Katie's Tourist Christmas Adventure!

It all began when I boarded a van to Chiclayo and began the 24 hour trek from Cutervo to Lima.

In Lima, I ate as many sandwiches as possible at La Lucha and picked my DU friend Beth up from the airport (a very drawn-out and crowded affair, but worth it because we had a new companion and I got goodies from home such as loads of chocolate and trail mix and fuzzy socks).

Then it was another 22 hour bus ride all the way to Cuzco, where we settled into our hostel and slept for as long as possible to get rid of all the bus aches. Perú may not be as large as the US, but when you're traveling through the Andes travel time is significantly amplified. From Cutervo to Cuzco is about 43 cramped hours.

Cuzco is beautiful, with some really delicious Peruvian and gringo food, gorgeous vistas, and elaborate Spanish churches (built on top of Inkan foundations, which are still stronger than anything the conquistadores ever built, FYI). We stayed for 2 days before our Macchu Picchu trek and saw many llamas, pretty buildings, and ate lots of exquisite Middle Eastern food.

Then, we trekked. We went with SAS Travel, and our guide, James Palma, was a wealth of Inkan, Andean, Cuzqueñan, and Quechua knowledge (not to mention trilingual and gorgeous). We had amazing healthy food, lots of history and Quechua lessons, and became intimately acquainted with cañons and trails (including one of the Inkan trails) of the southern Andes. We spent a day and a half in a leisurely trek at about 12,000-15,000 feet. We camped the first night, and the second day we hiked to the train that took us to the town at the base of Macchu Picchu where we steeped in the hot springs.

But Macchu Picchu itself...ineffable. Spectacular. Not just the stones that fit impeccably together without were fired and polished and hauled up mountains. It is surrounded by the Urubamba river (the biggest tributary to the Amazon) and Huayna Picchu mountain, on which are fully preserved ruins of what is thought to be an astrological observatory. And everything is in the middle of a cloud forest. Definitely worth it's position as one of the wonders of the world.

After Macchu Picchu, we spent Christmas in Cuzco and went to Huaraz, where we saw the tallest mountains in Peru, brilliant glacial lakes, and celebrated new years with Peace Corps buddies.

At this point, there's not much more that I can put into words, so I'll just leave you with pictures:

These are of Cusco: cute llamas, street art "Pachamama" (mother Earth), Spanish-style tile roofs, and my new favorite "ponche de leche con Pisco", or milk punch with Pisco (basically egg-nog)








And here's the pictures from the trek to Macchu Picchu: me and Chris in our tent, the beautiful Andean valleys surrounding Macchu Picchu and Cusco and the Inka trail, the slot cañon inside of a cloud forest.





Macchu Picchu! The vista from Huayna Picchu (the mountain that's always in the pictures) to Macchu Picchu, a gorgeous flower, our guide James, the hand-carved stairs, the perfectly stacked rocks (nothing holding them together but the rocks themselves)









And Ancash: Mt. Huascarán (the tallest in Perú at around 20,000 feet), glacial waterfalls, glacial lake Llanganuco, Huascarán in black and white, mountains Huascarán and Huandoy, a mountain I think is Alpamayo in black & white, and the sand at Llanganuco

Noviembre

This month has been pretty regular--mainly working at the Youth Center and teaching classes. My middle-school classes ended this past Thursday, and I'll be finishing with my Data Mundo classes this upcoming Tuesday.

