7 weeks in and I'm only 4 weeks behind! Go me!

Apparently I’m not the only one here still obsessed with the big A!


Hola chicos! Another week has come and gone!

Sunday April 18

After the horrendous ordeal known as crashing in the mountains I decided to lay low on Sunday! I found an LDS church right by my school and thought it started at 9, I got to sacrament a little bit late (weird right?) and they were singing a song so I thought perfect, it's the opening song I'm right on time, as soon as it ended they said a prayer and I walked in and sat down as the bishop was making a few comments I didn't understand and I felt like all eyes were on me, I thought it was because I was the only whitey in the place but when the bishop finished and everyone got up and walked out because sacrament was over I knew why all the staring! haha

Later in the afternoon I met Lauren and Tiago and we went to this place called Molinos, it's the Peruvian black market. They have tons of electronics and boot leg DVD's and just about anything else you could possibly want including but not limited too.....


Yep my friends that's a real life cooked guinea pig on skewer with a pepper in it's mouth, I think his name was Ted.... Yum!

My favorite part about Molinos was the big high def TV's playing high def movies!!! Seriously, it's like a joke sometimes how nerdy I am but I don't even care I loved it! :) They also have tons of knock off clothes and shoes and purses and things it's way sweet! They love to barter here as well! Almost as much as the chinese, and that's saying something!


This picture is not blurry, it's you..... In the background you can kind of see the market, but me Lauren and Tiago stopped and got some fresh made juice! You just tell them what you want and they blend it up fresh right there! And it's only 2 soles a glass! That's like 70 cents, I seriously could live on the stuff it's so amazing!

In school on Monday my new profesora was Marybel, she's really sweet and motherly! I also had another student, James, with me. He's a science teacher from New Orleans and seriously fit the bill of an awkward science teacher in every way shape and form, and he had the worst coffee breath every morning! :) Needless to say it made for an interesting week!


Yes my friends the mullet is alive and well in the great state of Louisiana!

Tuesday was such a beautiful day, I met my friend Vicky, from England at the school and after some confusion and a little broken Spanish we found the right bus stop and took a cambi up to the Cristo Blanco that overlooks Cusco. The cambis are these van like things that they shove people in to the point of no return, I didn’t realize until now but there is actually always room for one more! You get to know your neighbor real quick, whether you want to or not! It’s only 60 centimos which is like 35 cents and you’re not a real Cusquenian until you experience one of these, so I guess what I’m trying to say is it’s official, I am now one of the collective, you can call me 1 of 200,000 (and anyone laughing right now, you’ve just been exposed as the ST:TNG fan that I always knew you were)!


Oh it’s fine, I just met a real life Peruvian rock star, even got to star in her real life high budget music video! :)

It is such a beautiful view from up top and while we there this band came and set up all their instruments, I’m talking keyboards, guitars, saxophones the whole shebang! And made us move out of their way so they could shoot a real life music video, no joke! It was super classy, they had a hand held video camera to record it all and a portable tape player to supply the music! It was so funny! They recorded a couple songs and then the lady asked me and Vicky if we liked to dance and if we would be in here video. We both felt way dumb but pretty much they just played the song and she was just singing along and we were dancing right by her, luckily I naturally look so good I didn't even need to get in to costume and make up! So funny slash awkward slash I better get some royalty when that video goes straight to #1!


This day I finally realized my life long dream of.... standing next to a lady wearing a dress of sparkling jewels brighter than the sun!

I'm gonna be honest, I think this first little taste of stardom brought out the true star in me because Thursday night I went out dancing with a bunch of the students that are leaving Cusco. We were just club hopping and there were about 12 of us and we ended up in this club called Mamma Afrika that was playing lots of hip hop so of course I loved it! While we were there the song Soulja Boy Tell Em came on, it's kind of an old song but it has this whole dance that goes to it, and this one kid from Belgium is 19 and he's crazy, they all call him El Nino because he's so young but our group kind of cleared the floor and he went in the middle like he knew the dance and I was like hey I know it too, so I went out there with him and we tore it up! Literally everyone in the entire club stopped and made a circle around us to watch and it was awesome! After that, I'm not even kidding you I was a legend! Everyone was nice to me before but after I did that, they were all like, "That was amazing, I love you" this one girl just kept saying "You're so cool, I want to dance with you, you're so crazy!" hahaha I'm not even kidding you I was in my glory! Even at school the next day, a couple of the girls live with the head teacher Maike and, Maike came up to me and was like, I hear you are quite the dancer! So much fun! I'm back on cloud 9 just thinkin about it! I'm pretty sure if everyone had known I didn't even have any alcohol they would have died!


This was a big performance week for me.....

Friday April 23 is apparently El Dia De Idioma (day of language) so for the second half of the day we did all these different activities. My friend David from Texas is an awesome guitar player and he played a couple songs for everyone and I think he must have spotted how in tune I am with music because he asked me to accompany him on the maracas. Now, most of you probably aren't aware but I've actually had many extensive years of training with the maracas so I was well qualified for this job, and I mean his guitar playing was good but really I think you can guess what made the performance! :)


Sorry if you can't pick my face out of this picture, I really got in to character as Molino #3 in the back!

Also in case you didn't already figure out from the above picture I was also able to finally land my dream role in the theater that day as Molino #3 in the schools reproduction of Don Quijote for the Day of Language..... Oh yeah Molino in spanish is windmill! Hahaha It was so cheesy slash nerdy! The play was short and all I did was stand there waving my arms like a windmill, I mean it took a lot preparation on my part and without me the whole thing probably would have fallen apart but it was a pretty eventful day!

After the performances, they had us split in to 4 different teams and we had to come up with a team cheer and then we did all these competitions in Spanish. I wasn't much good at any of the Spanish stuff but I did come up with our team cheer! I may or may not have gotten the idea from a little known place called the Spectrum..... Bringing a little piece of Logan to my friends in Peru! We did the I believe that we can win chant in Spanish it was awesome!


Sunday we had a rooftop picnic at Katrine and Arianne's hostel! They have this amazing view overlooking the plaza! It was awesome, we got a bunch of bread and cheese and veggies and the avocados here are so amazing! And then we watched the sunset and Katrine jammed a little while we all sang along! Such an amazing night!

Sunday morning I went to church and found some other white people! And they were from Logan! I love that place so naturally life was good! It was a couple who worked for the church and had been living in Lima for 4 years and all there kids and some of the spouses were out visiting so they were doing so traveling! They were way nice and they loved that I lived in Logan almost as much as I loved that they weren't BYU fans! :)

After church Isabelle was sick so I was just planning on eating something in town, but she called me in to her room and apparently her nephew had gotten this take out and she wanted to share it with me.....


I'm not 100% sure about all the contents on this plate, but the dark meat is cuy aka guinea pig (surprisingly tasted nothing like chicken), I think the white things were some kind of fish egg and the green stuff tasted a lot like seaweed! Also don't be fooled, that is definitely not a hot dog! :) And on the upside the popcorn kernel looking things were amazing! And I loved getting to try so many different kinds of food and now I don't even have to waste a whole meal on Cuy!