still in Cusco...

Well i have now had two Spanish and am starting to understand bits of conversations, like a word here and there and putting it together, but still not great. The Spanish we did was really hard and somehow i ended up in the higher group, but then 5 minutes into the lesson there was a mysterious knock on the door and the teacher went out and came back and told me to swap groups! boohoo, that was so embarrassing i got bumped down to the intermediate class, but apparently it was a mistake but i stayed anyway to avoid further embarrasment. The lesson was quite easy and i already knew most of the stuff we covered, but it was still worth going over i guess.

I'm really surprised their is very little peruvian food to try. i was looking forward to eating some interesting dishes but so far all it has been is chicken and chips, or steak, or spaghetti bolognaise...aghhhh!!! apparently when we go to the village we will have more traditional food. For example, the other night we went to dinner a t a place called "surf and turf" ...yeh it's traditional Cusco tourist food.

I'm quite tired today because we had our official welcome dinner last night (even though i have now been away for exactly a week) where we went to dinner (i had steak of course) and the interesting thing about going out here is that if you order a drink they do not measure the alcohol, so if you have, hypothetically um say, gee i don't know, a vodka and sprite, then you get a big glass, and they free-pour the vodka till hypothetically (if this happened) it would fill up half the glass, and then the rest is lemonade. So you get about three drinks in one. At the dinner we met the family of the lady we will be living with in Huaran, they must have a big house to fit us all in. At dinner there was a group playing who were doing Columbian rap! After dinner we had our first big night out where we went to a club that is popular with the locals. There was a popular local salsa band playing and it was very crowded. The waiters carried the glasses on the ir heads instead of on a tray or, heaven forbid, just in your hands, and danced along as they walked about serving drinks! The band eventually finished but the music continued and there was a really good atmosphere and a lot of short Peruvian men looking for a dancing partner. Some of the other girls were about the right height but for me it would have been like Lauren Jackson (is that her name?) dancing with Frodo...that would be quite a sight! well i exaggarate but it is fairly common that poeple will approach tourists in the hope of gaining a australian passport or something...anyway, enough of that, it was a really really fun night.

Yesterday i had a really good experience at a church funded children's clinic just on the edge of Cusco called the San juan Clinic where there are diabled children who live there. It was saturday so they had free time and no therapy so a bunch were able to play with the kids. All are in wheelchairs so i ended up partnering up with a three old girl who was very cute but also i think very aware that she could make me do what she wanted. So she said parque, and i wheelded her outside to the elaborate play equipment designed for wheelchairs, and the ball pit with coloured balls. i lifted her out ofht e chair and then i realised i had to move her legs for her when she sat on the equipment. I was glad i learned some colours that monring in the lesson because it was the main way of communicating using the yellow, green and blue plastic balls we played a game. I found it very challenging as not only had i never looked after a disabled child before but also we had no common language so iwas using what very little Spanish i had to talk to her. I actaully learned some words from her too. I ended up wheeling her inside and outside and to the soccerfield and back and forth about five times in the hour. It must get quite boring and lonely for the kids so they obviously know how to make the most of visitors. I felt a bit guilty and heartless that other ppl in the group were crying a bit as we left the clinic, but i didn't feel like crying becasue i had just spent an hour laughing and playing with a child who otherwise would have been watching TV, and also the clinic is very well funded. They seem to have many volunteers that come to stay with them, so i actually felt very happy and optimistic.

i have to keep reminding myself i am in Cusco, in Peru, in South America, on the other side of the world... it's easy to forget that! wow