South American adventure

We have been working in the schools for a week now, and it has been really interesting. I have been working in the inicial school with the 4 and 5 year olds as well as a bit of helping in the primary school which is first through 6th grade. when i go into the primary school, they want me to speak in English to the children and show them what i am saying by pointing or gesturing. this is what i will do this week, next week i will start with some English lessons. the dress code requires me to wear a skirt and stockings everyday which i quite like but havent had to do in a long time before this.

on saturday we went to 2 markets, one for local food and another for clothes, where Al was able to find a pair of sandals in his size! there was only one his size in the entire market so he bought them. i also bought another sweater because when it is rainy here it is quite chilly. i am also knitting a scarf. there is no snow, but when the sun is not out it is cooler. although yesterday and today were very sunny and warm, when the sun is out it is about 70 degrees, when it is not it is about 45 degrees. large difference at this altitude, 11,500 feet.

yesterday we went hiking to Cristo Blanco and then to Sacsaywaman which are ruins of an old Inca fortress that sits up above Cusco and looks down on the city. the name Sacsaywaman is Quechua and means tiger because they say that from up top looking down onto Cusco, the city is the shape of a tiger. When pronounced Sacsayhwman sounds a lot like sexy woman, and many people that understand English find this funny. we hiked all morning and part of the afternoon and have some wonderful pictures i am uploading right now. i also uploaded a Cusco album of the day we were in City of the Boys. they make the best cheese and yogurt there i have ever tasted. the cheese is only aged 6 months maximum but we think it is better than the 5 year aged Cuba cheese. Queso andino it is called.

i have a bit of a sore throat and runny nose, i think it is adjusting to the rapid climate changes, my body goes from very hot to very cold. but thankfully the hot water has been fixed in our hostal and our showers have been nice and hot. we moved up a floor to another room that is cheaper and negotiated the price down based on a monthy rate, and now our housing is quite affordable. esto es todo para mi. tal vez Alejandro quiere escribir un rato tambien.

con amor,

Annie

we arrived in Cusco last thursday night after a very long day bus from Arequipa that lasted 11 hours. we arrived at the house of our friends, a missionary couple who have two sons, and they fed us dinner and helped us find a hostal. we explored the San Pedro market on Friday with Nicole (the mother of the family) and on saturday morning we went to the local market where all the people from the surrounding villages come to sell their goods. we bought fresh cheese and yogurt and lots of vegetables to last us the week, and it was quite cheap. we hope to go to this market every saturday morning, which is the only day that vendors are there.

we moved hostals from the original one because the room was very cold and drafty, i was boiling water for tea and filling Als water bottle with hot water and sleeping with that in my bed. it is still a bit cold, 45-65 degrees depending on if there is sun, and coming from the coast where there was so much direct sunlight and we were sweating all the time to here up in the mountains at 11,000 feet has been quite a change.

downstairs of the community house where the families live here at the mission there is a piano! and all kinds of really good music books like Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms. i have been playing at least an hour or two each day, many times in which Al has patiently listened and waited for me.

on monday we started work at the schools, Al is at the Ciudad de los Muchachos (city of the boys) which is an almost self sufficient place where there is an orphanage, school, farm, bakery, carpentry shop, claymaking, they only buy a handfull of things, everything else they grow or produce themselves. he loves it there. he will be assisting teaching english and also painting the outside of the building which is badly in need of a few coats.

i have been helping at the girls school, assisting in the 4 and 5 year old rooms. yesterday was the start of the new school year and it started with a Mass said by Fr. Giovanni, the founder of the mission. i am reading his book right now which tells of how he met Pope John Paul II and Mother Teresa, and all kinds of stories about the mission when it was just getting started. the mission is called Servents of the Poor of the Third World. there are sisters, priests, and 9 families that work as missionaries here. really interesting community, very faith filled. very soon we will go to adoration with the parents of all of the families upstairs in the chapel next to our friends apartment. even in the fan on the way to school we say prayers and a rosary, and on the way home the girls sing hymns.

espero que todos esten bien.

