MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM MY TWO NEW FRIENDS!!!

That´s right on Christmas day I realized I had some new friends: Giardia and Salmonella. More about them a later....

But first, let´s go back two weeks. Two Sundays ago the three of us got a kitten from someone on the street. True it will have only been with us for two weeks by the time we leave Cusco but that´s okay because it´s always a good idea to have a cat around for the holidays. (She´ll go to Ruben when we leave)

We named the cat "Estrellita" or "Starshine" (it´s a long story that involves Willy Wonka and the two girls in my house.) When we first got her she meowed non-stop (because she was obviously suffering from some feline illness) and she was going to the bathroom all over the house and she was really edgy.

Well after about five or six days she calmed down, got better, quit meowing and now she is as nice and sweet a cat as any you could find and she even poops in her box.

On Saturday we went to a real live South American Fútbol game. The team from Cusco, Cienciano, is one of the best in Peru (and in South America apparently) and they played the team from Lima, Alianza. We went with some of Ruben´s family and Juan Carlos.

It was a fun game and Cienciano won 1-0. It was crazy to have all these people packed together in a stadium with people sitting in the stairways creating a gigantic mass of people all the way around the stadium. It reminded me of Hunter High´s auditorium.

Finally Christmas Eve day came along and the girls sang a musical number in church while I accompanied. That evening we had some of Ruben´s family, Juan Carlos and Gustavo (a new member) over for a Christmas Eve dinner party. We watched the Polar Express and then at midnight we had our feast of chicken and mashed potatoes. They treat Christmas like new years here with a countdown on the radio and fireworks and everything at the stroke of twelve. It was different.

After dinner we all exchanged gifts and then the Peruvians all went dancing while we Americans went to bed.

Ruben, being an excellent carpenter, made me a nice napkin holder made of swans. He made Tammie this beautiful box.



On Christmas morning we lined up youngest to oldest on the stairs to see what Santa brought. We exchanged our presents from each other and then talked to the family back in the States on the phone. The girls gave me a certificate for a 30 minute massage at a nearby massage parlor.

It was Christmas Eve night that I got the chills and woke up with a fever, my new friends had kicked in.

The day after Christmas one of my students who is a tour guide invited the three of us to the Inca Salt Mines. So we took a bus early in the morning to the Sacred Valley with Carlos, my student, and his two kids. We walked around the salt mines which have been used as such from the days before the Incas to today.

My new friends came along as well. I felt it.

I still felt sick after three days and so I went to the clinic on Wednesday evening and saw a doctor. They did some tests and it turns out I have Giardia and some form of Salmonella. Nothing serious though, so she gave me a prescription for some anti-parasite pills and some antibiotics and sent me on my way.

I feel fine today.

Well, this will probably be my last post from Cusco as we will be leaving for Bolivia on Tuesday.

Nos vemos.

MERRY CHRISTMAS from 1984!

Well I taught my last class at Maximo Nivel on Friday. While I´m excited to be moving on and doing new things soon, I found it difficult to say goodbye to a lot of these students whom I´ve taught since October.

My High-Basic class was particularly endearing as were my 12-year-olds. At the end of class everybody in the High-Basic class came up to me and gave me a big hug and I realized how attached I´d become to them.

With my 12-year-old class, two of them had already left a few days ago for Christmas holiday while two remained in the class. They both kept begging me not to leave Cusco. One of them finished his exam and gave me a big hug and then left. The other one, (who was always the rowdiest and most difficult to control in class) finally finished his exam and said as he always does, "see you tomorrow, teacher" but then he realized that he wouldn´t and he all of a sudden started to cry and came over and gave me a big hug and said, "you´re a good teacher." It was really sweet and it certainly meant a lot to me. (No crying mom!)

I said goodbye to my other classes and my intermediate class (made up of several tour guides) invited me to go visit some sites with them next week.

After classes we had a small party for the Maximo Nivel faculty and staff. Then a few of us went out for some dinner.

Now it´s Saturday and I´m late in meeting Tammie and Alana at the church to go over a Christmas medley we´re doing in church on Sunday.

So I gotta go....

My Pre-Intermediate I class

My Intermediate III class

My High-Basic class

My Niños

The Academic Office staff

Some of my fellow teachers at the Christmas party

My Spanish teacher, Jacki

My friends Jed and Cristina

My school is located on one of the main streets of Cusco and every so often I'll be teaching a class when I'll hear the din of an approaching protest. Here are a couple of photos from a particularly large procession. It's always interesting to see them go and see what they're protesting. Sometimes I think they do it just because it's kind of like having a party but with the riot police following behind you.

ORPHAN CHRISTMAS PARTY

Every year Maximo Nivel (my school) hosts a Christmas party for the boys of a local orphanage. The faculty, staff and volunteers at Maximo Nivel are all invited to choose a name of a boy and get a present for him.

The boys then came to Maximo Nivel on Saturday and got to watch a movie (Pirates of the Caribbean), play games, hit a pinata, get presents, watch a puppet show and eat treats and drink hot chocolate.

The boys were between the ages of 10-16 and some of them had obviously been through some rough times in the past.

The name I chose was Juan Santiago and I got him a soccer ball, a little radio with headphones, some socks and some candy (Nerds and Sour Skittles which I found at an American import store.)

They were all very excited about their gifts and Juan in particular was listening to his little radio from the moment he opened his package to the time he left. It was really fun to see the kids have such a good time.

