We're on a boat!

All you have to do is follow the signs on the highest largest navigable lake in the world and you should be fine!

Saturday April 10
We woke up and ate a stimulatingly free breakfast courtesy of our 27.5 soles a night for a private room hostel. It consisted of bread, jam, tea, little cubes of butter and coffee! Yum!

We headed down to the dock to try and find a tour, everyone was more than willing to help us, so much in fact that I think they were actually more so trying to help themselves! :) We found a good tour that included 3 meals and a nights stay with a host family on one of the islands as well as travel to 3 different islands!


They call this the platano (for those of you non espanol speakers that also means banana) of the sea, because you peel down the sides and eat it raw, although it tasted like a whole lot of nothing to me!

We first visited the floating islands, it's pretty crazy they've figured out how to turn all the seaweed or whatever the heck you wanna call it into islands, it's kind of weird to explain but basically they get big chunks of earth and tie them together and over time they grow together and then they take these reeds or straw or whatever it is that grows there and put layer after layer on top of the earth and that's what makes it steady enough to walk on, and then over time they have to add more layers as the bottom ones decay and die away!


Welcome to an island made purely our of straw, please watch your step!


Oh it's fine, they brought out the big guns with a welcoming party singing and dancing when we got to the island, apparently I'm not just a big deal in Utah! :)

They gave us this whole demonstration and then let us walk around look at all the dwellings and then we decided to go for a boat ride on one of these canoe looking boats made out of the straw! It was pretty cool especially when 8,000 children jumped on board with us to sing! It was really cute!


We're on a little boat!


These are just 3 of the 8,000 that jumped on with us!


Happy faces, at least face.... I paid this little girl to be in my picture and she still couldn't even pretend to be having a good time? Seriously I must be losing my touch! :)


In theory this was a good idea, but more recently they've received lots of complaints from the villagers who feel like it's a waste of a dry set of clothes every time they have to swim out and buy something!

After that we had a 3 hour boat ride to the island of Armantani, it was pretty cool, we sat on top of the boat and enjoyed the sun!



Don't even worry we just made ourselves comfortable on top of the boat in the agonizing heat, while all the smart people stayed down below in the shade!


Viva El Peru! 'Nough said!

Once we got to the island Armantani, we were picked up by our host mom for the night and had to take a 20 minute hike seriously straight up the mountain! It felt like a billion degrees and we were packin.... our clothes that is!


Twenty yards into our hike up the mountain, I found an LDS church, is it weird that such a simple building should constitute stopping the whole group to get a picture? I sure didn't think so! :)


If we wanted to know what we were having for lunch we just needed to look at what was cooking slash smoldering in the heat of the sun, yep this is their version of a stove.... No joke!

When we got to our house it was very simple, it was set up kind of with a little courtyard in the middle and then a bunch of doors around it that led to different rooms, I'm still not all the way sure but I think there were at least two families that shared the area! They have no electricity on the island at all and when it got dark we had our meals and the lights in our rooms by candlelight!


This is the kitchen....


Our beds were made of half thin mattress and half straw

After eating our simple lunch of soup with Potatoes followed by Potatoes and fried cheese, the dad told us we were going to Pachatata (some of the ruins on the island) and that we need to make sure and stick with Cynthia Illia and Royer, what he didn't mention was that they were 5 and 7..... Only on an island with no electricity would it be kosher to send your children off on a long hike with strangers from another country!


These were our tour guides, somehow they convinced me into buying them an Alpaca kebab off the street when we walked in to town, despite the lack of communication between us, they still knew how to play me like a fiddle! :) It was so cute watching them share this, especially when Royer dropped it on the ground a couple times and he just picked it up, brushed it off on his pants and kept going to town! I don't think they get to eat meat very often here because the whole way home after this they kept saying "We got meat, we got meat" talk about breaking your heart!

The hike to Pachatata was so pretty the higher we got, we could see more of the island and the surrounding islands! The pictures could never do it justice!


Oh yeah, the shirt I'm wearing is from Australia thanks for asking! Also did I mention how rough this hike was on my recently surgered knees? It's fine you don't have to tell me how tough I am, I already know! :)


Julia (Germany), Me (Utah, in the USA, maybe you've heard of it?), and Caroline (Alberta, Canada) and the kids at the top of Pachatata!

