World Vision!  What a small world.  (If you didn´t already know, I sponsor kids through WV) You´re the excepcion.  From 10am to 12 noon I work on grammar in a little room with Anna.  That´s fun too.  Anna doesn´t really speak English, so it´s very interesting trying to talk think of different ways to say the same thing when I need to ask her something and don´t remember the Spanish for it.

There are a lot of districts and neighborhoods within Cusco.  I live in Cari Grande in San Sebastion.  It´s away from the historic center, so it´s nice and quiet, but you have to walk quite a bit to get anywhere.  As far as I can tell, each neighborhood has a different saint that they celebrate.  For the last 3 nights, there have been fireworks blasting off from this church behind the main square.  I love it.  This weekend my neighborhood celebrates Saint Sebastion, so I´m excited to see how they celebrate. 

I´m lucky enough to have a friend that lives in Cusco, who I met when we came down here to hike the Inka Trail, which has been a huge relief.  ´He has been teaching me different things about living in Cusco, like how to take the bus and where all the good cheap places to eat can be found.  Yesterday we walked onto the university campus to look around and there was a girls soccer game going on.  Each school within the school has its own team and they compete.  This game was CRAZY.  It was on a basketball court and the court was completely surrounded by students, mostly standing and mostly boys, who would scream everytime one of the girls took a shot at the goal.  It was hillarious.  There were definitely favorites on the team (MARIA¡¡¡) and quite a few fans who were shouting their love or heckles to the girls.   

Tonight I´m going to study and take it easy.  I have a terrible sunburn from walking around yesterday.  Yesterday AND today were sunny!!  It´s supposed to rain through Feb-March, so I´m soaking it in while I can.  When I can figure out how to post pictures, I´ll put some up!  For now, thanks for reading.  I´ll try to write again soon.