easin' on down, easin' on down the road.

HOLA! It's been a while, but Terry and I are finally heading into CHILE! I can't believe it. No more Cusco, no more Peru, no more CUY! I could cry! It's been such a long time, traveling like this feels strange. And we are carrying everything we own with us, which has been entertaining for locals, but somewhat of a burden on us. Our first stop was Ica, which was a lot of fun! We stayed in this hospedaje, which is a cheaper hostal, for one night, and decided to move on to Tacna the following day. So, our first day in Ica we walked around the plaza de armas for a while. It is really hot here! In January we are stripping because of the sun, I'm pretty sure this blows Florida out of the water. However, this town does have ice cold beverages figured out like nobody's business! So tasty! And the mall here is something to behold, it's three levels, all the fast food that we missed ( yes, I know I just left the states and have only been gone a month, but still, the second you return to Peru, you feel like you never left, and so all the good, fulfilling, unhealthy crap that I dined on repetitively back home was gone the first time I ate a menu in Cusco.) We stuffed ourselves on Pizza Hut and then watched Avatar in a cinema. Granted it was in Spanish, and without the 3D effects, but it was still awesome to be sitting in a movie theater, with a large screen, and stale popcorn, and obnoxious people all around you. We also went and visited one of the local bodegas, which are vineyards that produce wine and pisco. Our tour guide took a shine to me, so we received a wicked tasting after the tour, there were quite a few types of wine we tried, and then for a special bonus we were given four different types of pisco to try. Walking down the dirt road to the main highway back to Ica was fun! However I got quite burnt in the span of 15 minutes. Luckily a cab came by and picked us up! So it was quite a day, we also had cable in the room, so we spent one crazy Saturday night livin' it up by watching RV on a small t.v. and passing out early. We left Ica and made it down to Valparaiso Chile in the span of three days and several VERY long bus rides. After the last 27 hour bus ride from Arica to Valparaiso my arse was begging that we not use it of several days, so we
We did not stay in one place longer than a night on the way down to Valparaiso. We only stopped in Ica, Tacna, and then we stopped in Valparaiso. We did all this in five days. It was disgusting. Once we got to Valparaiso we stayed for two nights in our hostel and just relaxed! The graffiti in this town in absolutely incredible, so we walked around and enjoyed the lively decoration. Our neighborhood where the hostel is is very young and chill. The other night we stopped for a second to watch these neuvo hippie street performer clowns do a free show in a tiny plaza. There were bleachers set up, and they had trapeze set up, but we didn't stay long enough to see them really use it. And i didn't even notice until we were about to leave, but our hostel also had one set up in the hallway area, but it was high enough I'm not really sure how people boarded the vessel. anywho, our first night was very calm. we walked around, found a place to eat and tried our first pisco sour with chilean pisco. there is a difference; peru might have created the liquor, but chile has the soil, climate, and knowhow to mix it with ingredients the way I like it (strong). Shooey, it was good! So, we had several of those and shared some fajitas. There were two things about these fajitas that led me to start falling in love with this country.
1) they had yellow corn, that was fresh, not canned, and
2) the fajitas were regular white corn tortillas. On our way home we stopped off in a little tienda and they had
3) GINGER ALE! The world makes sense once again for me. The next morning I went to the grocery store to get food for us for the day and tomorrow's lunch so we could save some money instead of eating out.
4) I was waiting in the deli checking out cheeses and meats when this woman came up and asked me if I had taken a number, which I hadn't because I didn't know about that, so she let me use her number as well so I didn't have to wait longer.
5) I was getting bakery bread (which was loose in bins and you put the amount you want in a bag to price) when this different woman came up to me and let me know that I needed to go to a different line than I thought to weigh the bread, and she just handed me several bags to put the bread I had in. HUH?! I do not know how to react to such kindness without hints of suspicion in my mind. All of these acts of kindness happened in less than five hours of me being conscious. I would like to say at this point that I truly did enjoy my time in Cusco, it was an incredible experience and I met some amazing and kind people; however in 8 months I met almost the same amount of kind nice people in Peru as I did in Chile in less than a day. I really do appreciate how honest everyone here is; and they all are friendly and helpful. I have been a complete idiot with the Chilean currency. Everything is 1000 or 10000 pesos, and the zeros throw me off, however
6) everyone has always corrected me and made sure I got the correct change back. There were many times in Cusco vendors tried to trick me, and I understood their money system. I seriously cannot keep up with all the things that have happened to us that I was impressed by.
So, continuing on with the days recap: BEACH! It does exist, we were there, and it was quite incredible! There was sand, salty water, bathing suits (not on me) tans (again, not on me) and lounging. Good times! We did wet our feet, but the water was pretty cold, which i don't think is fair... haha. But so we stayed out in the sand and sun for a good while eating lunch, reading and listening to music. That evening we cooked an absolutely incredible dinner. I just remember there were two other just plain wonderful things I came across in the grocery store.
7) There were real steaks. Big, juicy ones that had this color of red I've only been able to drool over in dreams. Something you could cook for more than 10 minutes and it would still be rare. So tasty.
8) Stroganoff mix. I know it's not Patti's homemade, but it was really nice to see it there, available to buy, because I didn't have the recipe, the money to buy all the ingredients (then only use part of them and waste the rest), nor the fridge space in the hostel we were staying in.
So our dinner was THICK steaks, noodles cooked in stroganoff mix, and then some veggies. It was healthy in the sense that we haven't had a home cooked meal in a very long time, and it was much needed to add our own spices, sit down at a table, wash our dishes and talk without the general clutter and noise pollution of a crowed restaurant.
The next morning we walked around, sat in plazas, smelled the funkiness of salt water in a port city, ran into a homeless man dropping a number two in a very busy boardwalk behind a tall pillar, went on a hunt for the post office and ran into a very friendly and helpful older couple who gave us a bit of a chat, and then we headed off to Olmue, which is an hour inland from Valparaiso. We took a subway/metro from the city to Limache, which is another city, and from there we hopped a bus to the plaza in Olmue. This is the city our farm is located near. The actual farm is 30 minutes into the country, but the family owns a pizzeria in the main plaza so we stopped there first. It's a really nice small restaurant, the wife and daughter live in an apartment above the pizzeria, and Mario, the husband lives on the farm. One of the people that work for them is this girl from Lima who's been with them for quite a while who's only 21, single, and has a 1 year daughter who is by far the most adorable and well behaved little kid i've ever wanted to play with. At first she didn't warm up to us, we were strangers after all, but finally she started to smile at us after we talked to Maria, her mom, for a spell. It got to the point where we were picking her up playing with her and dancing her around the kitchen to old Madonna hits. This is what our days consist of. After two weeks we had helped in the pizzeria some, made a compost pile, kept the dogs happy and renamed them, made sure the horses were still alive, and managed to not kill any plants or any flies. There is some sort of fly haven in this house and it's completely out of hand. It becomes second nature to slap your arm or leg, fan your hand near your ear and sleep under heavy comforters in very hot weather to keep the flies OFF! They are incessant and evil. You could kill an entire battalion of them and still their armies rise again, stronger than before... They are crafty, flying so that your vision is blurred, a cyclone that attacks your ears, goes up your nose, tickles any exposed skin... I rue these vicious creatures with a passion that even my anger driven heart has not known before. After two weeks it is definitely time to move on. The shower water has the most foul smell and up until two days ago there was no pressure. i have managed washing for the most part while watering the trees, and kept my hair from scaring anyone away by washing it down in the kitchen sink. Everytime it makes me think of Patti when she lived in Enon. How she would wash and curl her hair before bed. I don't remember it the same way when she moved out to Gloucester, but it's a distinct memory from waaaaaayyy back, with the wickedly awesome tacky 70s decor in poor lighting and her talking about plans for the next day or whatever, always good times. On that note I am out of steam and this is already long enough...
LOVE!