Across from Pachatata was Pachamama we kept asking the kids if we were going to it as well and they were acting really strange, saying things like "No, we'll go tomorrow" (even though we were leaving first thing) "Tourists aren't allowed" "We have to go home...." So finally this Italian girl who was with us and I decided we didn't care we were there and we wanted to go so we made plans to meet the others at the bottom. While we were gone the kids finally told Julia and Caroline that they just hadn't wanted to hike to the other side! haha


There wasn't much to see at Pachamama, but the view of Pachatata was amazing!


It always amazes me how timeless the peace sign is, I mean seriously you would probably think no way could it work in a picture with a humble lunch such as this one, but then you see this and BAM, it definitely has a presence that would be missed had it not been there!


I'm gonna go ahead and loosely refer to this as tea, because I don't know that sticking a plant you pulled off the side of the road in to hot water can truly be called tea.... We had this "tea" with every meal, the plant is called Muno and it's supposed to be really good for you, it's sorta like the Windex thing from My Big Fat Greek Wedding, they use it to cure everything!


This was the path to our luxurious outhouse, you had to have a bucket of water on hand to flush anything down, another bonus was that it was located right next to the pig sty so you were actually relieved to get in and close the door, you got the terrible smell coming out!


They had us check out all their homemade goods, they had some really sweet hats and scarfs but they were asking way too much and I didn't have the heart to barter! I tried to find a sweet beanie for my dad but apparently they've never had a head that big in Peru! :)

After dinner there was a fiesta that they put on for the tourists and you're supposed to get dressed up in traditional garb and dance around but for some reason our mom didn't dress us up, we still went for a little while and it was pretty fun!


This is Marieke, Katrine, and Ariana, the other girls we went with, all dressed up in their traditional outfits! Marieke and Ariana are from Holland and Katrine is from Denmark, they're way fun girls and they call themselves the old mamas because they're all over 28 haha (yep I know, I practically fit the bill) and so many of the students at the school are way young!


Sunday April 11

We woke up and had breakfast at 6:30 (apparently when you don't have electricity you rise with the sun) we ate these almost scone type things with sugar and it was way good! And of course another dose of plant in hot water, I feel healthier already!


Right before we were leaving the kids all came in our room playing these flutes and singing, they just wanted us to give them money but it was still really cute!

After heading back down to the boat and saying our goodbyes, we sailed away and on to the Island of Taquile, it's a smaller island but has more people. Apparently we were there on the day of some big event because everywhere we went people were dressed in these bright clothes with giant bells all over, so every time they took a step they sounded like a human cowbell, and yes there is always room for some more cowbell in my life!


Picture of said Human Cowbells....


There should have been a sign that read, "Welcome to Taquile, once you hike straight up this mountain for 20 minutes and you're exhausted to the core we're going to charge you a 5 soles entrance fee, sort of like a gym does we just don't have the fancy machines!"


Taquile was so beautiful and seemed almost Greek Islandish only without all the Abba songs!

We ate lunch on the island, if you were about to guess if it involved rice OR potatoes, then you would be wrong because it involved rice AND potatoes, I don't know why I thought they didn't go together before, I mean starch and starch, hello!

We had to climb down the mountain to get to our boat and of course we were the last ones on, and because it's such a long hike down we all kind of came in at different times, so we're just chillin on top of the boat waiting to go and as it starts to pull out we all kind of realize Julia is not there, so we look at the dock and she is running at us with this petrified look on her face! We all start yelling "Uno mos, uno mos" she literally had to jump the gap between the boat and the dock to get on, it was so funny! Luckily she made it and we were good to go, had she gotten there 5 seconds later it would have been a different story!

Once we got back in to Puno we had about 4 hours until our bus left so we went and got some ice cream and then just kind of hung out in the main square for a little while. There was this group of hippie slash musician people from Columbia selling jewelry and singing, they lived off the money they made from that and just kind of bummed around, they were way cool and had we been interested in finding drugs slash sharing any drugs we might have they were more than willing to help out!


I wish the light was better in this picture! This is in the Plaza De Armas in Puno, chillin with the groupies!


Katrine asked to borrow the guys guitar and busted out a few songs herself! She's way good!

We took a night bus back to Cusco and didn't arrive until 4 in the morning! Maybe you're worried about how cold it would be on the bus, like I was, but don't worry I actually sat on top of the heater for the entire bus! If I hadn't been sitting next to a strange man who kept sticking his elbow in my face, stripping down may not have been out of the question.... Instead I had to settle for pressing my face against the cold glass every time it got unbearable!


