Busy Weekend

                Sunday September 9, 2012 2:00 pm

This weekend has been busy, but fun.  Saturday I woke up, took a shower, had breakfast, and then Mariska and I decided to go to Cusco for the day.  By the way, showering here is not fun – the water is freezing and you have to shower before 8 am.  Oh well.  Anyway, we took a bus to Cusco.  The ride is about an hour from Pisac and costs only 2.5 soles, which is less that a $1.  The bus was crowded with Peruvians, so we knew we were traveling the way Peruvians do!  We arrived in Cusco around 10 am and first went to a couple craft markets and I bought an alpaca sweater.  It was fun to bargain and use my Spanish, although many of the vendors would speak English as soon as they heard my bad Spanish.  (More of the vendors speak English in Cusco than in Pisac.)  We wandered around Cusco taking pictures of the old churches and figuring out where exactly we were.  We decided not to go into any museums, churches, or Incan ruins but rather to see what there was to see and then come back another weekend once we had a plan.  We ran into another volunteer from Projects Abroad who we had met at the barbeque last week and had lunch with her at a little café.  After eating, we wandered around a little more and then realized how exhausted we were so we got back on the bus and came back to Pisac at 2:30.  It is tiring to be in a new city, where you don’t speak the language, and the sun is beating down on you (don’t worry Dad, I wore sunscreen and a hat).  We both fell asleep on the bus, but, when I was awake,  it was fun to look out the window at the beautiful view and to see and hear the Peruvian people on the bus.  Once we got back, we dropped off our stuff at our house and headed to a nearby bakery where we each bought a different kind of pastry and brought them back to the house.  We ate the pastries (which smelled better than they tasted) and read through our guide books, so that we could plan for next weekend.  I think we will head to the Pisac ruins next weekend, which are close by and are supposed to be amazing.  After dinner I was exhausted, we usually go to a nearby internet café after dinner, but I felt like I couldn’t move, so I stayed back and read in bed and fell asleep around 9 pm.

            Today, Sunday, we had breakfast and then watched our host mother cook.  I had fun as she would show and tell us what she was doing as she put each ingredient in the pot – she does not use a recipe.  Each ingredient she showed us had a different purpose (outside of taste).  For example, one spice made you smart and the meat makes your skin healthy.  I was scolded because I do not eat enough meat!  Apparently I will not have nice skin like my host mother has when I am older.  After cooking, Norma, a girl who lives with the family and helps clean, was doing the family’s laundry (by hand) so we asked if we could join her and we did our laundry too.  It is a long process with lots of buckets of varying soapiness involved.  First I was told that my white socks were not clean enough because they have stains on the bottom.  I washed them again and turned them inside out so the bottoms of the socks could not be seen and then Norma was satisfied.  She was not, however, satisfied with the two white shirts I was washing.  She kept pointing at them and saying “muy sucio” (very dirty).  Really, the t-shirts were not very dirty, but they are old and have been sitting in my crawl space for years, so they are not as bright white as Norma expected.  I kept washing out the shirts and getting ready to hang them up and Norma would take them and put them back in the soapy water.  Eventually, I asked and she said we would leave them to soak until tomorrow.  I think she will be very disappointed when the shirts are not any cleaner tomorrow!  Oh well, I guess I should have brought more dark colored shirts!

            After doing laundry for about an hour, my hands were chapped and dry, so I put on lots of lotion, and then Mariska and I headed for the market.  The Pisac Market is always big, but it is huge on Sunday and has many more tourists wondering around.  After half an hour, it started raining pretty hard so we came back to the house, put on our rain gear, and went back to the market.  I bought gloves, a bag, and socks today.  And bargained the prices down for all three (in Spanish)!  After lots of shopping and enjoying looking at the multitude of crafts and colors, we came back for lunch.  It has stopped raining, so I am hoping our clothes will dry fast, although, as always, I brought too much so I will have enough even if they don’t dry soon.  Now, I will hang out, maybe practice some Spanish, and relax.