The boys lined up to hit the pinata with Juan taking a swing

Race for the prize

Here's Juan with his radio. We were all much happier.... really

The puppet show

The kids watching the puppet show. Apparently it was really funny. (Particularly when the corn puppet started to rap. He's black because they actually have black corn here.)

Well.... only one more week of teaching, a week to relax and do some last minute things in Cusco and then we're off!

THE TRAFFIC MIMES

So at certain times of the day in Cusco you can spot one of these elusive creatures out directing traffic. They parade around in their mime outfit and stop cars, wave them on or get trapped in a little box. I think they are part of the traffic police which are regularly out in uniform and never get trapped in boxes, little or otherwise. I´m not sure why this happens, but I know that it does.

So far as I know, they don´t carry guns.

MONKEY + TALENT SHOW = NORMAL DAY IN CUSCO

On Friday I didn't have English classes because it is the day when all the teachers come in for an hour or two and finish correcting all the quizes and exams taken the day before.

So after doing my duty at Maximo Nivel I met up with Tammie, Alana and Ruben and we all headed over to the University to see the Cusco zoo.

First we stopped for lunch at crowded lunchery near the University.

Next we paid one sol each and headed into the zoo. There we met many wonderful animals, like this ostrich who came over for a chat. (South American rhea in the background)

This deer wasn't really in a cage and we weren't quite sure what the deal was. But it let me take its picture.

The parrot got all up in my face.

The burrowing owl is a type of owl that burrows.

This spectacled bear is a native to the Andeas Mountains here in Peru. It is quite rare and this one made quite a spectacle of itself.

The Andean Condor is Peru's most famous avian friend. These two made quite a pair.

The puma is another icon of Andean culture. This is one cool cat you don't want to mess with.

This capuchin monkey just wanted to reach out and touch someone.

And of course, no trip to the zoo is complete without a talent show. So that night Tammie played the guitar and Alana and I both played piano pieces in the Young Adult talent show.

It had been quite a day.

*all cheezy references made herein are intentional by the author because he went to a zoo and this kind of thing happens when you've been around monkeys.

THANKSGIVING FEAST

With Tammie´s parents and grandparents in town we had the man/woman power for a great Thanksgiving feast. They rented the apartment across the patio from ours and so we had two kitchens. They brought some hard-to-come-by items from the states (like stuffing, canned pumpkin, shortening and other things.) And thanks to Tammie´s mom we had a very organized system of providing Thanksgiving dinner for the seven of us plus our 15 or so friends whom we invited.

We had ordered a turkey from the butchers, they said it would be ready on Thursday morning, but when Tammie and Alana went to pick it up they said that there are no turkeys in Cusco right now. (They are really popular around Christmas time but the rest of the year, impossible to come by.) So we decided to go over to a nearby restaurant (where I know the head manager and helped him translate his menu to English) and we got three rotisserrie chickens.

Other than that, we had all the makings for a classic Thanksgiving dinner, plus a few surprises. I helped make the pie crusts for the pies and they turned out really well thankfully (I´m kind of hit and miss with my pie crusts.) And some of our Peruvian friends brought cuy to give the dinner an Andean flair.




The time came for dinner and we ate and ate. Now, I don´t eat very big meals here so this was quite a change and I felt it the next day. We sent plenty of food home with our friends and all in all it was a great success. The Peruvians seemed to really enjoy it as well.





As for the rest of my time recently, I haven´t done much other than teaching English, learning Spanish and going through the daily routines here.

The Land Before Time MCXXVII: Journey to the Sacred Valley

Littlefoot sensed danger... What began as a joyous dew-filled world of song and dance became a stiffling, dangerous death-trap. There was nowhere to turn, nowhere to run and he knew his only chance to avoid extinction was to run.

Littlefoot ran, faster than one could imagine an apatasaurus could ever run. Oh, thank the trilobites he was no brachiosaurus with a neck that towered above the foliage. He could keep his head tucked well below green canopy avoiding detection from the hunters.

The ferns and giant horsetails whipped his humungous bulk as if

As you will no doubt recall, I am currently sharing an apartment with my cousin Alana and her friend Tammie. Tammie´s parents and grandparents came to visit this past week and will be here for another. They arrived on Wednesday and on Saturday they invited Alana and I plus a couple of our Peruvian friends to go with them on a tour of the Sacred Valley of the Incas.

So we reserved a thirteen-passenger van hired with a tour guide and we set off. Our first stop was the town of Pisac, capital of the sacred valley, which boasts some ruins and a great town market. Because Alana, Tammie and I were too cheap to buy the tourist ticket that gets you into the ruins (because we see ruins all the time) we got out and waited at the control point while the others went on. While waiting we recruited some of the local kids into a game of Uno. I totally won twice. Those kids didn´t even know what hit `em.

Next we went down to the town market where I took this wonderful picture of myself behaving touristy. (Yes I took this picture myself with the camera you see here and I´ll give someone a piece of candy if they can explain how I did it.)


After Pisac we headed further up the valley to the town of Urubamaba, capital of the Sacred Valley, where the Schwieders (Tammie´s family) treated us all to a nice buffet lunch. Some of the dishes included such favorites as stuffed peppers, lamb stew, alpaca stew and phlagn.

Even though the Schwieders aren´t featured in the picture below, I promise they were there.

After a great lunch we headed to the town of Ollantaytambo, capital of the Sacred Valley, where we were able to see more ruins. Alana and I had been there before my first week here.

I also met a new friend there, featured in the picture below.

We stopped at one more town on the way home for some more ruins and then went back to our apartment. It had been a fun day.