Ah ha! I´m tired.

So, If being Peruvian was a job, I´m on intership right now. Yesterday Nilda, yeah I messed that up for almost a week, Nilda asked me if I would like to help since their family is so busy right now preparing for all the festivities. Actually I should start a little earlier, so yesterday I was walking around, trying to find a place to nap in the sun and passed by San Isidro where they were butchering bulls for the festivities, about 10 middle age men, drinking chicha and killing cows. Anyways, they were yelling that I should come down and watch since they were getting another bull in position to kill, I said no thanks and they tried to tempt me with chicha. ¨we have chicha, there is chicha¨etc... which

Peru Travel Tip #1
Chicha is NOT a selling point.
If you are not in the know, chicha is a alcoholic beverage made from fermented corn. Sometimes they add strawberries to it, which is definately the better kind, but often times there are chunks and stringy bits, I don´t really like to think about it, just drink quickly and it will all be over soon. Also it´s often times quite strong, two cups and you are going to start to get tired and drunk. Another thought, I think chicha is what I imagine drinking when I´m backstrap weaving in hell.

anyways, I blew them off since this didn´t seem like my kind of party. I return to the hostel where Nilda tells me almost immediately that we are going to go help clean cow parts, so I had to come back 10 minutes after I rejected their offer, AWKWARD. Okay so all the cows were all dead when we got there and we basically chilled and drank chicha while watching them cut and clean the bulls and occasionally pretend the esophagus and spinal cord was a microphone. I was put on baby watching duty for awhile which made me extremely nervous, but they clearly thought was amusing. When we walked over to the house to cook, I was still carrying the baby and when who I believe was the mother saw me, she rushed over to take the kid. I think I would usually would be offended at how fast she took her, but I was relieved to not have to worry about dropping the baby anymore, it was very much a ¨who gave the gringa the baby situation¨.
So then I spent about and hour and a half cutting fresh fresh bull liver. While I will never be a carnicera I did start to get the hang of it. I wish I had a picture because when I was done I had so much congealed blood on my hands and wrists, and in spots it was almost a quarter of an inch thick. It became rather scaly as it dried and I had to pick pieces off in order to continue cutting, and you´re welcome for the imagery.
Then we cut about a gajillion onions. That was terrible and it took several washes and hours to remove the smell of onions from my skin, or maybe I still smell like onions and just have become accustomed to the smell, that seems more likely. It had become freezing by then so I moved into the smokey den of the kitchen and hung out with all the women cooking, there were cuys all over the floor and dirt walls and so much smoke but at least cooking with an fire meant that it was warm. They feed me boiled cow brains and told me what it was after I had eaten it, it was kind of how I imagined cow brains... squishy. I spent a couple hours there cutting tomatos and occasionally explaining who I am and why I´m sitting in the kitchen and then was served a huge bowl of dinner which was rice, a salad made with the onions I had cut, a potato and a huge piece of liver that I had probably just cut as well since the cut looked a little... special, but whatever it all tastes the same.
Later I went back to the casa where Nilda was adorning parts of the traje, she asked me to paint some of the hats for panaderias and I was doing well until the paint dripped onto part of the trim, I tried to save it but fail! I felt soooo bad, like sooooo bad, but Nilda insisted it was okay and that they would just put something over the paint splotch (this morning I sewed a bead flower thing on, it´s okay I guess, but still feeling guilty). This wore me down, I´m back on coffee as I help out, walking here, there doing this and that, not sleeping well, but it´s been really fun.
Today I´m expecting more of the same, at noon I think we are going to cook again, so yes I am an intern of Peru, give me your children, dead animals and hats, I will try my best. Sorry for any paint drips.

More Festival Information

I have been trying to get some more information on this here festival so that I understand why everyone I seem to know is dancing and in sucha frenzy. My spanish really hasn´t been sufficient to understand well, most of what I´ve been told but here is what I learned. The festival is the Festividad del Señor de Choquekillka, the patron saint of Ollantaytambo, evidently his miracle was somewhere close to Ollanta in the valley. It´s the biggest festival in Ollanta that happens at the end of May or the beginning of June every year. There are about 18 or 19 dance groups from Ollantaytambo and I believe 4 more coming in from Lima to participate, other activities include a bullfight and processions. A lot of the people I know here are dancing in the festival, and I hear it´s a pretty sweet deal to be a dancer since the heads of each group opens up their home to the other dance groups to offer beer and food and etc. Thusly each group tries to visit each other location but evidently only get around to 3 or 4 before they are too drunk to continue. What else? Um, seeing as I get invited almost everywhere, I´ll report more if I get to attend one of these dance group parties. Other than that, I´ve been told to expect not much sleep and a lot of fun. It all starts tomorrow, so we´ll see or as I´ve now learned in Quechua but is absolutely not spelled correctly, ya cha ku qui cha.