There hasn't been much happening...the biggest thing to report is that in early November, while I was washing the dishes a glass broke apart in my hand and cut me really deeply. I received 6 stitches and learned about Peruvian emergency rooms. The odd thing was that while I was laying on the gurney, Chris had to go to the on-site pharmacy to buy the materials; gloves, string, everything. It cost 11 soles for the whole ordeal--a grand total of $4. The good things were that I was relieved to understand the doctor's Spanish even while in shock, and my Chris was nice enough to knead my bread and wash my hair in the following month :)

Also, last week we went to celebrate Thanksgiving in Trujillo and a nearby beach with Chris' group of Peace Corps volunteers. Trujillo was gorgeous, it has an amazing statue in its town square and we enjoyed some great gringo (foreigner) food at a café in the center of town, as well as a couple really great Peruvian-style sandwiches. There are also lots of used book stores to explore, so we spent a good amount of time there. After, we went about 2 hours outside of Trujillo to another volunteer's site to an amazing (and cheap) hotel on the beach, and started cooking furiously. I made pumpkin pie with the spices my mom sent me, and several veggie dishes. Chris helped make a little of everything, plus a really amazing banana pudding (everyone's favorite dessert of the night). We had 3 turkeys cooked in a huge adobe oven in the back of a bakery--I wish you all could have seen the baker use his 9-foot paddle take the turkeys out of his oven half the size of a garage, but sadly I did not bring my camera. All in all, I ate some very gourmet food.





There were so many Americans and Peruvians!



I also ran in the 5k turkey trot and got a t-shirt for it, yay! I got 7th and Chris 8th, not bad for not running in months.

In a couple weeks now we'll be leaving for Macchu Picchu and Ancash with my friend Beth to celebrate Christmas, I'll let you know all about it :)

Well, it's been a month

After I last wrote life turned into a deluge of activities;

I began teaching my weekly English classes (the one from the last blog was the class I taught before vacation). I really enjoy teaching, especially teaching languages, so it's been relatively easy for me to put together classes and time goes quickly while I teach. My kids are sweet, and some of them have been showing progress in English fluency already just by speaking with me. Though while I love teaching and my kids are good people, they tend to rarely do their homework, be late to classes, or not show up at all. For example, when we had class scheduled for the Friday before and Monday after Cutervo's 101st anniversary, no one at all showed up. It's been immensely frustrating at times, no matter how much I'm told that that's just how life works here.

I've been putting a good portion of hours into working with the Kutiri youth center. We now have a blog (kutiri.wordpress.com, go check it out!), and we've been getting some very helpful individual donations. We do game nights, educational charlas (workshops), art classes, movie nights, and yesterday we pulled together a rather large Halloween party. We got to show lots of Peruvian kids traditional Halloween stuff like bobbing for apples, carving pumpkins, and dirt pudding--it was greatly successful, I'm so proud of everything Chris, Katherine and I have been able to accomplish. I even got to carve this crazy green pumpkin they've got here, the kids and my host family loved it. However, it's been exhausting (a lot of children talking to you in Spanish all at once will take it out of you), and sometimes difficult (that many children in a room at once is not usually orderly). But I really love working with the kids, and I know that the kids love our center. Why? 70 or more kids between 10-18 come EVERY NIGHT. We've hardly been open a month, so it's easy to see the need for constructive activities for Cutervan kiddos.


Baños del Inca

In between all of that, me and Chris took 3 days to travel to the nearest big city, Chota, for a despedida (or good-bye party) for the Peace Corps group that's leaving this week. It was fun to hang out with the volunteers, they've got so many stories in them, believe me. Afterwards, we traveled to the local capital Cajamarca (all of this was hours upon hours in busses mind you). There we bought games for the youth center with our grant money, enjoyed the local cheeses and some real Taiwanese food, and took a dip in the Baños del Inca hot springs. Cajamarca = seriously my favorite I've been to in Peru.



Other miscellaneous happenings: skinned a guinea pig (I couldn't kill it; I was very vividly reminded of why I am usually vegetarian), and got to participate as a judge for my school's food festival. The kids had to present in English, so we rated them on taste and English, and I tried 20 different traditional Peruvian plates, including cow hoof, cow stomach, and pig neck. My favorites are the fried bread and cuajada cheese with molasses, and a jam made from a fruit called berenjena. Other than those, I've been baking a lot--check out my favorite things at my new food blog here: Sojourner Food

Oh! And for other updates on our adventures (including lots of Halloween pictures with kids bobbing for apples, pizza, and oatmeal raisin cookies), check out the other Katie's blog here: http://illmeetyouinperu.blogspot.com/

It's like America...but South! (and an address!)