Nothing much has been going on in the past week, I’ve sent out a couple of resumes. We’ve narrowed down destinations to Montevideo Uruguay, or several cities on the northern coast of Chile: Antofagasta, La Serena or Concepion. Of course there are some cities in Bolivia: La Paz, Cochabamba, or maybe Sucre, but we are focusing more on beaches right now. It’s been slow moving since we don’t have a great internet connection no matter where we go with free wi-fi, and it’s getting the fact that our schedule is so different from regular business hours it’s complicated. I’m guessing that drinking coffee at 1 am isn’t really helping, so this week I’m going to try to start getting into a regular sleeping pattern that doesn’t include waking up half way through the day. The whole household is getting excited about Christmas, especially the candy and sweets aspect! I am definitely missing Kali’s ginger snap cookies right now… we’ve been planning parts to the menu, and Jason’s girlfriend is coming down so we are thinking up things to remember to ask her to bring. Kentucky Gentlemen is on the list because I am going to attempt to make bourbon balls, I’ll keep everyone posted on how terrible they turn out. We have also been making some additions to the tree. Terry’s mum sent a card with some Merry Christmas confetti, and we put most of it on the tree, it adds some really nice reflection and color, and then Terry drew a Santa drinking Pisco for our tree topper, it looks great. I’ve been busy this weekend doing lesson plans because…. Drum roll please… I GOT A JOB! It starts tonight, I’ll be teaching a doctor couple at this nice clinic in Cusco the English that they need to know to deal with tourist patients as well as basic English because they don’t speak at all. It’ll pay about 9 dollars an hour which isn’t bad, but it doesn’t matter, I’m just excited about having a job, getting some more practice, and boosting my resume un poco. It’s strange having to make my own curriculum for these clients, as well as learning more about doctors vocabulary than I’m comfortable with. I’m already kind of nervous about teaching in a manner I am completely not used to, and on top of that having to teach information I have no clue about! I haven’t the foggiest about what doctors have to say to patients, I can’t even remember the last time I went to the doctors! EEK. So, I’ve been looking at charts of organs to help illustrate the vocab because the husband is a surgeon; it’s just gross. Not to mention a pain in the ass to find the information that I want. Why is google search failing me now?! Maybe it will be more advantageous than I think, overall, in the long run. It’ll also be fun to dress up and walk around in business clothes like all the other Peruvians. However I did walk back from the interview in cute flats and got these two wicked blisters on my heels. And then proceeded to make them bleed by going out Saturday night in HighTops, so I am bound to my flip flops for now. I am forever grateful to Onja right now! They have been a lifesaver for me! Unfortunately the pharamacies here don’t have moleskin, so I’m stuck with these cheap looking bandaids. I’m just not going to wear them unless I’ve absolutely GOT to. I've gotta run and finish up my last minute lesson plans for tonight! Procrastination is my best attribute?
hugs, and LOVE!

