Cusco, Peru

So I´ve made it to Peru after a quick stop in LA and about 22 hours of toal flying. It was nuts, but I have arrived in Cusco and have had one heck of a week.

I arrived a day late because I had to come all the way from New Zealand, so things were crazy off the bat. Oh, and they changed my host family the day before I arrived because my host mother had to go to the hospital in Lima. Crazy. But I was picked up by my new host father, Cesar, and taken to the house. It´s a nice little apartment only a short walk from the center of town. Inez, his wife, is a very nice lady who always seems to be busy. They are both retired teachers and have hosted many people on my program.

The school I am doing my program through is the Academia Latinoamericana de Espanol. They have a school here in Cusco, and two others--one in Bolivia and the other in Ecuador. They offer spanish classes at every level, and they work with local schools for volunteer projects. The schools are closer to daycares because they are for kids 3-5, but they are all kids of disadvantaged and poor families. So, after I arrived in Cusco I was told to take a nap because the altitude is a killer. It´s 11,000 ft above sea level here, easily the highest I´ve ever been. I´m easily out of breath walking up the street, and headaches were a problem this week.

This week I took classes at the school, and they get right into it. No english, at all. And considering I had studied spanish for 6 months over the past 6 years, things were a bit rough at first. I still understand and never lost the major aspects of the grammar, but lord I´ve forgotten so much vocabulary. I forgot snake (serpiente), moon (luna), and I´ve even spoken french a few times, an astounding fact considering my french vocab consists of about ten words. But I had a great teacher named Rebeca along with two other students. Sarah was younger than me and from Belgium while Francesca was in her 40s and from France. The academy has people of all ages from all over the world, hoping to improve their spanish and work with local kids at the same time.

It´s easily been the most emotionally tolling week of my entire trip. Even more so than when I first left home. In Australia you can feel lonely or homesick and still just get by and figure things out no problem by checking into a hotel if you need a break. I kinda felt the same way here but it´s s tough to communicate sometimes. Monday night was crazy and lying in bed I realized I hadn´t spoken a word of english all day. I don´t think that´s happened ever in my life. It was tough to say the least, but things have steadily improved throughout the week.

I´m now done with my spanish classes portion of the program, and today I visited the school that I´ll be volunteering at for the next two weeks. The kids have already stolen my heart and I want to adopt them all. They´re incredibly sweet and vivacious and just love meeting new people, playing soccer, and doing arts and crafts. There´s no way someone couldn´t like these kids.

But before I start my volunteering I´m heading to Macchu Picchu this weekend for four days. I´ve been looking forward to this part of my journey more than any other singular moment, and I cannot wait to get started. It´s currently pouring rain outside, so I hope that stops, but I am geting picked up at 3:45am in the morning to get started. Four days, about 6 hours of hiking a day, and hopefully the most incredible views of my life at the top.

I´ve probably left something out here, my apologies, but I need to get some sleep before a big day tomorrow. Anything I´ve forgotten I´ll include in the next post. Until then, adios.