3-16 It´s not late, it´s earlay

Good morning all! Bright and early. It´s not even 8 as I begin to write this. Now that you have sprung forward, we are on the same time. Weird huh?

Ok, now to try to sum up what has happened the last few days. School has continued to be good. I have learned a lot of vocab and am still working on my past tense verbs and por versus para. For those who don´t know, those two words both me “for” but have stupdily long list of ways that you use them. The bane of many students. I also learned present subjunctive and Monday I will start to learn past perfect.

Thursday I returned to the Clinica de San Juan de Dios. I had a much better time and focused on seeing the joy in my actions as my friend Tracie suggested. I drew pictures with several children, bounced a ball back and forth for a while with two boys, and then spent a decent amount of time pushing and running wheelchairs around the place. I had one little boy, Jose, really laughing as I sped around corners making car noises. He can´t talk or really point, so I didn´t always know what he wanted and where he wanted to go, but we ended up having a really good time. I was not able to stay for dinner because I had to meet one of my teachers to discuss the Inca Trail. I hope I get a chance to go back there, but Monday another teacher plans to start showing me some other places.

Friday at school we had a short cooking class in the afternoon where they made and we sampled a Peruvian dish. At 6:30, we had a salsa class that was pretty entertaining. Then the girls and I decided we wanted pizza, and 6 of us from the school headed to dinner. Yum. After that we went to a club called the UpTown where they have salsa from 9:30 to 11 or so.

Yesterday, Elsbeth and Seana and I bought out Boletas de Touristas General. These are tickets you must purchase to go to I think 11 different sites in and around the city. Then we headed up to Sacsayhuaman, a very large ruin above the city. On the way, we met some gentlemen offering a horse tour of the sites. This is what we were looking for so we went with it. The horses actually started heading the other way to sites and then came back to Qenqo, which by the way, we foreigners pronounce “Sexy Woman.” My horse was named Paseo and he really liked to eat. We went to Tambomachay, Puca Pucara, and the temple of the moon. Unfortunately, around that time, it started hailing. No seriously. I mean, we have seen a lot of rain here, but HAIL? Holy cow. Our guide rushed the horses and we started trotting through this hail until we got under the cover of trees. Then he told us the horses could go no further and we would have to walk the rest of the way. Shoot. We felt a little cheated, but what could we do. I have to say, until that point we had had and AWESOME day. The warmest so far. It was the first time I was in a tank top. And the countryside was BEAUTIFUL! We were so happy we decided to take the horses. It was truly amazing. Minus how sore my legs and groin will be. And the trotting at the end was a little terrifying. It wasn´t as if we were on flat land… we were going up and down rocky hillsides etc. The hail really didn´t last long, thank goodness, and we walked to Qenqo and then Sacsayhuaman. The latter is up a great hill from the center of town and by the time we got down it we were absolutely EXHAUSTED. We treated ourselves by going to a an American restuarant called Jacks and eating veggie and hamburgers. Unfortunately, I ended up feeling more ill than I already was and went to bed around 9. I have a pretty wicked sore throat and now I am a bit drippy as well. On top of that, I felt like I was going to hurl, but this morning that is gone.

As soon as I finish writing this, I have to call my bank. Despite the fact that I sat down with a banker and made a call with her to the appropriate number and gave them my dates and exactly where I would be, it appears they have frozen my account and frankly, I´m pretty pissed. Wish me luck with that.

Today we are heading into the Sacred Valley. It is an hour bus ride from here to Pisaq which has a HUGE market on Sundays and is an impressive ruin. We will go to 3 or 4 other sites as well. I think it will be a long day, but without so much walking and definitely no horses.

Soon, I will write you about my plans to hike the alternative Inca Trail route called Salkantay. It´s gonna be SWEET!

Love to you all! Pray for my health and bank situation. Blessings!