Festivus for the Rest of us!

So in the spirit of the season, even though it’s about 70 degrees on a regular basis and always raining, we went on a hiking excursion to find a Christmas tree in the woods way up above our apartment in the area called Villa San Blas. It is to the right of Sacsayhuaman and Cristo Blanco if you are standing in the Plaza de Armas. It was a lot of fun and took a good long while. I still am having some trouble breathing, nothing serious I just get short of breathe fast (shocking considering how healthy I was while back home…) so climbing up the developed side of this mountain was not easy for me. Eventually we got to areas without inclines and found this awesome ruin site. First it was a wall that had been revealed, and we followed it around (it’s in a square shape) to the opposite side and climbed on top of the wall and found some really awesome chairs and various right degree angles carved into the rock debris. It was really cool. After hanging out for quite some time exploring and rock jumping we got down, climbed up some more and found ourselves at the back entrance to Q’enqo, which is another ruin site right outside of Sacsayhuaman. However this one you have to pay to enter, and there was some guy in a jacket who looked like he would stop us if we crossed the line any further into the site, so we turned back, found a cool group of small evergreen shrubs and Terry cut off a nice branch for our Christmas tree. On the walk back we went a different way and I started collecting the pretty dead blossoms off of various bushes. Of course Jason and Terry didn’t really understand what pretty dead was and started to crack jokes about the rotting dead cactus, and would I like that, or the fact that some of the stuff I was cutting off wasn’t quite dead yet… needless to say after some good natured harassment reciprocated with sweet smelling branch beatings there was enough of a collection of tree decorations we started home. It was a really nice relaxing Sunday. We had an early-ish dinner, played cards, experimented with coca tea and pisco then watched Life Aquatic. I decorated the tree today while it rained. Unfortunately it wasn’t the same as previous Christmases. The only Christmas music I currently have on my computer includes: Tom Waits song Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis, and the Neko Case cover of this song; The Kinks’ Father Christmas; Run-DMC’s Christmas in Hollis; the They Might Be Giants album HolidayLand; of Montreal’s Christmas isn’t Safe for Animals; John Prine’s Christmas in Prison; Richard Cheese lounge music Christmas covers (e.i. Christmas in Las Vegas) and then lastly the David Sedaris book on tape of Holiday’s on Ice. But no need to worry! I am currently downloading several different Christmas compilations, as well as the Charlie Brown Christmas album and that Disney Christmas album from the 80s that has been in the Conover household since the dawn of it’s creation (it being either the cd or the household, both work).

