Today was my first day at Hogar de las Estrellas, the orphanage where I will be working for the rest of my stay in Cusco. An interesting catch that I had not been expecting, is that the majority of the 10 kids there, are deaf mutes. This added a new layer to the cake, but that could only mean...a tastier cake.

I was supposed to be at the orphanage at 11 this morning. After mailing a few postcards (which costs like 2 bucks a piece down here), my host sister attempted to help me find the right bus to get where I was going. On the one hand, the busses, or combi´s, as their called, cost only about 15 cents to ride. On the other hand, they consist usually of VW Bus sized van, crammed past capacity, and don´t neccesarily follow a predetermined route. You can tell the different combi routes apart usually by some sort of decal or gimmicky name on the van. The one I would be riding is the Batman. Yep, thats right, I would be riding the batmobile to work everyday. It isn´t exactly as glamourous as it sounds.

I take the Batman all the way to the end of the line, in south Cusco. The neighborhood is kind of a weird mix of lots in various stages of development, and some of the nicest looking houses I´ve seen in the city. I think its sort of a developing neighborhood community. I arrived as the kids were finnishing up morning school lessons, and right in time to sit in on sign language lessons. The teacher is one of the former inhabitants of the home, who has some speaking capability, and now lives by herself and works at the home as a teacher. They proceeded to hit me with a barrage of signs to remember over the next two hours. I retained little, but feel confident that I know the sign for maricon, an insult literally meaning ´great big homosexual´, so thats good.

Another one of the former inhabitants of the home who now lives on his own now works as the cook. We ate lunch and then off to the carpentry shop. In the afternoons, the girls learn different types of skills at the home, and the boys go to the woodshop, a few blocks away, to learn carpentry. Their instructor is a man named Fernando, who does not know signs, but nonetheless is very patient with the guys, and instructs them in all aspects of carpentry. He built all of the shop tools that they use himself, from the lathe, to the joiner, to the tablesaw. He helps them to create quality items, that they hope to be able to sell at somepoint. Fernando also builds a lot of the furniture for the house himself, from chairs,to beds, to tables and cabinets. I think for the majority of my time I will be working with him.