These past couple weeks have just flown.

I spent my time in Lima eating sandwiches from a restaurant called La Lucha (roasted meat with onion-lime salsa, ají pepper sauce, and fresh fruit juice on the side, sooooo good), and generally wandering all over the city discovering churches, parks, and shopping areas.





Most days I just walked around Lima alone because Chris spent the days at his medical examinations. I think my favorite day in Lima was spent walking to El Bosque Olivar, a beautiful little nature area in the San Isidro district. Chris, some other Peace Corps volunteers and I also were there just in time for Mistura, a yearly food festival held in Lima showcasing all the different foods from all over Perú. We stayed there for a solid 5 hours trying all the different foods!

Afterwards, we took a night bus (12 hours long) to Chiclayo, the biggest city close to Cutervo. We spent the day in Chiclayo just hanging out with our friend Rob, and even went to see Planet of the Apes. Then we boarded another night bus to Cutervo, for another solid 11 hours. I finally arrived in Cutervo at 6 in the morning, and we both went to Chris' host family's house and collapsed

Chris has been keeping me busy from the start, I've already taught my first English class to the kiddos (in Spanish! I didn't think I had it in me...), Chris now has a space for his youth center that I've been working on with him, and once vacations this week are over, I'll begin teaching my English classes daily. The kids are the most well behaved I've ever worked with, they answer my requests, work hard, and are in general peaceful...! It's a little strange, but welcome.



Other than that, I've just been running around meeting & greeting and hanging out with Chris' host family. I have an apartment as a part of my English teaching job, but Chris' host family made their house available for me to stay in as well, so we've worked out a way for me to stay with the family. They are truly such kind, warm, and welcoming people that I already feel like part of the family. So, rather than furnishing my own barren apartment, I'll get to learn more language and culture from a host family, which is always better.

Also, today we climbed up to the white sand beach in the mountain Ilucan just above the city and got to see part of enormous span of Andes mountains that we're living in. It's been raining a lot, so we haven't made it to the top yet, but I'm sure that it's breathtaking. And we had 43 kids show up for Chris' first youth center activity, a movie night where we ate popcorn, drank soda, and watched Finding Nemo :)

FOR YOUR INFORMATION:
If you'd like to send me a postcard, letter, package or watermelons with postage (which I would like very much!), please send it to...

Pasaje Yoyo Flores 180
A la familia Espejo Sanchez
Cutervo, Cajamarca, Perú

Please keep in mind that packages must be under 2 lbs and in an envelope for them to come to Cutervo! Otherwise they'll go to Chiclayo ELEVEN HOURS AWAY to go through customs!

Now to leave you, here's a picture of a cute alpaca!

9 Days in Perú

Up to today I've been to and through 4 Peruvian cities and towns--

My lovely Chris showed me around Lima for the first two days; we stayed in Miraflores (the really, expensive tourist part of town), where we saw the main square, a museum on food (knowing me and Chris, how could we not?), and the coast.





Then we took a 16-hour bus from Lima to Arequipa (it was an overnight bus so I was knocked out for most of it thank god), then went straight to our hostel...where we had the room at the very height of all the churches, so we had one of the best views of downtown and the mountains and Volcán Misti (part of the Andes range).

In Arequipa we tried all sorts of foods (amazing ceviche, anticuchos (grilled cow's heart), queso helado (don't know what it is but it's like reeally tasty ice cream). We also got to see "Juanita the Ice Princess", the most intact mummy they've found in this part of the Andes range. She was a child sacrificed to appease the gods after a volcano had erupted. The exhibit was really interesting, though they were so set on preserving the mummy by keeping the lights low that you could barely see her. You could see all the artifacts they found with her though, which were fascinating. We also found some tremendous Peruvian chocolate and Argentinian wine (a little under $5 a bottle), and some new Peruvian friends who we met in their alpaca clothing store, which one of them showed us where to buy tamales and told us some fantastic stories about Peruvian culture and history.