So, here is the rundown of what is currently decorating the Asnoqch'utun Alley gringo apartment Christmas tree of 2009: (3) beaded bracelets collected from various Cusco markets; (3) full pairs of earrings: large purple circles, ohm symbols, and cheap silver plated club danglies; (1) Saint Christopher keyring; (1) Buddha earring; (1) broken earring of the red and black seed for good luck from Peru persuasion (the name of which I’ve never been able to understand when told by merchants); (4) strands of blue-turquoise dyed wool; (1) bunch of dying orange flowers; (many) clusters of two different types of dead blooms. This tree is also being held up in and ingenious tree stand compromising of: (1) plant potter currently being occupied by some pretty plant with pink blooms and some grass and (2) several beer bottles with left over dead bloom branches to camouflage.

Unfortunately i can't upload to this website right now, but the pics are all on facebook, so look up that album! LOVE!

xoxo.

back in action.

Having spent a whole two months state-side I’m now back in Cusco! So far the weather has been sun, rain, wind, sun, rain, rain, night. It’s some great thunder storms, but otherwise a bit of a drag. Anyway, after a couple of days I’m back to the old habits of living in a third world country. It’s amazing how you can forget to flush TP, but you don’t forget to not flush it. All of the random food I brought has been much appreciated, Cheese toast is now a part of our daily diets in the apartment! I even rolled some sushi for dinner a few nights ago! It was very yummy (I thought). Then of course the junk food is also being devoured! Oatmeal pies are almost gone, the gallon jug of goldfish has been demolished and I think the slim jims disappeared the second I took them out of my suitcase… I swear this stuff is even better in a place it’s not readily available, and probably healthier for you too… Our days have been very relaxing, pretty much the same routine I had back in VA: staying up late watching movies, waking up in the afternoon, however I’ve been busting my behind to get my resume prefect and look up places to live/work. So far it’s narrowed down to anywhere except: Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela and Brazil. If there are any suggestions, please feel free to share! Otherwise there isn’t much to speak of. The flight here was pretty uneventful. Mom and I drove to D.C. in the middle of the night, I caught my lay over in Panama City, the two flights from D.C. to Lima had more little kids on them than I think I’ve seen on the total of other flights I’ve been on. The first flight had this really cute little kid and his mom sitting next to me, and I was in the window seat. Each time they were asleep the mom would fall into my seat, as would the kid, so I was up against the window trying to give them enough space, but they were really nice, and anything to keep that little 2 year old from screaming was fine by me! When I got to Lima I found my flight to Cusco was 6 am, not pm, so that was fun. But thanks to Grandma Linda I knew of a great little hostel to stay in, and they even gave me a ride the next morning at 3:30 AM to catch my flight. I made it safely to Cusco, and Terry was waiting for me at the airport. And the rest has been nothing but relaxing. Right now we're watching futbol in a pub of sorts, with free wi fi. I'm not sure why we haven't been doing this earlier. Anyway, I'm off! The food just showed up! LOVE!

xoxo.

No more excuses.

Here is the Astronaut at the Nazca Lines, and possibly my next tattoo, which I am thinking about putting somewhere on my scalp....always scheming....
Two crazy girls jamming out in a tiny aircraft. Oh my how we rock it.
The Nazca take on the Tree of Life. I also really like this....hmmm.
This is the oasis of Huacachina, there was some serious paddleboating taking place in this little watering hole. It was quite awesome.
The end of an awesome day. 
So here is the sand angel that I made, VA's is right next to it. We had a whirl wind bus tour of the Southern Coast of Peru, including Nazca, Ica, Huacachina, and then Arequipa. However there was a huge protest going on because of a lot of terrible things happening to people living in the jungle right now because of bad policies and practices of the President of Peru, Alan Garcia, so we were on the bus a lot trying to get back to Cusco and it rendered my three travel companions and myself very sick. We have been coughing for quite a while now and even though it's a hilarious broken record at night, we are all ready to be on the mend. So, back to the pics...This sand angel was left in Huacachina, were we went paddleboating, dunebuggying, and sandboarding. It was such an amazing and fantastic day. Almost worth the flu.
The missing party of our caravan took this pic, but she only managed to capture VA airborne. Drats.  From Left to Right: VA, me, Meagan (my good friend from ASU who came down)
This is in the Arequipa Plaza de Armas, and this is VA and Shannon (my friend from Cusco) rocking out with the pigeons. We suspect they could be the culprits of our sickness. However we TOTALLY cleaned up and de-pigeoned right after we finished feeding...
CHECK OUT THE MOHAWK! I went all the way this time...
Christmas greeting card 2009.

