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.