Huy, lunes!

Huy, lunes! I was not ready to wake up because I stayed up late reading a blog of my friend Amy who is WWOOFing in Hawaii. I had a couple weeks to catch up on, and I got a late start. She is farming with Japanese women right now, and I found myself remembering my days on the farm in Japan. But I have been waiting all weekend for Monday! Not because I could foresee the Rockies sweeping the Diamondbacks (news I credit Betty for), but because I like school. Jason, Manuela, and I are joined by Karoline, a Swedish student. Magda and Nuri are our new teachers, and I like them both. Even more exciting is learning a new tense – el pasado. I came home talking for lunch talking about what we did, what I’ve done, what’s happened. It was exciting to practice this new tense. Poco loco, you think, but really it has opened up a whole new level of conversing. Coincidentally, Gloria is correcting me for even more. Manuela and I planned to meet after lunch in our respective homes – my first real play date in a long time! We wanted to hike somewhere, but by the time we met up and talked about it, we really only had at most two and a half hours of light left. So we hiked to el Cristo blanco. It was a pretty steep grade, though it didn’t take long. We found some paths to meander and vistas to capture in photos. I can’t imagine taking as many pictures as I have with a film camera! We wandered back down some llama paths (really probably people, too, but they were that kind of skinny dirt line through a hill of a lot more dirt) and found ourselves in a barrio pobre’s back yard. A young girl helped point the way to the trail that went between the houses, but with the materials for building that they slid down the hill (easier than carrying up), we were really scrambling not to ruin something. Manuela joked that we were being bad tourists. It seems a bit redundant, but anyways, we made it out. On little ledges a llama or alpaca would be resting. Children were sliding down a cement chute along the steep stairs on plastic bags – I think it is meant for water drainage primarily and playground second, but the laughter was music to my ears. Winding through the streets, we came to one of Manuela’s favorite cafes, so we stopped for refreshment – hierba luisa tea and mango pie for me – muy buena. This made a nice snack before going back to school for a brief presentation on Sacsayhuaman (Incan ruins meant to look like the head of a puma from an aerial shot, but pronounced similarly to “sexy woman”). Dinner and an early bed time were in order for me, though I would have gotten online if there was a signal. Not a bad Monday for being un poca cansada. Sweet dreams…victoria