Chillin on the plaza steps like its our job! This time I'm not even alone in my unemployedness! :)

Coming next, adventures in crashing on a mountain bike! Stay tuned!

I'm practically halfway to 30 already!

We walked out of our hostel Saturday morning to find this market had popped up out of nowhere, it lasted forever and there were tons of fresh fruit and veggies!

Wednesday April 7
Nothing too exciting happened on Wednesday other than the fact that it was another challenging day at school trying to understand my profersora, and that actually wasn't so much exciting as it was a new outlook on Peru for me.... Ya know the part where it's hard for me to understand them is something new and different! :)

Also went back to Chez Maggy for more chips and guac, I seriously feel like I've died and gone to heaven when I eat at that place! :)

Thursday April 8
Had the usual for breakfast today, oatmeal and bread, however I will note the addition of a few friendly ants crawling on my bread.... It's amazing all the new friends I've made here! :) You just gotta laugh to yourself and say, "Only in Peru!" and then brush the ants off and finish your breakfast!

After lunch Isabelle stepped out to feed the dogs, but I guess she was expecting an important phone call because she asked me to answer the phone if it rang.... Say what? Yeah, I was sweatin bullets for the 10 minutes she was gone, I don't think I've ever prayed so hard in my life for the phone not to ring! The only dialogue I could come up with if it did ring was, "Alo?" "Whatever they were gonna say back" and "Isabelle no en la casa, lo siento, ella regresa en diez minutos" click.... That roughly translates to me sounding like a big dumb moron! hahahaha I really dodged a bullet with that one!


This is us playing soccer in the rain nonstop for 2 hours! Now if only I could figure out a way to make this happen every night of the week I would feel right at home.... :)

Later on I was at the school working on my blog when my professor from the first week Jose came and asked me if I was gonna play soccer (he had told me they play every Thursday but I hadn't seen anything posted about a time) and I said I hadn't heard anything about it, so he told me to be at the school by 7:40! I seriously could have kissed him I was so pumped that he had remembered to tell me! So I went home and got my stuff just as it started raining like nobody's business! I got soaked as it took me 10 minutes to get a cab to stop and right when the taxi pulled up everyone was getting in taxi's to go play, I like to play it close! There were 3 girls and 4 boys from our school and we went to this outdoor soccer place that is cement fields, there were a bunch of other Spanish students from other schools as well! It was way fun but the rain made it pretty slick! I'll be honest, I got lucky and scored a couple goals and all the guys were like, wow a chica that knows how to play! I was eating it up!



Friday April 9

Go shorty it's your birthday, we're gonna party like it's your birthday! All I wanted was for someone to sing me this song that day, but nobody would oblige, so instead I sang it to myself in my head all day long!


How cute is my host mom? I woke up and she had been hard at work getting things ready for me! She even sang a special rendition of Happy Birthday in English! She even made me a bag or goodies for the trip!

Today was the day we were heading to Puno and Lake Titticaca so after school we grabbed some lunch (the flattest hamburger you've ever seen with some homemade papas fritas, don't worry I definitely introduced the group to fry sauce while I was at it!) then we headed to the bus station which is crazy! There's live chickens chilling in sacks on the backs of strong Peruvian women, you have to pay .5 soles to use the most disgusting smelly bathroom you've seen in your life and to top things off I didn't even get special treatment because it was my birthday.... :)

It was an 8 hour bus ride in seriously first class conditions! The chair laid all the way and we had full on leg rests as well! I felt like a million bucks, especially when they even gave me a buttered crossiant with saltine crackers and a light mint, that right there was when I knew I had it made in S. America! :)


This was what we wandered into Friday night after we checked in to our hostel! Clearly they were throwing this massive even because they heard I was turning the big 2 5!

After checking in to our hostel, we could hear a loud ruckus in the form of a band and followed our ears to a big party in the street, there were so many people, but we were seriously the only white people in sight and everyone kept staring at us like it was there job! Also had to make a mental note to self, don't walk in the back of the group you will get grabbed.... We wandered around for a minute and then stopped to listen to the music and chillin, it was very latino and they never stopped, I'm not quite sure if it was one long song or they just loved playing so much they didn't want to transition from song to song so they just never stopped playing! After a few minutes of hangin out we couldn't help but notice we had a lurker who was staring and slowly trying to inch his way in to our cirlce, all the while dancing and acting like it was normal. Finally one of the girls in our group Julia (she's from Germany and you pronounce it you-lee-a) started dancing with him and I thought I was gonna die it was so funny!