From Arequipa, we left for Colca Cañon, where the deepest cañon in the world, Cotahuasi, is. We passed through Chivay, where we got to try alpaca meat and see the beautiful embroidered clothing that the women there wear, then stayed the night on the edge of the cañon in a town called Cabaconde. We woke at 6am and started out with our packs on our backs for the cañon. It was a very odd experience for me, since when I'm going climbing, I'm used to going up first, not down then up. So the second day was a little more difficult since we were already sore from walking 8 hours the day before and had to go up the length of a very, very steep cañon. But, proud to say it, we made it to the top in 2.5 hours, passing others who left an hour before us. There were places for us to stay in the cañon, so we walked in the first day and out the next. Fortunately, we just barely made the 9am bus, which was the only one we could have caught to make it back to Arequipa in time for our bus to Lima...luck is on our side!






Now Chris just has medical examinations and training in Lima, so I'll be hanging out here for 4 days, then we'll head up to where I'll be staying put--Cutervo.

Till then, hasta luego!

¡Perú!

It's August, which means that it's time to take off again! Next destination: Peru!

First, I'll be stopping in NYC for 9 days to see friends and family, then August 25th I'll be in Lima (after a stopover in Columbia).

A little information about where I'm going...

I'll be living in Cutervo, Cajamarca Peru. It's in the North part of Peru, located in the Andes Mountains and near the base of the Amazon river. Peru is quite huge, I'll be closer to Ecuador than to Lima.




There, I'll be working as an English teacher for a local school called Data Mundo, and I'll also be helping my boyfriend Chris with his Peace Corps assignment of building a youth center and doing activities for kids.

The future will be full of potatoes, llama hats, and Spanish speaking! I'll be writing my next blog when I've finally arrived :)

Today 今日

Today, さ, today is, ね
Wandering the Tokyo temples, よ
Ambling slowly with my brimming burdensome pack
In company with graveyards and trees ample with 柿
　　　　　　（牡蠣じゃなくて柿）
Wending, in a leisurely and unsure fashion
through cold back-streets and gem-stone stores
To 大福、to よもぎもち
（一番美味いよ！）
To the historical shack, to Ueno (winter sweet potato roasted)
the lecture about myself given by an aged Japanese man
History museum , head hazy nap creeping in the quiet couch on my weary worn soles
And nearly crawling, back throbbing, to the ryokan
to the brown bathwater and old women cleansing and

then darkness よ
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　 That was Tokyo





(http://lordessucchan.deviantart.com/art/today-237898699)

終わり

On the tail end of my trip to Japan, I travelled with my parents to Tokyo, Nagoya, Kyoto, Nara, Kobe, and Okinawa. It was a rather busy 2 weeks, but we certainly got to enjoy a lot of famous places. We were also treated to fantastic hospitality by our former host students, Miki and Hiroko. Plus it was quite the experience being in Japan for the New Years, because that is just like our Christmas--it's a big deal.

But now I am back in Denver, and I've been attending my classes in English again. I truly, truly miss Japan, and I wish from the bottom of my heart that I could still be there. But the fact of the matter is that I must graduate first. And not only that, Japan is rather removed from the line of work I wish to enter. It is incredibly difficult to integrate into Japanese society without having lived there for years upon years and being fluent in Japanese, and even then you are probably just teaching English (not something that particularly strikes my fancy). So, as much as I love Japan and Japanese, that will most likely always be a hobby or vacation for me. Nevertheless I am just so thankful for this opportunity to have traveled there for close to free, and all of the incredible new lessons the study abroad experience had to offer me.

Stay tuned for the next trip, but until then it's time for me to buckle up and finish my degree!