Hello everyone!

Today I am lucky enough to write you from the beautiful, sunny Lima! We got here two nights ago and have had 3 seminars since and some time to explore. Yesterday, we suffered a little through two back to back seminars... and for the record NOT A SINGLE person my age has that long of an attention span... In fact, I'm not sure that ANYONE has that long of an attention span. The second seminar I found much more interesting than the first, but maaaaaaan, I could NOT pay attention.

After we got out of classes, we went as groups and got lunch in Larcomar here in Miraflores - it's a mall and has a bit of a food court but it's good food and not all U.S. food... a bunch of people wanted to go to the beach... I tried telling them that in Lima proper, the beaches are really not worth-while but they still wanted to go, so we trekked down to the beach after lunch and EWWW! The water was a frothy, poop-ish color and everyone who went in came out to dry disgusting, frothy, brown water off of themselves. Being in the sun was really nice though, and I enjoyed getting to just be outside after our long seminars.

I am really pumped to get some seafood while in Lima as well as some good Asian food (there's Thai, Chinese, Japanese, etc. here and there is QUITE a lack of it in Cusco)...

Alright, so now let me back up a bit... This trip started out in Puno, off of Lake Titicaca - the highest navigable lake in the world. Our first day was pretty much spent on a bus, attempting to get to Puno and not succeeding very well. On our second day, we woke up incredibly early to go to Lake Titicaca. We visited the Uros floating islands and Taquile Island. The Uros island visit was interesting in a number of ways... we were given an explanation by the President of the island we visited of how the island is made up, how one literally cuts off members of the island if there is a conflict, etc. We were asked to go into the homes of different members of the community (there were 6 families living on the island we visited) and then they wanted us to buy their stuff. The majority of the income for the Uros is now tourism... but they do some fishing for income as well. I was fascinated by the fact that almost EVERY SINGLE person in our group did buy something from them... but I was even more fascinated by the fact that 180 degrees from where everyone was buying things from them, there was a huge amount of trash, bottles, etc. stashed slightly out of view from visiting tourists. I think I may have been the only person in a group of 25 students - 27 if you include the two directors who were with us - who took notice of this...

After everyone had satisfied their purchasing needs on the Uros island, we got back on our two boats to go to Isla Taquile - a pretty large island in one part of Lake Titicaca which, unlike the Uros islands, is not floating.. it sort of looks like how I would imagine the Mediterranean or something along those lines - very rocky, very sunny, and downright beautiful!

On Taquile, we had homestays organized for the night and as I made my way up the 520 stair super-exhausting walk to the top of the island where most people live, I met my host mom. Her name was Maria and she was incredibly kind to me during my less-than-24-hour stay. Most of the day I spent with Maria and her oldest son, who is ten, walking around and exploring the island. We went back to the house after exploring for a couple of hours and did some weaving (I learned how to do it... roughly) and I tried to help show her youngest son how to knit. Men in families that do "traditional" textile works tend to do a lot of knitting, which I get a kick out of - men would never be caught knitting in the U.S., I feel like.

That night, we got our coca leaves read by a paq'o (andean shaman, basically) who lives on the island and who is also a community leader. It was really interesting and I am hoping to go to a paq'o once we are back in Cusco and have my coca leaves read outside of a group, etc. The intent of the reading was to hopefully give us luck and a good spirit throughout our travels and that sort of thing but it was incredibly interesting the explanation that was given about the reading later. Apparently there is a huge amount of energy between a paq'o and the coca leaves when they do a coca leaf reading and energy also between the person whose coca leaves she or he is reading and the coca leaves and themselves... In any case, I found the process fascinating and asked one of the program directors if he would help a friend and myself find a genuine place to get out coca leaves read (in Cusco there are a lot of fakes for that sort of thing as well as drinking ayahuasca which is a psychedelic drug basically, but which, if you drink it with the help of a spiritual guide, it can be a really wonderful experience according to the directors... I think I'll pass on that one).

The next morning, we had to leave, but I watched the sunrise from my family's courtyard, which was INCREDIBLY beautiful and it was a very cloudy morning, so I didn't get to see much but it was still amazing... very cold though! As we were all getting on the boat to leave, Maria host-mom got on the boat and surprised me by giving me a hug and said that she would really miss me... it was soooo incredibly sweet and there were some shocking things for me about her life in Taquile but she was one of the nicest people I have met in my whole time here, I thin

k....