This was at the dock Saturday morning when we found the boat to take us to the islands, the scenery was so beautiful even without us in it!

I love you Grandpa!

Tuesday when I got home from class I had a text from my mom telling me that my grandpa had passed away.... There's nothing worse than hearing that kind of news while you're in a different country. My grandpa was one of the most kind generous and loving people I've ever known! I will miss him so much, but know that we will be together again one day! Most of you who see this know him and know how much he truly loved everyone around him! My little sister wrote an amazing tribute and I just wanted to post it for everyone to see!

Laughter is forever, life is eternal, and love is unending.

Grandpa always had a joke ready to go to brighten any situation he might be in.
He knew just how to get a smile out of just about anyone. His life was never his own.
He served all who needed his help no matter how inconvenient it was for him.
He always had an amazing outlook on life and knew just how to help find the light in dark situations.
He sincerely loved all around him and was immediately loved by all who met him.
Grandpa loved his children and grandchildren more than life, and would do anything for them.
He adored his wonderful wife and wanted only happiness for her.
His illustrations of laughter, life and love will serve as an example to all of us as we go about our days remembering him and his charitable legacy.
We will love and miss him until that beautiful day we are together again.

- Jill Smalley in behalf of All Bill’s Children and Grandchildren

So I put my hands up they're playing my song..... It's a party in the Peru way!

Hola amigos! I'm back for some more action, unfortunately it's just in the form of blogging my life in Peru! :)


Don't worry this isn't a trick, I didn't actually take this picture in Peru! These 3 moose were chillin in our front yard in Mtn. Green about two weeks before I left! Pretty sweet ehh?


Saturday Arpil 3

Woke up to two men speaking in a language I didn't understand, then remembered I was still in Peru. Ceasars childhood friend Carlos was here for the day, they grew up together somewhere in the mountains in a different part of Peru and Carlos still lives there and is actually a doctor! He ate breakfast with us and had brought these cornbread type things, they were wrapped in corn husks or whatever it is that tamales are wrapped in, it was pretty dry but other than that the flavor was good, we also had what they told me was some kind of hot bean drink, and hot dogs..... Yep things just got crazy! It was good but made me laugh that is was for breakfast!


This is the kitchen.... and there's not even another half decorated like a discotec!

Decided to try and walk up to the school without really knowing where I was going.... I wouldn't say I was lost so much as I was exploring parts of Cusco that had been previously unexplored.... I finally gave in and got a taxi and of course I was like 3 blocks away! haha


This is just a random plaza that we found wandering around on Saturday, it's way pretty and the main plaza is surrounded by other smaller plazas like this! Maybe your thinking I know the girl in my picture, nope I think she thought I was someone famous so she just tried to jump in at the last minute! :)

Because it was a 4 day break most of the other students had planned out of town trips for the weekend but since Lauren and I had just arrived we hung out a lot! haha We met up and just walked around a bunch of the different markets, there are lots of handmade type stuff that is way pretty! Lots of alpacca sweaters and handmade scarfs and gloves and socks and most importantly lots of soccer jerseys! Everything is way cheap and I'm a danger to my budget when I walk around these places! haha The people are so nice too and I always want to buy something from all of them, also they love to barter down here!


This is where the magic happens, magic as in all the eating of the meals! :) I love this room! I also love how good of a cook Isabelle is, I'm starting to get used to having all my meals prepared for me it's going to be a little rough when I get home and no one is willing to fill that position!

I went home for lunch and had more soup as usual, but for the main course we had omelets with onions and spinach and tomatoes and some other veggies with rice! It was way good and just to recap the day, yes I ate hot dogs for breakfast and an omelet for lunch!

Later that night Isabelle told me they were going somewhere and I should come, I didn't really know what was going on but after following her down the street a couple blocks Ceasar was waiting for us by their truck (which I didn't even know they had) and they took me to what is the closest equivalent to the grocery store. It was nice to see an actual clean building that resembled something you would see in the states! :) It was very similar to our grocery stores but it was crazy how cheap everything was!

While we were checking out they didn't have enough cash or something so they told me to wait with the cashier and while they were getting money out of the atm. While standing there I spotted some LDS missionaries (I've been trying to figure out where the church is around here and have been struggling....) and I got so excited it was a joke! I couldn't move cause I didn't want to leave our stuff so I just kept staring creepily until they finally came back and I ran up to the missionaries and one of them looked like an American so I was like, "DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?" (Yep those caps were on purpose because I was probably yelling haha) "I NEED TO KNOW WHERE THE CHURCH IS!" They were way nice and explained it and gave me a Spanish Book of Mormon so I can work on my Spanish!


