La Vida Nueva

After a long day of surfing in Lima, I went to bed pretty early on Friday only to get up at 2:30 am to catch my 5:30 flight to Cusco where I’ll be spending my next few months.

The sun rising over the Andes from 30,000 feet.

My new place

My new place part 2

I arrived at my new place around 7:30 am where I was greeted by my "host mother" and her 10 year old nephew who is living in the house for the next few months with his mom, dad, and 2 week old brother. Little by little, the rest of the family woke up and came to the kitchen to greet me and eat breakfast. After being in the house for about a half hour, I stood up to meet one of the cousins staying there when I knocked my cup of tea off the table only to watch it shatter over the ground...great start! Things got better after that when my host mother asked me if I did drugs, fabulous! I think she was joking as we were talking about "mata de coca" a tea made from coca leaves at that time, but considering I only understand about 70% of what the family says, there’s no way to really tell!

Aside from those two incidents I’ve been having a really good time and really like my host family thus far. I think the 10 year old, Jueseph, who talks non stop will really help me with my Spanish. The 24 year old college student, Cesar, and I are going to play some soccer later today and I think he’ll be fun to hang out with. Finally, I’m pretty excited to get to know the cute 26 year old daughter, Denisse, a bit more ;) I have plans to go salsa dancing next week with her and her friends!

Lastly, the house...I think it’s going to be a bit of an adjustment to the new standard of living. I was excited when I found out they had "hot" water in their shower, only to be later disappointed when I discovered that hot meant 55 degrees and not the normal 40 of the rest of the water in the house. To add to the cold, it gets down to about 35 here at night and there’s no heat or insulation in the house...sweatshirts, long underwear for me! Did I mention we’re raising guinea pigs to eat for dinner about a month from now when they’re big enough. In addition, we use buckets of water filled from the sink to flush the one toilet shared by 9 people.



That being said, I think I’m adjusting rather quickly, and the whole family is VERY nice. Hopefully in another few weeks I won’t even think about it!

Until next time, keep livin´ the dream!

Dinner!

The local supermarket