besitos de Cusco xx

after leaving Pisco we went to Ica looking for a bus that would leave that night but we missed the last one (or so we thought) so we went to Huacachina for the night where many of the other volunteers were and spent the evening with them. in the morning we swam and said goodbye to the rest of the volunteers and spent the day climbing a huge sand dune and then running down it. we had an excellent meal that night at a pizzeria and they let us bring our own wine! our bus left that night at 2 in the morning and we got into Arequipa yesterday at 4pm..after many hours in the very warm bus. we are staying with a friend of a friend who has a huge house and we have been cooking him nice meals. tonight chili con carne and submarinos finalmente. the city here is beautiful, i feel like we are in Europe. we ran into a pisco volunteer in front of the cathedral yesterday. today we ended up spending more money than usual and Al bought me new earrings that are beautiful. we will be here a few more days then head to Cusco. i posted some new photos of Pisco and some of Als photos from the last 2 months should have uploaded as well so check those. i have some beautiful ones from Arequipa too but cant upload them right now on this compu. we are both feeling much better and health wise i am happy to be out of Pisco where i seemed to get any sickness possible. i am treating myself extra well with a lot of sleep and tea so that my immune system can recover.

besitos a todos xx

tonight we are leaving Pisco to go to Arequipa. i feel like i have been sick with one thing or another for the last 3 weeks. i hope when we leave my immune system can pick back up again. we took some photos with Fabiola, la mujer de la torta (cake lady) last night. she really is lovely, giving me advice and free goodies to help me feel better. and of course her vanilla cake always makes me feel better. Al has been feeling sick these last few days as well but we both feel a bit better today. since the last post i have gotten a throat and mouth infection which means i am on 2 more antibiotics and pain killers. my mouth is so sensitive i can only eat really soft foods. but it is getting better little by little. last sunday on valentines day i sang at a cultural festival on the beach 2 latin american pop songs with my friend Yoni and then he sang a song in Hebrew because he was born in Israel. it went very well and i was not nervous at all. later in the afternoon we asked them to put on salsa music and Al and i danced for a while, a bit rusty because we have not had much time to practice this last month here in Pisco, but everyone was really impressed, a few Peruvians were taking photos on their phones. PSF has 2 dogs, Manchito and Gringo (its a joke) and they were both at the festival, Gringo was circling us and barking while we were dancing which was really funny, i wish we had a video of that.

on tuesday then i went to the Cuban doctors again who know me well now, the nurses face lit up with a big smile when she saw me. i think the antibiotics are finally working. it was expensive but i had to buy a bottle of listerine. it hurts my mouth at first but then numbs it for about half an hour and it does not hurt at all.  i have to do that before bed especially to help me sleep.

we were told there are no early morning buses, so we will leave tonight. there are still several people from the local community that i hope to find, along with packing up our bags.

espero que todos esten bien.

chao con amor! 

last week mid week i was on a job in desamparados trench digging again in the sun all day after having a tiny but severe sunburn on my lower back (from when i ore a borrowed shirt that as a tiny bit too small and when i worked the previous day it had come up a bit in the back without my realizing) i think i overheated so much that it made me ill. i did not realize how dehydrated i as, but i got sick and could not stop. it made me dizzy and after doing my best to apologize to the shopkeepers whose store i had vomited in front of several times, i just layed on the sidewalk until the others were able to call a car to take me to the hospital here i had an IV drip of 2Liters of a saline which quickly brought me back to good health. they also gave me an injection to relax my stomach muscles. that night i slept surprisingly well and the next day felt great but decided not to work until at least this week. but then my sunburn worsened and blistered, so i have not worked since, outside of housecleaning and some cooking that is. health wise it has been a difficult week because on saturday afternoon al got sick as well, he became dehydrated but could not keep down any water or foods. on sunday morning i took him to the hospital to have the same rehydrating drip (suero) that helped him a lot too. on monday morning we went to the cuban doctors on the other side of the panamericana highay and got medicines and they mandated some tests which i am still in the process of realizing. but the first test today tested negative for parasites which is a good sign! hopefully again tomorrow.

this computers keyboard is very funny, it will not let me press the w key hich is very annoying but funny at the same time.

al is still not feeling very well, he is taking the week to rest and hopes to be back full strength next week.

we are taking good care of each other, drinking a lot of water and other rehydrating solutions and gatorade, and now are both eating full meals again. dont worry about us because we are both doing much better now.

i may not have written about this yet so i will take thi opportunity to do so. al and i are officially engaged! on new years day he asked at 1 in the morning and i was already almost asleep, he asked (in spanish of course) if i wanted to marry him and i mumbled yes without opening my eyes and went to sleep. i did not think this as anything big because many times before he has asked me if i would marry him. he took off my ring that marie had given me and i was wearing on my left ring finger and replaced it ith a beautiful turquoise heart ring that he had made for me, exactly as i want. i was half asleep and did not pay attention to this, i thought he just took off my ring and put it back on.  al, being the patient person he is decided to wait until the morning when i realized it as different. in the morning i woke up and al asked me again if i would to marry him, i told him yes and he said, good then, look at your finger. i looked and was shocked when i saw that it as a different ring than the night before! we are not getting married this july, our plans have changed a bit but we are now engaged and will be getting married, just a littler later than originally planned. we are praying that the Lord will lead us to married life at the right time.

bueno chicos, nos vamos.