This is what the front of the house looks like, it doesn't seem like much, but I'm pretty sure the family I'm with is very well off by Peruvian standards!

After shopping they were so sweet and took me out to dinner at this place called Etapoy I guess it's a popular Peruvian chain, they just ordered for me and it was way good! We got a salad with a really good Italian dressing and then a plate of fries and grilled chicked with really good seasoning! It was awesome!

The funny thing I noticed about the grocery and when we were at the restaurant was at the grocery store they had a kid out there directing traffic so people could park their cars and pull out and just navigate in the madness! I mean there's not even a real parking lot so there's just cars everywhere and it's messy. Also at the restaurant there was a guard sitting outside watching all the cars parked down the street because again there was no parking lot! Anyway Ceasar tipped them both as we were leaving it was kind of funny to see, that would definitely be an interesting way to earn a living!


This is another picture from horseback riding on Thursday! Obviously I'm the hot one on the right! :) Seriously though, see sunburned picture from previous post....

Sunday April 4
Sunday was a crazy busy day, it was awesome! I went to Mass with the family at 7 am (take that all you nay sayers who didn't think I could handle the morning life after no job for a year!) It was way crazy crowded I think a lot because it was Easter! We had to stand through the whole thing! The cathedral is so beautiful though and it was way cool to be able to experience that! About halfway through I felt something brush my leg and I looked down to see a dog running through the crowd, I had to laugh because hey there's a dog in the church! :)

After that we went home and had breakfast and then I caught a cab to the LDS church on the other side of town to watch General Conference in English with 4 other elders! When I walked in everyone was so nice and greeting me and when I went in the room with the 4 American elders they were all surprised to see an American! 3 of the elders were from Utah and 1 was from Idaho. The one from Idaho had only been out a few months and he was a huge Aggie basketball fan and I was getting so happy talking about them! haha


Oh it's fine I'm just a mega fan in my original Ciensiano jersey cheering for my team! :) Notice the barbed wire fence up all the way around the stadium and in the bottom right corner you can kinda see the fully armed guards that were everywhere in the stadium as well! Apparently these games can get out of hand!

I had to leave conference 15 minutes early to meet Lauren and go to the Ciensiano soccer game! We met a bunch of other students from the school there as well most of them are from England and it was way fun! Ciensiano is Cuzcos professional team, I was way pumped and had even bought a jersey for the game at the market the day before! Apparently they used to be way good and won the South American Soccer Cup or something in 2004, but now they aren't very good and there weren't a lot of people there! I guess the games can get pretty out of hand though so they have to have tons of guards, people were throwing stuff like bottles and food on the field throughout the whole game too it was crazy!


This is the little kid they send around to sell suckers to the suckers at the games, how do you say no to a face like that? :)

They got down 1-0 halfway through the first half and then got a red card at the beginning of the 2nd half, despite playing down a player though they came back and won 2-1! I was kind of surprised at the quality of soccer though, it wasn't very good.... They were pretty good individually but were terrible as a team!


Hey it's Superman, you can tell by the shirt.... This is Estaban, he was my buddy and sat by me for part of the game! Strangely there was something about him that reminded me of my old boss TJ.... haha


This was my 2 freakin sole lunch at the stadium! That's like 70 cents and it was seriously way good! They were cooking fresh

Monday April 5
Woke up at 5 am to someone pounding on the door and ringing the doorbell, I just ignored it at first but they wouldn't go away and then I got a little nervous at who it was... Finally I went out in the hall and Isabelle was answering the door, I guess it was Caesars nephew! Woke up to more pounding and ringing at 6:30, this time it was Isabelles brother, apparently they heard a really cool American was staying at the house and they wanted to see me for themselves, so they thought it was best to arrive in the wee hours of the morning so I didn't get any sleep! :)

Got a new teacher at school, her name is Rebecca and I'm still alone in the class! Last week I was sad cause I wanted to get to know other students but now I realize I'm pretty lucky to be alone cause I think you can go at a much faster pace if the teacher pushes you!


This is the really safe clean open oven that the pizzas are cooked in!