VA and I have had an interesting time together in Cusco. We started off traveling and where stopping in a different town each day, traveling by bus at night to the next stop. We got caught in Arequipa because of protests going on blocking Sucwani and Juliaca (I think I spelled those cities correctly) so we had to back to Nazca and then to Cusco, so there was a period where we were on a bus for 27 hours. It was terrible. After that we all developed a nasty cough and lost all our energy. There were four girls in one apartment completely incapacitated and bedridden. However it was pretty funny to hear the rounds of coughs we would have in the middle of the night. It was like the yawn effect. Once one started you could hear coughs for the next ten or so minutes. Eventually everyone regained enough energy to be able to take short outings around Cusco and fit in some tourist shit. VA and I went to Machupicchu on Tuesday and then these Hot Springs in Santa Teresa, they were very nice and warm after a cold day on the mountain, it was so nice. Machupicchu was beautiful but VERY cold, it was drizzly and foggy, which complements the stone of the ruins so well, it was exquisite. We then walked along the train tracks, hitched a cab ride in the middle of nowhere, and spent a very long time relaxing in these hot springs pools. It was a wonderful and much needed end to the day.  

Arequipaness Round 2

So I know these are really late, but thanks to a huge lack of computer knowledge, I wasn't able to access these photos for quite some time... But now, here they are. The weekend in Arequipa was pretty awesome, and I have been polite enough to exclude the incredible meat department in the Mercado that we went to, but if you feel you have the stomach, let me know, I can send them your way.  Anyway, the fruit section is PG, and wicked, so there's that. It's also a huge bummer that none of these pictures were rotated. I'm not sure why, once again my lack of computer competence steps up. Just tilt your head.  This honkin' plate of food was quite delicious, unfortunately I could only finish two thirds of it. It was two thirds of something closely resembling Patti food, though, which I did not think was possible here! So tasty!
These are the two people I went to Arequipa with, and three Peruvians were nice enough to capture this moment on film.
This is what happens on the nice buses in Peru. At least the smell wasn't bad, but Greyhound has nuthin' on this shit. In addition, at one stop I was woken up to a woman yelling something with a meat cleaver the size of Jay Leno's face hacking away at some enormous cooked leg meat and I thought I was having a nightmare.  I was not conscious enough to ask for a serving before she disembarked the bus, but I heard from others that the meat was quite tasty, and it did smell good.

Mannequien?

So this is what litters the streets of commercial Cusco. Aren't you disgusted about what you are missing out on?  LOVE IT! And I just noticed too there is a little bit of XYZ going on, too.  Fabulous!  

Unfortunately there isn't much new going on, another TEFL party has come and gone, this one a little bit more of a show stopper than the last one.  I sported a llama fur hat like something straight out of Siberia, and sunglasses to boot.  Unfortunately I did not capture this on my own camera, and once I find a picture worthy of this blog, I will try to post it on here. It was quite a fun night, as was the entire weekend.  I tried to hike up into the community above me, Villa San Blas to check out this Temple of the Moon cave labyrinth, however I didn't really know where I was going and got seriously lost, and decided to walk back down so next time I will bring a map or a knowledgeable guide for assistance.  

This is the last week for classes this month, so there is a lot of review and fun games, candy, and then of course, being the holy day that it is, Friday is going to be fan-tas-tic. We are throwing a Iowa Legalized Gay Marriage Party which should be pretty intense, it's costume based, and so far the other teachers I've talked to are really getting into it.  We'll see what really happens, as I will be sure to post all appropriate pictures.  Enough procrastination, I have to get ready for my next class. only three more to go today!  CHAO!