festival

Today in ollanta, there is a weaving and spinning and doll making competition, pictures will follow, but watching reminded me of my weaving class I took in guatemala. Heres what i say, there are a lot of boring and repetitive and in many cases, non productive things I could force myself to do for the rest of my life. move dirt, check bottle caps, i dont know, but back strap weaving is not one of them and if someone told me i had to backstrap loom weave forever I would take the loom and use the various pieces to impale myself. That being said, it´s so much fun to watch this women and i have the utmost respect and admiration for their incredible skills.

and so...

it´s been a moment since we last spoke. right now I´m in ollantaytambo, a rather empty ollantaytambo since there is another strike today. its funny, since there still is some traffic and cars since ollanta and urubamba arent actually participating, but they might as well be since pretty much all their traffic comes from cusco or machu picchu which both are striking. all the tourists are stuck since there is no train or way to go farther than an hours drive. I´m just chilling here until the fiesta this weekend. heres what I can tell you about it. its going to be big. its going to be better than urubamba´s same festival, and evidently i have to stay. yeah, thats what pretty much everyone has told me. also there will be a lot of dancing and i´ve been out most of the nights since i arrived watching various groups practice and watching milda adornar her clothes for the dance. milda is the cousin of emerson who i have known since I first came to Ollanta, shes super nice as well and has a hospedaje where ive been getting a good friends and family rate i believe, combined with the blue restaurant with the 3.50 sole dinner, living here has been cheap. and cold, like unbelievably cold. i stole all the blankets off the extra bed the first night i was here. and now i want to nap so, chau.

strike strike strike

Strikes in Peru are not an uncommon phenomenon, I think there has been a strike everytime I´ve been here, but this was the first time it really affected my plans. The transit workers, ie combis and taxis striked for two days to show their solidarity with the people who live in the country who are having troubles getting enough water. So thusly there was no transit since people don´t always have cars and there were a lot of roadblocks making it nearly impossible for those that do, for two days there was no school since nobody could get there, no trips into town, and a lot of free time. Since the last week was vacation it´s been pretty free for the majority of the last 2 weeks. I went down to the streets both days to see what was going on, a first there was some chanting, but after establishing all the road blocks, of which there were many, it seemed to settle down to lots of pickup soccer and volleyball games in the streets and people picnicing while watching the roadblocks. People were hanging around to make sure nobody tried to move their blocades, including some school kids playing volleyball. I think the most violent thing I saw was a taxi trying to enter Av. de la Cultura and some people broke glass bottle to try and deter it. That was the main hinderace, people were making road blocks out of everything, construction materials, the gutter covers, even parts of the barbed wired fences were tore down to cross the road. And there were lots, about every 100 meters, and one they lit on fire near the police station. This is a road block about an mile from the house, its actually a rather lame road block compared to some of the others, but they dragged a trashed car out into the streets, so I took a foto.I walked to enaco, where pukllasunchis is, about an hour, then went back to get a bike and go a bit further, but fairly soon after enaco there was a lot of traffic, i guess that section takes their strikes less seriously. This is at enaco, this was one of the bigger groups I saw minding the road blocks, there must have been about 50 people all sitting on the rocks they had brought into the streets. Mily says that they are more politically active in that area which is why they are more dedicated to the strike and not letting motorbikes pass like most of the other roadblocks. Most of the motorbikes can make it through the blocks and some make money by carrying people which the strikers dont appreciate and I hear can thusly be a little dangerous. I was worried they wouldnt let me pass on my bike since at time people throw rocks at bikes during strikes, but I had no problems, people seemed amused at the gringa crusing around. Yeah, thats the police in the background, it was the only real showing of police I saw during the strike as well.
So while it was quite interesting and I got to ride a bike for the first time in a while, I´m a little bummed, I stayed in Cusco for another week to teach another group, but now that I would only have one day, it´s impossible and I´m just going to help with a mini film showing. I leave cusco on saturday, sad...

soy un guia tambien

yesterday I was rousted at the ungodly hour of 745 to serve my first day as a guia to the sacred valley for diana and taylor. they really wanted to see the ruins and when i first volunteered to show them how to get there i was not curled up in bed listening to music and so thusly agreed to show them the ropes at so early oclock. we took a combination of combis and buses and walking to arrive in urubamba where another girl traveling stuck to us since she didnt know her way either. its sad, before i started traveling with other tourists/volunteers i rarely got ripped off but since, man, the combi ride for me solo was s/.40 and with the other girls was 2 soles a 5times fare hike, and this was after bargaining him down a bit. anyways i was much happier after we stopped off at hearts cafe in ollanta and had a coffee and scone and soon became a much more patient and knowledge filled guide. i showed the girls where to enter the ruins then went off to enjoy some sunshine in the plaza de armas. this is where i learned the pains of being a guide, recently i had been fantasicing about running of to peru and being a guide, you get to travel, i speak english i like the area etc, but now... i ran into the woman who owns the hospedaje where i stayed last time, who is also the cousin of one of my friends from ollanta, and she invited me to a wedding that was happening at the curch, i joined her and it was interesting. we watched them exchange vows and sign the papers and then small cups of champagne were passed around and more confetti (which is called pica pica) was poured on peoples heads, including mine, i woke up with confetti all over my pillow even after combing my hair last night. she also told me about some of the different wedding traditions. one that i was able to understand is that in the small towns they pass around a plate with the rings and people put money on it and there is a sort of rivarly between the brides and grooms side for who give more, in the city they give presents instead. i was invited to the party in a small town about 20 minutes away where there was no cell reception and said of course but i just needed to tell the other girls what was happening. i hate peruvian cell phones i tried to call them both for about 15 minutes and the phones kept telling me i had an incorrect number and so i watched the truck of wedding guests pull away. sad.
so i wandered around, chatted with some people i knew and waited for diana and taylor to return from the ruins. we found 20 soles on the ground and got a concillatory lunch and then later climbed up to the granary which is pretty cool and ill post pictures of later. all in all a good day.