Went for another run after lunch still got exhausted, but it was nice! Went to the school after another cold shower to get on the internet. Saw Kate from Australia who I had met the week before and we decided to go to dinner! Kate is way cool, naturally I would think that just because she is from Australia, but she's way nice and I try not to act to creepy when I tell her how much I love Australia! We met up with a girl that is living in the host family with Kate this was her first day, her name is Ilia and she's from Holland! We ate at this pizza place that was way good!


Dinner with Kate and Ilia at the amazing pizza place! Don't worry I didn't even order my own large pizza !

Tuesday Arpil 6

School was so frustrating today! Apparently my teachers are not supposed to talk in English to me at all, but last week and on Monday they've been explaining what things are when I don't understand, but today my teacher decided she wasn't going to speak in English, I'm sure eventually that is how you are supposed to learn better, but I feel like I didn't hardly learn a thing! I know language is supposed to be hard but today sucked! haha

After lunch Isabelle took me to feed the dogs, I didn't really understand what she way saying but, they have 7 puppies and they are seriously the cutest things ever!


Isabelle and the cute puppies.... I might be coming home with a plus 1.... :)

After feeding the dogs I met some girls from school in town and we went and bought bus tickets to Puno which is near Lake Titticaca, we're going there for the weekend Friday after school! I'm way pumped! Then we had some drinks (don't worry it was just coke for me) and went to dinner at this really good place off the main Plaza called Chez Maggy, I had the most amazing homemade chips and guacamole I almost died and went to heaven!


This is another picture of the cute puppies! Mom don't you think we need one of these? :) Holly I'm sure you're in the market as well right?

The beginning of the beginning!

Hola mi amigos! Tu comprende Espanol? No? Yo tambien! :)

Holy smokes, the time has come and I am here in Cusco, it still doesn’t seem quite real! I will be here for the next 11 weeks trying to blend in with my pasty skin and hopefully learn how to say more than I want a quesadilla, gracias! Here’s what has happened the first couple days!

Oh yeah, sorry this post is pretty long because it's my first week!

Sunday and Monday March 28 and 29:
I flew out of Salt Lake Sunday morning at 8:30 to LA where I had the privilege of sharing half of my seat with a rather large man, he didn’t ask if he could have part of my seat but I figured it was the right thing to do.... :) Once in LA I made my way to the international terminal, which if any of you have been to the international terminal you know that means hordes and hordes of Asians! Luckily I was 5 hours early so there was no line and I checked right in. I decided to check out the food joints and walked around for a bit when I decided to go through security I reached for my passport only to find an empty pocket! Panic set in and as I started to frantically retrace my steps I hear over the loud intercom “Natalie Jane Smalley, please come to the information desk” oops! I ran to the information desk and asked the man if someone had turned in my passport, he looked at me with skeptical eyes and then down at the passport, “Name?” “Jayne Smalley” I said, he finally handed it to me and said “You’re a very lucky girl.” Ya think? :)


This is one of the main cathedrals in Le Plaza Del Armas, they have cathedrals and churches everywhere and they are so beautiful!

The flight from LA to Lima is about 9 hours, ya know a little longer than the average person would call a work day, I say average person because I am most definitely not average. :) Got in to Lima at midnight and my flight to Cusco wasn’t until 5:30 the next morning. Luckily I had sat by a kid on the way over from Oregon whose flight didn’t leave until 6, so we watched each others stuff and tried to get some sleep in the airport.


This is only one side of my bedroom.... The other side has the feel and look of a discotec, maybe you're thinking Jayne discotec was so 1980, not in Peru that kind of thing is modern art!

I finally got to Cusco at 6:50 in the morning after almost 24 hours of straight travel! The airport in Cusco is pretty dilapidated with only two tiny baggage claim areas and maybe 20 carts total. I grabbed my stuff and headed out the door to see the sweetest looking lady with a big smile on her face holding a sign with my name on it! Her name is Isabelle and she hugged me and I assume told me to follow her, I say assume because she speaks no English and as previously mentioned my Spanish is slightly above that of a house trained goldfish living in Peru! As I was following her out of the airport parking area she was just a chattin away and smiling and nodding, to which I could only look at her dumbfounded thinking, what did I get myself into?! Taxis kept coming up and she would ask how much and they were apparently way too much because she made us walk away from the airport a ways before one finally told her an acceptable amount (I think they had been saying 20-30 soles and it should have been around 5 soles! There are a little less than 3 soles to $1). We took the taxi home where I met Caesar my host dad and ate breakfast consisting of hard bread and jam, some type of almost lemonade type juice and hot water with coca de matte. Which is a common tea type drink down here that looks and smells like ground up wet green hay! It wasn’t too bad….. with the 6 spoonfuls of sugar I added to it! :) As we left the house Isabelle gave me a set of keys and tried to explain how to use them. There’s a lock on the door and then a built in lock on the gate and then another manual hard lock you have to undo on the gate!


