The Weekend

So tomorrow when I wake up I will have officially been in Cusco for exactly a week. Feels like a year. This weekend was amazing, I had no idea how many students were enrolled in the school, since I only knew the kids from my class but I met a bunch of new people with whom I can practice spanish because most of us are on the same level.

On Saturday I got to sleep in but wound up waking up at 9 anyways. My host mother made me breakfast consisting of chicken thigh, rice and beans in a sort of red Indian sauce with peas. For some reason, though completely out of context, was one of the best breakfasts iv ever had.

At about 1 I walked down to the Plaza de Armas and met up with Allie and Paola (other united planet students) because we were signed up for an XTREME city tour. We were all very curious what this could have meant since we all thought it would only be a walking tour to see the churches and such. We piled into a van (not a VW) and drove first to a museum to view Incan time art and architecture. It was all so interesting but I kept being distracted by our tour guide who just kept talking and talking not even about what we were seeing. We were with other people from the Netherlands and Holland as well, but not from the school they simply signed up on their own.

One of the most interesting things I saw in this specific museum was something that would continue to reoccur throughout the entire tour. The exact measurements and placement of the stone for the Incan foundations. The trapezoid frame for their doors in anticipation of earthquakes and the symmetrical holes found all around the foundation for the placement of silver or gold plates, depending on the gender of the person residing there. After the museum, we took the van up the mountains to view other ruins that have only recently become controlled. Before these sites were protected by the government people would use the Incan cut stones for their own houses, since they were already so perfect.

The first site we went to, I apologize for not remembering the name but my receipt is in my room, was a sacrifice arena. There was the alter perfectly cut once again and proof that archaeologists only found last year, the bones of the llama and alpaca. Also a few human bones were found and its said that they stopped having human sacrifices once they found out that the llama and alpaca had a similar number of bones. So even though it wasn't practiced for long, there were also cuts into the wall about 3x3ft because once a human was sacrificed, they were mummified in the fetal position and placed into the walls of this structure. Just to paint a picture the structure was seriously a boulder that had been scooped out from the inside in the pattern of a snake.

After we traveled a bit farther to another ruin called Sacsayhuaman which I remember because with an accent it sounds similar to sexy woman, and most of the Europeans found this the most amusing aspect of the entire day. This place, was the most amazing thing iv ever seen. We didn't have much time because it began to sun pour but I felt something through the land that was indescribable. Our guide pointed out a piece of land that had been dug out and said that only 6 months ago archaeologists found more Incan foundations 20feet under the ground. Thinking about that I wondered for the rest of the day what I could be standing over. He then said something else that caused me to recluse into my own mind, that fossils of fish and shells had also been found in almost every single boulder used to create this structure. Its difficult to imagine when a land is completely covered by modern structures and concrete but in Cusco, it is surrounded by virgin mountains and you can see it, the divots and the waves from billions of years ago.

now I'm rambling but it was enchanting.

After the tour I went out for dinner with Paola and then headed home, stopping in the market to buy a teddy bear made out of alpaca wool and is now named Cusco or CoCo for short.

I met Allie later for second dinner cause her host parents were making cuy (Guinea pig) and my host parents dont make me dinner.

Then today, I woke up very early to walk to the Plaza de Armas again to meet up with my group for the ATVs. We rode for 5 hours and circled Cusco in the mountains. We rode through little villages in the mountains and I saw adobe fields and men and women alike creating the bricks. This was also really interesting to me because until today adobe was just a vocabulary word we needed to know for social studies in 9th grade. It was very cool to see these fields and the finished products. I tipped my bike and broke the clutch so I had to pay 30$ US for them to ship over a new one plus labor. I dont understand how this is possible.

And this weekend I was also very lucky to witness 5 weddings. Gorgeous dresses.
Today especially with the church music it was beautiful.

but now its time for tea with my family,
hasta