Sunday September 11th Another full day of walking and visiting ruins. When we left Cusco it was raining and as we started driving past the ruins from yesterday (from the city tour) it was gorgeous! But, as we entered the Sacred Valley (Valle Sagrado) the clouds came in again and by the time we reached Pisac, the first ruins, it was rainy, windy, and cold! So, the ruins weren´t that enjoyable although they did look mysterious in the clouds and rain which was cool. We spent some time in the colonial town below the ruins in the market before driving another hour to reach Urubamba, the town where we stopped for lunch. The lunch buffet at the restaurants there was was specifically for tourists and so incredibley expensive. Vivi and I had brought sandwiches and snacks ... read more

Saturday September 10th I have actually felt fairly non-touristy so far here in Cusco since I am actually working, but today I felt as touristy as it gets. Vivi and I started early to walk to town, buy the obnoxious ´tourist ticket´ that every tourist must buy to see the ruins (it includes the ruins around Cusco, ruins in the Sacred Valley, a few others, and then some museums in Cusco as well), and then visit as many museums as possible before our City Tour this afternoon. We went to the Popular Art Museum (just a bunch of art and sculptures made by people in the community), the Regional Historical Museum (my favorite of the day. It had history of Cusco, the Spaniards, Tupac Amaru, food, Pisco Sours, Garcilaso, and more. It was very interesting and ... read more

My second week volunteering! I still had spanish classes every morning. (I will just summarize what I did this week). Monday (Sep. 5th) This afternoon we went back to work as San Judas Chico (the girl´s orphanage) since it was a Monday. This time the girls actually had homework so Vivi went in one homework room with the younger girls (preschool-ish age), and I went in the homework room with the older girls (elementary school age). I helped a bit with the homework, but my spanish and grammatical knowledge is probably about as bad as theirs, so I am afraid I wasn´t that much help. There was one girl who was in one of the higher grades and really smart so I helped her a bit with english and she was really cute and eager to ... read more

September 2nd I was up in time to say goodbye to Vivi this morning and then it was off to classes again. At 3 this afternoon I met Maria Jesus to buy 4 fairly good sized cakes to feed the 80 children that will be at the birthday party today. Once a month both the boy´s and girl´s orphanages get together to celebrate all the birthdays from that month so sometimes Aurora Andina contributes and buys the cakes. Everyone was so excited for the cakes when we got there and we had chosen ones with animal figures on the tops of each which was really cute for the younger kids. I helped cut the cakes while some other women served the pieces and eventually I got a piece too, and it was actually really good cake. ... read more

August 31st Spanish again this morning, and I walked for the first time downtown by myself! I was a bit late, it took a little longer than I thought it would (about 25 minutes) but it wasn´t a big deal, I am the only one in the class. My professor´s name is Miriam and she is really nice and knows enough English to help explain a word or something when I don´t understand, so hopefully these classes will help my spanish. For lunch I went with Joao (the volunteer coordinator) basically across all of Cusco to a tiny Cevicheria. I had just the basic white fish ceviche and I think I have to say it was the best I´ve had so far in my life, it was delicious. We also went to the Molina while we ... read more

I apologize again for my incredibly long lapse in blog entries. I will try to catch up, so get ready for another slew of updates! August 29th Since it was our first morning Maria Jesus (the overall coordinator and owner of Aurora Andina) picked us up from our house and walked with us downtown to the Aurora Andina Spanish School where I will be having my spanish lessons. It is about a 20-30 minute walk so in the mornings I can either walk or take a bus. The school is cute and fairly small, but I like it. We met Joao there (the volunteer coordinator) and he introduced us to our project. I was signed up for the ´standard´program where I would visit and work with the same girl´s orphanage every day to tutor and play ... read more

Another volunteer for the same program I will be working on arrived today. She is staying in the same homestay as I am which will be good so we can do stuff together. Her name is Vivika and she is from Germany and very nice. I also met Joao Bravo, the volunteer coordinator for my project, who will be the person who actually goes with us to our volunteer places and who also personally works with the orphanages in the program. He seems confident, full of energy, and very passionate about his job so I am very excited to work with him. Neither Vivika nor I really know what our project actually is yet but we have a orientation meeting tomorrow morning where we will learn all we need to know about our time here. This ... read more

August 24th Today was my first day on my own again after the overland trip. Another girl from the group, Rosie, was also changing hotels to a hostel in Miraflores (a district of Lima) so we took a taxi there together and then split to our own hostels. I am staying at the Flying Dog hostel right on the main park (Parque Kennedy) in the district. I checked in, talked on skype a bit to my mom and siblings, bought my bus ticket from the travel agent at the hostel for tomorrow from Lima to Cusco (22 hours), and then took a nap. When I woke up I met up with Rosie again for dinner and had some really good pizza. Tomorrow is my only day in Lima so we will go exploring a bit in ... read more

August 21st Ice climbing was today! And it was a lot of fun. We drove for about an hour and a half and then hiked for 40 minutes before reaching the glacier where we would do our climbing. I was honestly slightly disappointed at first by the apparent size and steepness of our wall, but it turned out to be harder than I thought. I took two turns on the wall and got the hang of it by the end. There was another ice climbing group there from another tour agency and they were climbing a steeper wall and then were preparing to climb the basically vertical wall when we left. We asked our guide if we could climb there too, but he said that it was too dangerous and the other group shouldn´t be doing ... read more

August 18th Next stop was Huanchaco, a beach town right next to Trujillo. The long drive (starting at 6 am) was made even longer by an hour long detour me made due to getting lost. We drove down one road, back up it, down another road, back up it, and then down the first and back again before finally leaving that area by the exact way we had arrived. It must have looked a bit sketchy because we were stopped by the police and the policeman got on the truck, demanding to see everyone´s passports. We kept them all in a safe in the floor of the truck so it took forever to get them all out and then the policeman looked at 3 before giving them back and getting off the truck. It was ridiculous. ... read more