Do you think that I maybe have an irrational fear of going hungry?

She came with me to school where a lady put me in a classroom and gave me a test to see what level I was at. 10 minutes later my teacher walked in to the room and the only answer I had known was my name, and I was even a little unsure of that at this point... :) My teacher this week was Jose, he’s really great and helped me learn so much, my head just kind of permanently feels like it’s going to explode right now! We have a 30 minute break in the middle of the day where I met a bunch of the other students. They have a teaching program and a volunteer program at the school the majority of the students are learning but there are quite a few volunteering as well and almost everybody here is traveling alone. It’s crazy to meet all the different kinds of people! After class got over I had to quickly learn how to catch a cab and even though I had printed off the address of my host family when the taxi asked me which street the house was down I had no idea! Luckily he was really nice and I told him the house number and we drove around a couple blocks until we found the right one. When I finally figured out how to unlock everything and get in the house Isabelle greeted me and had lunch all ready. Lunch is their big meal here because it’s at 11,300 ft in elevation apparently it slows their digestion down, so lunch is big and dinner is just a light snack. We had a delicious creamy cheese potato onion soup and then grilled chicken on the bone with carrots and onions, it was very delicious. She talked to me all the way through lunch and I just smiled and ate. After that I headed back to school for a city tour which was also in Spanish (are you seeing a pattern yet?) with a girl from New Jersey and a kid from the UK.


This isn't the best picture cause it's dark but this was during the Procession on Monday night. They have a statue of Christ that they march around and I think everyone comes out to hopefully receive his blessings, it was pretty cool but so slow and so many people!

Later that night I was supposed to meet a girl to go watch the Procession, but of course was late! :) I talked to these two other boys from the school, one is from California and the other is from Denmark, and they were going to get a view of everything from above the city so I tagged along! Afterwards we headed down in to the thick of things and I’m pretty sure every single person in Cusco was there! It was nuts there were so many people everywhere and it lasted forever! By the time it was finally over it took another hour to get out of the main square because there were so many people you had to follow the crowd whether you wanted to or not! By the time things cleared up a little bit I had to try to catch a taxi home but of course everyone else was trying to catch a taxi as well! I started to panic after 15 minutes of no luck with a taxi, and I was thinking, I’m never gonna make it back and I’ll probably die right here! Haha I did finally get one (he charged me double, but I didn’t even care) and got home about 10:30 at night! Needless to say I slept like a log!


Isn't this hot? Oh yeah and the La viva Peru is pretty cool too! The house I live in is right below this!


Tuesday March 30
Woke up at the butt crack of dawn aka 6:30, and felt quite refreshed! Breakfast consisted of manzanas (apples) and platanos (bananas) in yogur (I bet you can’t guess what that one is) with this oatmeal type drink in a coffee cup. Es bueno! Finished my homework in the taxi on the way to school (some things never do change) and for the first time in my life was 10 minutes early to class! Class was great again, but also like information overload! After the break we were playing a game with all the new phrases I learned and I was forgetting simple things because my brain felt like it was going to explode! I hope it gets better! Went to dinner with a bunch of the other students at this vegetarian restaurant, where apparently all the intellect slash tree huggers meet and by intellects yes I mean I saw lots of dreads and chacos, however sadly there were no subarus! :)

At dinner I was telling a few people about the ginormous Hispanic population in Utah and they were all way surprised, one girl even said, “I thought the only thing in Utah was mormons!” I almost died laughing!


This is what the plaza looks like during the day, it was completely packed during the procession and so we were all the streets where it started!

Wednesday March 31
Another espanol filled day of school! My teacher Jose was asking me if I liked to dance and what type of music I liked to dance to, I told him hip hop. He wasn’t sure what hip hop was so he asked me to write down my favorite hip hop song to dance to so he could look it up. Naturally I wrote down Low by Flo Rida and he asked me to sing part of it. For those of you not familiar with the song it goes:
“She had them apple bottom jeans (jeans), boots with fur (with the fur) the whole club was lookin at her
She hit the flo (she hit the floor) next thing you know shorty got low low low low low”

So after my incredible music performance the first thing he says is, (in this accent) “Wot ar apple ba-ttom jeans?” And then the rest of the day he just kept saying apple bottom jeans over and over! It was so funny!

