Cusco is about as Peruvian as I am conservative. Walking around the Plaza de Armas, which is the main square, speaking Spanish is a taboo. Even the annoying people selling you everything from little dolls to sunglasses (doesn’t matter if you are wearing a pair of your own at the time) hassle you in English. Anyone who has only been to Cusco has not seen real Peru. This city is centered around tourism and does everything possible to keep foreigners pouring in. The city itself is a beautiful cobblestone colonial town built on Inca foundations. There are Inca ruins all throughout [View Full Entry]

---

---

Most of you are probably going to pass this update by because it is lengthy and picture free (sorry this computer doesnt have an accessable USB port). I recommend that you read it though, even if for no other reason than to give me a lot of shit about it later. Enjoy my suffering! So we were going to leave Huancayo last Friday the 4th, but the train for Huancavelica wasn’t working and everyone who worked at the train station gave us a different assessment of the situation and when the trains would be running again. We decided that the main [View Full Entry]

---

---

The markets here in Huancayo are absolutely crazy and I love them for it! There is a market here everyday called el Mercado Mayorista. It stretches for nearly 20 square blocks and has everything from shoes (mostly used) to toilet paper (mostly unused). I pass through it every morning on my way to the Coto Coto orphanage. There are blocks and blocks of prematurely wrinkled women in their traditional Andean skirts sitting on the street peering over piles and piles of potatoes. Then you pass through the meat section where hundreds of chickens hang from the ceilings, occasionally dripping int [View Full Entry]

---

---

So, I realize that I have left you all in the dark for a few weeks now… Sorry about that. I’ve just been soaking up the Peruvian life-style and getting used to a somewhat crazy schedule. I have still been going to Coto Coto (the children’s orphanage) every morning. Besides the giving the kids attention that they never get, an important task has been working with the mentally disabled children. There is a brother/sister pair of children; the 2 year old brother mentally retarded, while the older 4 year old sister has quite severe autism. One of the objectives is trying [View Full Entry]

---

---

It’s only been a week since my last update but, so much has happened that I don’t even know where to begin. I had an emotional goodbye with my Costa Rican family and hopped on a bus for San Jose last Thursday. I spent the night in a hostel with the normal San Jose environment…plumes of noxious emissions blanketing the screaming prostitutes and drug dealers. I woke up at 4:30am in order to take a cheaper airport shuttle for my flight to Peru. I watched “The Bad News Bears Go to Japan” until it hurt... to its defence; it lasted a [View Full Entry]

---

---

For some reason, whenever a Costa Rican sees me, they think it would be fun to try and impress me and speak English. The problem is that their English is so horrid that often times I think that they are just speaking Spanish and using words that I just don’t understand. For example, my Costa Rican mom and I were hitching a ride in the back of a pick up of some guy she used to work for. When I got in he took one look at me and said “yossuummbueeush?”… well at least that’s all I understood. I looked at [View Full Entry]

---

---

I’m back in the city again!! It’s crazy… I have been here 3 times already. Yesterday I decided to treat my family (especially my mother) to a meal at any restaurant they wanted. They had only been to a restaurant together once, and that was 5 years ago. Who would have thought that the delicacy they chose was pizza. They were then introduced to the second best food in the states… cold pizza for breakfast. Max didn’t agree with the breakfast and promptly threw his piece across the room and demanded beans and rice. I’ve been trying to help out the [View Full Entry]

---

---

You know when your father tells you something and it really pisses you off? Mostly it pisses you off because you know he is right and you just don’t wanna admit it? Yup… Sorry Dad! He made a pretty big deal about getting some altitude sickness meds before I left and of course I was an ass to him because I didn´t feel like going to the pharmacy and worrying about it. I learned my lesson yesterday on the bus ride from San Jose to San Isidro. I was really tired since I only got an hour of sleep the night [View Full Entry]

---

---

I’m back in Roanoke for the last time for 9 months and for numerous reasons, it is quite surreal. For starters, this is the first time in nearly 9 years that I have opened my front door and my dog wasn’t there to greet me. Seeing my other dog, Sadie, lonely meander around the house is a constant reminder that he is gone. Another reason that it is so surreal to be home is that my parents asked me to move all of my stuff out of my room before I left. For those of you who thought that they finally [View Full Entry]

---

---

Over the last few months, Sprout has endowed me with many valuable abilities: The ability to detect feigned seizures, the ability to no longer be grossed out by anything… anything at all, the ability to work much longer than is physically advised or mentally reasonable, the ability to interact with Atlantic City’s finest prostitutes, the ability to have fun even while surrounded by fatal amounts of country music and southern twang, and I have now triumphantly conquered the ability of proficiently putting in and taking out a glass eye. And for those of you wondering, it does make [View Full Entry]

---

---