¡dios les bendiga a todos!

here in Pisco we had another day of hard work. i went to the child care center with guitar and sang and taught some guitar lessons. yesterday i spent most of the afternoon jackhammering and i am getting much better at it.

on Als crew they have now taken down all of the metal walls and beams of the 3 modulars in the school and have moved them to the other school. we are finding that peruvian time is similar to ecuadorian time, that nothing works quite as efficiently as it should, and it takes a lot of pacience and flexibility, but thankfully we are good travelers that have both.

on sunday we made crepes with friends of ours from France. although our french friends were not happy with them, the rest of us thought they were great (al and i and another couple from sweden and germany)

i just started my third journal since arriving in south america just over 5 months ago. tonight we will build a bonfire and cook marshmallows with some friends. we are planning the next part of our trip to Cusco, but looking at safety warnings to get there safely, because the main roads have been destroyed by the landslides.

i might start teaching an intro spanish course here. more constructive than complaining about how no one here within the organization is speaking spanish.

we are eating really well here.

chao y Dios les bendiga!

i had a very long post typed up and lost it all, so i will try to retype a bit.

we finished our first week of hard service work here in Pisco, i have been trench digging and jackhammering (yes i used the jack hammer 2 times!) in an effort to dig the foundation of a new house. the family is very nice, feeding us lunch and popsicles and drinks all day to save us from the hot son and no clouds or rain. it is so dry here there are water outages, one night we got back very sweaty and smelly but there was no water until the next day.

they are feeding us very well, excellent dinners every night with large portions which makes al very happy.

al is team leader on his project, he and his group are taking down a school and moving it to another location.

i cooked dinner for everyone with a few other volunteers, we cooked a pesto pasta.

chao a todos, cuidense mucho!

i had a very long post typed up and lost it all, so i will try to retype a bit.

we finished our first week of hard service work here in Pisco, i have been trench digging and jackhammering (yes i used the jack hammer 2 times!) in an effort to dig the foundation of a new house. the family is very nice, feeding us lunch and popsicles and drinks all day to save us from the hot son and no clouds or rain. it is so dry here there are water outages, one night we got back very sweaty and smelly but there was no water until the next day.

they are feeding us very well, excellent dinners every night with large portions which makes al very happy.

al is team leader on his project, he and his group are taking down a school and moving it to another location.

i cooked dinner for everyone with a few other volunteers, we cooked a pesto pasta.

chao a todos, cuidense mucho!

before leaving Cajamarca i decided to get my hair trimmed and was very happy when we found a salon that cut my hair for 5 soles, $1.60. cheapest haircut ever. we took a night bus to Trujillo, got in before the sun came up, waited in the busok  station very sleepy and uncomfrotable. once the sun came up we took a bus to Huanchaco which is the beach town about 30 min from Trujillo. We arrived to a hostal recommended to us by friends, but there were no rooms and in the camping in the back only space for 2 more people. we took it and walked back to find about 20 people sleeping in tents with a communal kitchen. they provided us the tents, blankets and pillows and as we were laughing because we could not believe the accomodations, we decided to accept because it was cheap. we spent 3 nights in the tents, cooking our own food and spending our days in hammocks and reading or on the beach. we went running on the beach, found a fisherman pulling in a catch of crabs and we bought a kilo of crabs, 12 in total, some medium and some quite large, for 4 soles which is $1.30. we got back and shared with the others from the hostal, including 3 travelers who just graduated from SUNY Geneseo and one who knows my old roommate Patty. one of our last days we went to Chan Chan which was the capital of the Chumi civilization that inhabited Peru and preceded the Inca empire. it was a beautiful ruins of the capital city where the nobility lived, they are restoring other parts of it but much of it was open to walk through. we went to the museum, met an Argentine couple that gave us some good tips for wine tasting in Argentina which we have decided will be the celebratory end of our 9 months of traveling together and reward to ourselves for our service work, when we get there in april or may.