On the way home the taxi driver tried to charge me 3 soles instead of 2.50 soles, don’t even worry I told him what was up and he won’t try to pull that business again!

Thursday April 1
First off can I just say I didn’t even realize it was April Fools until 6 o’clock at night which means I didn’t pull a single prank! I mean can you imagine the fun I could have had with my host family? Seran(how the heck do you spell that?) wrap on the toilet, short sheeting their bed, replace salt for sugar, oh man did I miss the boat on that one!


This is Ceasar and Isabelle, I seriously can't get over how sweet they are! This is their garden and they are so proud of it!

Oh yeah and did I mention we didn’t have school Thursday or Friday because of Easter weekend? They call it Semana de Santos (week of saints) and it’s a huge deal! We’ve been eating special food and desserts and everyone has work and school off on Thursday and Friday!

After breakfast I met this girl Lauren from Oregon in town to explore! As we were at the top of the church of san cristobal, this guy came and asked us if we wanted to do a horse back ride to a couple different places, so we bartered for a fair price and then followed him 20 minutes uphill to his ranch it was brutal, but so much fun!


If you think that maybe this picture looks familiar like maybe you saw it in the last action western movie, well then you would be wrong because it's just me!


Como se llama? Llama! I thought this was the funniest thing I'd ever thought of in my life, but apparently nobody else did!



So apparently it’s not just a rumor that you burn more easily at a higher elevation... This is from a couple hours on the horses!

Friday April 2
Wanted to go for a run after breakfast and when I asked Isabelle if it was safe, and by asked her yes I did it in Spanish! Who’s impressed? :) She told me it was safe and if I just went down a couple blocks there was a grande parque, now my Spanish isn’t the best yet but I think I knew what this meant without having to look it up! As I went running pumped to find the place where I could potentially chillax and play soccer and read outside this is what I found:
Picture of the park

Running felt great, except for the part where it was lots harder to breathe, but there are stray dogs everywhere here! They’ve all been really nice so far and pretty much just leave you alone and do whatever the heck they want! But I went running past these guys just sitting on the sidewalk and there were about 3 or 4 dogs by them, one of the little yappy dogs came running at me and started barking but as soon as I turned toward it, it stopped and ran away. I thought ok no big deal, I’m fine. Not 5 seconds later I hear this dog barking like it’s ready to tear something apart, I looked back and this big dog is running straight at me! I tried to play it cool, because I'm pretty sure the guys thought it would be funny to sick the dog on me, but inside I flipped a brick! I think I lost 10 years off my life in that instance! Luckily it was all bark and no bite and left me alone after a minute!

After that I went in to Cuzco to meet Lauren and we met up with this lady Caroline, she in her 30's and from the UK, she's way nice and we just kind of tagged along with her to check out some of the churches and stuff!


I have not been homesick this entire trip until I found this park and watched these guys play a pickup soccer! It seriously made me miss soccer so much! haha


I don't know why I love it so much, but all the streets are paved in cobblestone like this and they're all either going up or down!


This is the only 5 star hotel in Cusco, it used to be a monastery and it very beautiful, but it's a couple hundred bucks a night to stay, when you can find a cheap hostel for $4!

Awkward dancing video

In Betweeny Day!

So here I am, I've been home for a whole month now, and it's like the novelty of my presence has worn off for all my friends and family..... Weird!

Here are a few more pics from my trip! After we went to Melbourne we had a day in Australia until we left for New Zealand. I was so sad the whole day and kept saying things like, "This is my last time riding the 317" (That was our favorite bus route) "This is my last time seeing a homeless man in Bronte" "This is my last time seeing the Rainbow flags flaunted down Oxford Street (that gayest street in Sydney)" ya know things like that. Brighton and Wendy didn't quite understand, because they still had a few more weeks in Australia after NZ, so I think they were ready to beat me from all my comments! :) haha


This is the Teeter Totter we walked past everyday and although we never actually sat on it until this picture was taken, we pretty much talked about it every time we walked past it!


Our friend Jess took us to this way rad place called Govindas cause it was my last night! It's a buffet style dinner, but it's all vegetarian Indian food! There was some crazy stuff but it was so delicious! And after that you watch a movie and instead of having chairs you lay down on these couch things with lots of pillows and stuff! It was way rad! Jess is way great and we're gonna miss her times a billion!