The weather is turning, little by little. Clouds are more often rolling over the mountains reaching their tentacles of rain over the city. I really like the rain here. Somehow it makes me feel at home. It’s still really dry most of the time, and I have gotten sunburned a couple times, but soon the rains will come and be constant. And then all of the fields and trees and the Sacred Valley will transform into a verdant garden.

This week started out kind of rough. I woke up Monday and realized that my volunteer work, which I had thought would start the next week, actually began in half an hour. I showed up disoriented and nervous to the school and after a very short tour of the facilities, I was left alone in charge of a 6^th grade class that liked to fight with rolls of paper. Just me and them for an hour. I didn’t know the school’s schedule so one of the kids had to point out to me that it was recess and everyone else was outside playing in the sun and why can’t we go?

But everything is all right. I talked with my program directors and I am going to take another week of only Spanish classes in order to be able to communicate clearly with the students. I will restart teaching on the 5^th of October.

Almost every night is a beautiful dark adventure. The other night, the four of us (Ines, Kelsi, Simone, and myself) found ourselves in a tiny little shop with incredibly beautiful handmade jewelry. Peruvian turquoise is a swirl of deep greens and blues, and every stone looks like a miniature earth on a cloudless day. They had rings, handmade clothing, and didgeridoos.

We asked a guy there if he knew how to play and he grabbed a tall and curvy one made from the roots of some old tree and he rocked that thing like I couldn’t imagine was possible. Just then, two men on stilts with satin pants walked in and started dancing to the strange ancient beats. After that, we went out and danced hard until the morning and until our bones were sore and it hurt to laugh.

This past weekend I cooked a huge lunch for my family because lunch is the biggest meal of the day. I went to the market and got two giant bags full of the freshest fruits and vegetables for $10. I rushed back home, taking care not to break the figs, and played CAKE on my computer because the food always tastes better when you listen to CAKE while you’re cooking. I made a mint and garlic soup with violets, Brianna’s fresh corn and green bean salad, Grace’s amazing avocado tower, my figs baked with cream cheese, rosemary, and maple syrup, and to drink, Brianna’s fresh grape and ginger soda. It was pretty good but I had about a cup’s worth of salt more than I needed in the soup and my host family doesn’t really like ginger.

The next morning Kelsi, Simone, and I took a collective taxi to the pueblo of Chinchero. We walked around the market looking at textiles and virgin paintings. There are many virgin saints that protect the various neighborhoods and pueblos. My favorite is the Virgen de Fatima because, like the rain, for some reason it reminds me of home. Kelsi works with women in Chinchero who make textiles, and so we went to their house and visited them for a while. One of the women was eating soup with a jaw bone in it.

A new student arrived recently from Germany and Centro Tinku now has three German girls and two estadounidenses (Kelsy y yo). Her name is Stephanie and this Thursday she is going to go with Simone and me to Machu Picchu. I have learned that there are two c’s in Picchu for a reason. It is pronounced (ma-choo pik-choo) with the k coming from the back of the throat. I have had some conversations with random people in the street about the Quechua language and they all say that it is extremely expressive and onomatopoetic. For instance, wawa is the word for baby because that is the sound they make. Machu means old and Picchu means either mountain or penis.

I don’t know if I’ve already written about the Fallen Angel but I love it. Their tables are glass-topped bath tubs with illuminated fish swimming around. Really great art fills the entire building which is a work of art in itself, and their food is incredible.

Chicha, Tipon, Desfiles

I have been reading Aves sin nido in class and I think I will finish it this week. That is not because I can read fast in Castellano, but because we keep skipping the chapters where nothing important happens. It is an interesting book but makes me mad at priests. Other than that, my classes are excellent. One day for class I went to the pueblo of Lamay in the Sacred Valley with Dr. Decoster to watch a parade for Santa Rosa. I forgot my camera for that event. But don’t worry, there are always parades in the busy streets. The colors and music and movement were incredible and done with a kind of passion and excitement that is not usually seen in the states. We sat down at a table in the plaza and a woman brought us chicharrones (fried pork) and lamb’s head soup. I didn’t eat any of the meat in the soup. We drank cerveza after cerveza and some of the doctor’s friends came over with their guitar and mandolin. They started drinking and playing and singing and sweating from beneath their sombreros in the hot sun. It is moments like that that remind you how good life is. And then I rode the hour-long return trip in the back of a jeep, having to pee, and sitting with two very large dogs. I was lucky though, because they were very nice and very clean.

Another day, my profesora Jacky and I went out in the streets to watch another parade and drink Chicha, which is the sacred beverage of the Inkas thought to be the blood of the sun god, and which is made from fermented corn and fruit.

Some new volunteer/students came and we had dinner together in the plaza before Stacie had to leave and go back to her home in Hawaii. It was a good night. Kelsi and Simone are the two new volunteers, and we met some of Kelsi’s Peruvian friends that she knows through some strange connection of people. After hanging out in a quiet restaurant that they may or may not have owned, we went out to a club to dance. The music was all from the States but it was loud and good and we danced until it was hard to breathe. Then we ran out sweaty in the street and kept on dancing to the music as it bounced off of the stone walls of the plaza. People were watching us, and children were trying to sell us gum, but everything was good.

There is a small café here called Café Tinku and they serve fresh teas. That means that when I ask for a cup of lemongrass or mint tea, I get a cup of hot water with fresh-cut blades of grass, or fresh-picked mint leaves. It is delicious.

The other day, I went to a huge parade with my family and Simone and I did get some pictures and videos from it. It was a parade celebrating tourism and it took over the entire Plaza. I got burned crispy in the sun and then went to class, and then shopping, and then ended the night watching football with my family. They like to take trips out to the campo every weekend and this time, they took me to the ruins of Tipón, the site of the Incan cult of the water. Way up high in the mountains there are paths and fields carved out of the stone. Levitating stairways protrude from the walls and lead up to more levels of fields and more walls. And all along the walls runs a constant stream of pure cold water. Juan Diego and I dipped our hats in the stream and then put them on our heads with the cold water running down our backs. And it was ancient holy mystical water from the Incan spring that burbles constantly from the rocks. Tío Ronaldo explained to me the history of the stone walls and the water and the flowers with almost magical healing powers. Later we went to a little cuyería with a mud-made oven and ate cuy (guinea pig). There was no door and the flies and dogs and a parrot came in and out as they pleased. Mama Irma crushed the skull to get a bone, and then crushed that bone to get another bone smaller than a freckle that has legend to be a good health charm.

The charm didn’t really work though because I am now suffering from the effects of the chicha that I had with my professor, and have been doing so for four days now. It is not fun and I don’t want to eat anything. But I am drinking a lot of potions that Mama Irma is making for me from exotic herbs and seeds that are bright bright purple.