we took another night bus friday night from Trujillo to Lima, in the morning we swtiched buses to another to go to Pisco. After staying on too long by accident because of the loud action film and not being able to hear the bus attendant, we got off an hour too late, but they switched buses for us and took us back to Pisco no extra charge. we got in here yesterday with Pisco Sin Fronteras which is a grassroots org that helps rebuild Pisco after the devistating earthquake of 2007, the one that happened just after i left Ecuador the first time in august 2007. much of this city is still destroyed. tomorrow we start work, manuel labor which Al is looking forward to. the people here are very friendly, and they will feed us during the week, we can use the kitchen and cook for ourselves on the weekends, which means that finally tonight i will get to try my hand at cooking pizza in a frying pan. i will be going to the market soon with a new friend from Maine that lives in Argentina for the year. Al is playing RISK with 2 young men from Australia and another from Connecticut that graduated from Clarkson U. the RISK game is in spanish and it is funny listening to their bad pronunciations of the countries.

although everyone here speaks English more than i  like, they are friendly and i have decided i can overlook that if the service work is really good. but there are a few people that speak spanish and i have been able to speak with them.

later we will look for an evening Mass as well. the church in Huanchaco was wonderful, the priest gave us a blessing and i played their keyboard for a while which made me miss playing Bach, so a few hours of the bus between Trujillo and Lima i listened to the Bach preludes WTC Book 1 which makes me happy and miss the piano at the same time.

todo bien aqui, espero que Uds. esten bien tambien. feliz empieza de la semestre nueva!

all is well here, i hope you all are well also. happy start of the new semester!

after leaving Puerto Lopez we took an all day bus to Cuenca where we spent 2 nights in this beautiful colonial city. after meeting a swiss couple and a spanish couple in the hostal and borrowing their guide books for advice, we made a quick decision to head for peru on wednesday a bit earlier than planned. We’ve been in Peru now for a couple of days.  We crossed the border in the late afternoon Wednesday.  It was quite a zoo, very confusing and crazy but we made it across without any hassle or visa problems.  We ran into a small hiccup in Huaquillas with exchanging dollars for soles in that we received some fake bills.  But when we got to Tumbes we went to an exchange house where Annie exchanged the rest of her dollars exchanged for good bills in soles.  Needless to say, we’ve learned to never again exchange money on the street, no matter how reputable the person appears to be.

That was the only problem we encountered when crossing the border.  We both got 180 day visas for free.  We made it to Mancora, the beach resort town of northern Peru safely later Wednesday night, found cheap lodging and ate breakfast on the beach the following morning.  We went to the market and bought bread, mangos, apples and bananas all for less than $2 then spent the rest of the morning and afternoon relaxing and walking on the beach.  That night we decided to leave on a night bus instead of staying the extra night and the hostal was nice to let us pay half the fee for the other night because we stayed in the room until 10pm. The exchange rate for soles to dollars is about 2.80 : 1.  Everything is cheaper here and we like it a lot, except for the buses which are a bit more expensive than Ecuador. Al is proving  to be better at math in his head when thinking of how many dollars is 10 soles for example. we round up to 3 to 1 and try to divide all prices by 3 to see how many dollars everything is. eventually we want to be able to think of things in soles but right now we have to convert to figure out if it is expensive or cheap.

Last night around midnight we caught a bus out of Mancora that passed through Chiclayo at 6am, and we caught another bus there to Cajamarca, where we are now, after 13 hours on bus today. Our legs hurt!  This city is so gorgeous, it could almost be Mediterranean.  This is where Francisco Pizarro captured the Incan Emperor Atahualpa.  Tomorrow we are going to visit the house where Atahualpa was hiding before he was caputred. Sunday we’ll go to the Inca Baths and eat at a New York style pizzeria to celebrate Als birthday.  Monday night we’ll be catching a bus to Trujillo and then take a taxi or walk to Huanchaco near the beach to see some more ruins and hiking. Trujillo is rumored to be more dangerous a city, so we’re going to stay in Huanchaco, a smaller town on the beach that is much safer and has Incan ruins near by.  We’ll be staying there just about until we go to Pisco to start volunteering for a few weeks.  We will only be passing through Lima in the bus station.  Everyone tells us that there is not much to see etc., so we’ll just pass through. 

we ate the largest lunch for the cheapest today, it was 3 soles which is about a dollar for soup, the main plate of a mixed rice with sausage, chicken and vegetables and eggs, and juice. que barato.

chao a todos!