After we left, we went back to Puno and started the long drive to Chivay (in the province of Arequipa and part of Colca Canyon!)... It ended up being about a 10 hour drive from the 6 hours that it was supposed to be and it felt like we were all ready to eat each other alive by the end of the drive... Finally we arrived in Chivay and got to have a hot shower (many people don't have hot showers in their homes in Cusco, so this was pretty exciting) and some food before heading to bed. The next morning we had until around noonish until we had the lunch to meet our host families in Colca Canyon. In my case, I met a very short, slightly round woman of (I found this out later) 53, with one tooth on the bottom and the brightest smile I had seen in a long time... at the lunch she was very quiet, though and I felt like I was having a hard time connecting... After lunch we all left with our respective mothers/siblings and got on different buses to depart to different parts of the Canyon. I was headed to the northern part of the Canyon to a town called Sibayo (actually the coldest of all the communities who hosted us students) with my host mom and by the time we got to the town it was late afternoon. I met the rest of the family, one by one mostly, and by the time we had dinner I was feeling much more comfortable with Sra. Nieves and the rest of the family (one 18-year-old son who works/studies in Arequipa but was home at the time, one husband, three granddaughters of the ages 8, 10, and 14, and three dogs of varying ages.

The second day I was in Sibayo, I went with my parents to their chakra (field) and we planted 28 trees. I was digging the holes with my host dad and after about 4 holes, my weak little non-farmer hands got a big ol' blister... I didn't realize it until I saw it and just switched the way I held the hole-maker... When my parents realized it though, they made me stop making holes and plant the trees. While this was incredibly kind of them, it meant that more dirt, sweat, and other yummy things found their way into my split open skin... when we got back to their house afterwards, I washed it well, cut off the skin as best as I could and got out as much dirt as I could, but this required rubbing super-raw skin... so I decided it would be a better idea to put some hand sanitizer on my open wound (smart, right?)... it BURNED, as I'm sure you can imagine and so I nearly immediately washed it off in the water... I put some aloe on it after and hoped it would get better. Of course, it did.

I sort of spent my time hanging out with my other two classmates who had stayed in Sibayo with me, walking around, talking, and spending time with my family (they didn't let me back on the chakra after that...). Then, those of us who were staying in the north of the Canyon got to go to an alpaca ranch... It was an hour-ish long hike to the estancia (ranch) across rivers, roads, and much more... Once we got there (it was raining), we put our stuff in the common room we'd all be sleeping in and went to see the alpacas... there were little babies and mamas and just lots of cute alpacas! Of course, I wasn't about to get real close and get myself spat on or anything, but I just wanted to go and hug them all those cuties! That night we didn't do much with the alpacas but all went back to the room after a while and ate peanut butter sandwiches, etc. and played cards for a long time. There is another student here from Indiana (Gary) and we were teaching, along with another girl folks how to play Euchre. I have played Euchre just about everywhere but this was the first time I've played it in South America, so that was pretty exciting :)

In the morning, about half of us went to go cut firewood to replace the firewood that we were using in cooking that morning's breakfast. By this time, I was feeling a bit sick to my stomach and decided to pass up the other option (be in the kitchen with the woman cooking breakfast)... We cut enough wood and returned to eat breakfast but breakfast wasn't ready so we got to go cut alpaca wool and hold a baby alpaca which was about the cutest thing I think I'd ever seen... After offering cheap, super-sweet Peruvian wine to pachamama (roughly, mother Earth) and the two apus (deities that are the spirits of the mountains), shaving an alpaca to look like a skinny little twig, and getting our pictures taken with the cute little ones, we went to eat breakfast... By this point, I didn't feel like I was going to be able to keep anything down, so I didn't eat anything, but we were about to have an hour-long hike with packs on back down to Callalli (where we left from the day before)... the Assistant Director who was with us and the man who was our guide and who is a biologist who specializes in alpacas together convinced me to let the poor, 30-year-old donkey carry my bag back so that I could just walk... I felt terrible being the only one not carrying their pack, but in the end, it was probably a really good thing...

When we got back to Callalli, they surprised us and said we were all going to the hot springs (it looked like a pool, but was really nice and warm) and since none of us had taken a shower since we'd been there as there was nothing but ice cold water at any of our houses (except one girl whose family had a solar shower)... it felt realllllly nice and afterwards, I went home and slept all day and all night long since I wasn't feeling well :(

After getting back from the estancia, I mostly spent time with my host family hanging out... Which I think brings us up to date pretty much. I feel like this is definitely a large dosage of what I've been doing since I haven't updated in a while. Hope you are all wonderful and that things are good in the states... Always feel free to drop a line, and I love you all dearly!

Besos y un abrazo!

Ps. I took the picture heading this post the first time I was in Lima...