happy dance

tee hee hee i have comments which means people read this, other than me. thanks!

updates

so its been awhile since ive posted anything. this last week has been vacation at pukllasunchis and so its been a delightful week of sleeping in late and watching a lot of movie. Mily has two new students living at her house now, im moving into daniellas room today for the next week as well. this is getting twisted so i´ll start at the beginning.
friday i worked with the students for the last day with the groups. it was rather complicated as a lot of the students wanted to go to a craft sale the school was holding, so i did a lot of shuffle students and very exciting, on the last day we were finally able to download sound from the recorder. fyi panasonic has a software which is the only way to remove audio from their devices and if you lose it its not available like a driver for free or anything, no they charge to replace it and thusly can go suck it...
so now we finished two movies, well finished one about arts at pukllasunchis and there is one on sports, but i would call it 80 percent finished.
saturday i went to ollantaytambo, i intended to stay only for the afternoon, but ran into some friends who convinced me to stay the night because there was music and dancing in celebration of reopening the church which had repairs done and mothers day and some important soccer game the next day, which evidently my friend is the president of the ollanta club or something (spanish confusion, iono) . i was in the streets dancing and drinking cerveza until 1130 when i wimped out of dancing at the discoteca and caught some zs.
sunday - no game since the other team didnt come, so i hightailed it back to cusco for a mothers day lunch with the family where we went for chifa, they dont use chopsticks often so they we amazed by my ninja chopstick skills. i then slept.
now monday and tuesday i think i just slept and watched movies and listened to music and played lots of rummikub as per usual.
wednesday and thursday- new students arrived, diana and taylor who go to duke i guess. ive been showing them around town since its their first time here and mily is working, they are going to volunteer at pukllasunchis teaching english and other stuff. i get to share my combi skills. we have walked soooo much and i get to try and remember all the stuff ive forgoten about cusco. i bought a scarf too. and they agreed to try cuy with me one day while im here.
the end
oh and i was already going to leave a week late in order to teach another group, but everyone in ollanta is gearing up for a giant festival thing and convinced me to stay. i dont want to leave yet anyways so its a good thing im here for another 2 weeks.

photos lost

this is going to be whiny so... so yesterday i watch el dentisto y su amigos fantasmos which i believe is ghost world in the us. anyways i was feeling energetic for some reason, not something that has been common in the afternoons after teaching or as it often is wrangling, so i decided to go into town. its about a 30 minute combi trip (by the way so far combi riding is neck and neck with improving my spanish as the thing im most proud of on this trip so far) and for some very odd reason i wanted to climb to the top of town. so i climbed and gasped for breath and climbed and gasped some more and cursed the lack of air here and finally i got high enough and took some awesome pictures and found some very cool street art and felt content. i bought tres leches cake to celebrate. today i worked with bridges students and we had some down time so i gave two of the students my camera to take photos they could print. yay stickers. and fun and whatever. they deleted all my photos, i managed to rescue everything i had taken monday and before but all the photos since, gone. whaaaaaa? and tears. i didnt have anything too unreplaceble, but all i can think of is that i have to climb that stupid hill again. so, anyone have any suggestions on how to avoid this in the future, ie good internet storage places? and i found ghost town fun is it only me?

ah ha photos

so i have started working with kids on bridges stuff, its fun although i was suppose to have some of the old students to help, but evidently they decided new student.s would be better and denied my request. and to be honest 12 students is too much for one mariko

this is the rooster that lives on the roof across the street. i will kill it. it is a broken rooster. there is nothing to crow at at 2 in the morning.


and the view from my room the other way. nice, eh?

language school

i have been taking spanish lessons at acupari again, which made me realize I dont like learning spanish in peru. in guatemala, whenever I got twitchy, the classes were cheap enough and the teachers laid back enough that i never felt bad about saying, hey lets just go to the market/bakery/anywhere but here, which was really fun. in acupari, which i guess mainly teaches german, its a lot less hangy outy and more studying and doing worksheets which begins to feel a lot like learning. so while i may be beginning to understand subjunctive, i still dont know the best place to get coffee in cusco.