Again, I don´t have time to put pictures here right now, you can see them all at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/91387210@N00/sets/72157621908366740/ I am giving you fair warning that this entry is pretty much about food and being lazy. It´s not entirely my fault as I am traveling in a country where they pride themselves on spending their time at one huge and delicious meal talking about, planning and, let´s face it, fantasizing about future meals. If you are feeling ill, hungry, overly full, or over worked you might want to read this at another time. On Thursday afternoon (over a week [View Full Entry]

---

---

For now photos are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/91387210@N00/sets/72157621657418123/ Because I don´t have time to load them here as well. I arrived in Madrid early Saturday morning after a long day of dealing with nonsense and a long flight during which I didn´t get much sleep. But waiting for me at the exit were Arantxa and her father, Juan. What a nice feeling to be welcomed to a country by someone you know! They whisked me away for a driving tour of Madrid and a stop at a delicious looking bakery (sadly, I was not up for eating yet). I had the option to [View Full Entry]

---

---

So my goal is to finish these Peru entries in the next few weeks, not quite one year after having done this traveling, and hopefully before I leave for this summer’s trip. My Dad has suggested that it might be easier to accomplish this if I wrote less, which I’m willing to try, but it’s really just not my nature so I’ll make no promises. After leaving Arequipa, I flew into Cusco and spent a day wandering around by myself waiting for Willow to get in. We hadn’t made any real plans or reservations in advance and I was starting to [View Full Entry]

---

---

At this rate I’ll finish last summer’s blog sometime in 2010 but I’m still plugging away. So my last week at the orphanage involved many great and fabulous things that made me feel very loved and appreciated, but early that week was also the only truly negative experience that I had during my time with them. When Madeleine and I got to the orphanage on Monday we realized that we were the only two volunteers for the afternoon. There was some random woman there who we later discovered was a nutritionist. She was there to take the kids to the local [View Full Entry]

---

---

Well, I'm so far behind on updating this thing that it’s gotten well past the point of ridiculous. I’m not only home already, but school has started so it’ll probably take me the rest of the year to finish up the blogs on a just the few weeks of travel. I’ve been told it’s expected though (and I suppose it’s good for me as well to have the record) so I plan on doing it..slowly but surely. Colca July 19-21 My last weekend in Arequipa I finally did the Colca Canyon Trek. This “trek” (I don’t know the definition, but I [View Full Entry]

---

---

Well, it´s 4:30 in the morning and I should probably be sleeping but I have to be up in a little over an hour to head out on my Colca Canyon trek. At this point it feels silly to even try to sleep I´d probably just snooze right through my alarm anyway. I´m still fighting off the tail end of a cold so I really should be getting my sleep, but at the same time I leave for the trek I´m also moving out of my apartment. There was just too much to do! So, please forgive me if there are [View Full Entry]

---

---

Things are going pretty well where I´m volunteering at the orphanage. We´ve been trying to find things to do to keep the kids entertained. Idle hands are the devil´s handiwork might have never been a more true statement than it is at the orphanage. Everything we try to do is complete chaos but mostly fun nonetheless. The main task that I´ve been given to work on with the kids is homework. The main Tía, Lilia has requested that I continue in afternoons to be able to do it with them. I usually spend most of my time with a group of [View Full Entry]

---

---

Pretty much the best decision I´ve made in a long time is to stay put in one place for awhile during my summer travels. I love traveling (obviously or I wouldn´t do it so much) but sometimes being on the move just really wears me out. Which is why staying here in Arequipa for over half my trip this year was a brilliant move. So let´s talk about Arequipa. So far I love it. It´s the second biggest city in Peru and yet it just doesn´t feel that way. It´s kind of surprising how much more you can learn about a [View Full Entry]

---

---

Well, I am back in Peru. Which, in and of itself is pretty exciting. This trip is extra special though because I am taking 3 of my 6 weeks of travel to volunteer in an orphanage. I am doing it through an organization called Traveller not Tourist (TNT.) I will write more about them at another time (I´m reserving judgment anyway.) The first part of my trip was so much like last year it was almost creepy. Though I did manage to avoid trying to get on the wrong plane. Applause accepted. Other than that I waited at the same gate, [View Full Entry]

---

---

So you know when you were a kid and you played that game where you had to stay on only one color tile on the floor (or stay on the cracks) and if you landed on the wrong color you got burned in the hot lava? Well, we played that game for real today! We didn´t even have time for deja vu because the shuttle actually arrived 15 minutes early this morning. Our driver Nixon let us sit up front to avoid as much nausea as possible. We were trekking up the volcano by 7:30am being led by Irving, our lunatic, [View Full Entry]

---

---