I have so much to write, I don´t know where to start. But I only have ten minutes left at this cafe so that´s how much I will write. I have to go back and write all about going to the amazon jungle of iquitos with Mike. That was awesome. He is one of my favorite people and one of my top favorite people to travel with. We had such an amazing time, I will write about it later.

Last night and this morning I traveled from Lima to Arequipa. SEVENTEEN. hours. on.the.bus. My ipod broke hours before leaving. The only time it´s failed me the whole time I´ve been in Peru. I felt pretty alone after arriving. All the other little groups the hostel were cooking dinner together and planning their trips. I talked to some people, but was too tired to make as big of an effort as seemed to be required. I went to bed at 8:30 and woke up 6 feeling awesome. The owner of the hostel made us breakfast. She is awesome. Now I am waiting for the volunteer office to open. Supposedly they opened ten minutes ago but there was no one there. It´s $60 to volunteer, which is actually one of the cheapest I´ve found. I´m going to see if there is a way around it, though, so I will have more money to tour around. It´s not too late for people to come visit me! Once you get here it is very cheap, like $5 a night in a hostel, free breakfast and like $1 for dinner. And awesome places to visit. The deepest canyon in the world, although there is some debate on this, is here. and a museum with a perfectly preserved 13 year-old girl incan sacrifice. You know you want to . . . Ok. Now I go.

I´m still feeling blah after getting what I assumed was food poisoning earlier this week. I´ve been eating crackers and ginger ale all day. Ginger ale is the sh--. Can I just say. I always forget how good it is, then I want it when I´m sick, then I forget how good it is. But it´s just as well here, it´s more expensive than other sodas here.

Mike is coming to visit me and we are going to the jungle. We are all so casual in my family, it´s hilarious. My mom emailed saying Mike´s flight got off. He asked if I would pick him up and she said "I assume so." I cracked up. We´re all like that, I think. Just get on a plane and assume everything will work out. Ha ha.

The Peep Show is probably the funniest show I have ever seen. One character to another:
-You stepped on his foot!
-That was an accident!
-No it wasn´t!
-Well it could have been! I made sure that it could have been.


-Why do you like that guy? Is it because he´s black?
-No! I hadn´t even noticed that he´s black!
-Well, you´re making a huge mistake because he´s terrible at being black! I´m a better black man than he is.

And so many others, some slightly inappropriate . . .

If she sees me all the time, eventually she´ll start liking me, the way people start having sex with each other in prison.

Sick in bed, flipping channels between the phils in spanish and "the other sister," mostly because they are close to each other and my remote broke so I have to stand up to change the channel. Ten minutes later: ok, that ended. Now the end of Haarper´s Island. Now, some other things. Now, this reality tv show called I´m a celebrity, get me out of here. With hiedi and spencer from the hills reality show. but after looking at heidi for more than 20 seconds, i think she looks like the french girl in inglorious bastards, which was really pretty great. this show, on the other hand, is of course terrible, but i can´t look away. also, i don´t want to get up to change the channel. also, i don´t feel like using caps. i´m sick.

in better news, i have started playing chess. i never wanted to learn before, it seemed so boring. but i actually love it. tomorrow jorge and i are going on a picnic. it will be so romantic.
today was not romantic. i was alone and sick and trying to make travel plans for mike and i to go to the jungle. but the airline i was trying to buy tickets through LAN charges non-peruvians a way higher price than peruvians because they hate me. but i love them so i am still looking.

Friday night going to bed early because of work tomorrow. Bottle Rocket is on! I take back every bad thing I ever said about peruvian television programming choices. Owen Wilson at his finest, Luke Wilson at his best. I forgive them for every wretched film they went on to make without wes anderson. Eating these chocolate-covered coconut cookies called picaras. It´s scary how much fun I can have by myself.

I´ve never been much of a "friends" fan, but here I usually wind up watching it while I eat lunch. Last night I had these dream that I was with the whole cast and we were on one of these huge, red, double-decker bus that they have here. And they were talking about how they throw birthday parties for each other. And I was like "hey, joey, you guys never throw me birthday parties." And he was like "you need to be more assertive and demand that we throw you a birthday party." And I was all like aw, man, maybe he´s right. I need to be more assertive. I was also having trouble making all my luggage fit together. I kept reorganizing it and trying to make smaller bags fit into bigger bags, so I was the last person to get off the bus when we stopped. What does it mean? I don´t know. Linda?
Tomorrow, I am here for 6 more weeks. I´m thinking about what I want to make of this time. My brother and I are going to the jungle in a few weeks. And I´m thinking of working in an orphanage in Arequipa, a province like ten hours away, for two weeks.
It´s still freezing cold here at night, but usually hot and sunny in the middle of the day.
I´ve been taking taxis recently, because I need to get from one job to another in thirty minutes during rush hour. Every taxi driver has a different route to get to the same place. Peru: just because you´re making a right-hand turn doesn´t mean you need to get in the right lane. No, you can be in the left lane and just turn right in front of the lane on your right. Very interesting.

ayacucho

On Friday Jorge and I got on a bus for Ayacucho. We were in the front seats on the second story of a double-decker bus. So nice, they gave us pillows, blankets, cookies, sandwhiches, tea, and Les Mis in spanish. TEN HOURS LATER we arrived. I am not a morning person. Sometimes I even want to kill people when I wake up too early. Also, traveling makes me irritable. But we took a taxi to his friend´s house and they gave us food. Then we went around to see the town square, cathedrals and stuff and got lucama ice cream with chocolate chips. Lucuma is this really awesome fruit used in desserts. It was so hot and sunny- awesome because up until last week it´s been freezing in Lima. Then we went to this cultural museum. I have a picture with scene-in-a-box thing they have here. They´re so gorgeous. Usually there are nativity scenes inside, but it can be anything- any kind of religious or secular scenes, from an inch tall to one of this size.The coolest one I saw was in a market, a scene of a shop with people making all these crazy masks.

Then we took a nap and woke up to lunch waiting for us. They made pachamanca, which I think I wrote about before. They take all kinds of things, chicken, pork, sweet potatoes, corn, sometimes fish, sometimes platains, these big green beans like soy beans that are really good, then cook them in banana leaves or a big pot, and cook them in steam in a hole in the ground with rocks on top. So delicious.

Then we checked out more of the area. It´s the dry season so a lot of it looks desert-y. It´s a really rural area. You can see mountains all around you, and also big piles of dirt. Then we went back to the town square and got juice. The center looks like the town square in Cusco. I´m going to miss all the juice places here, of every imaginable combination. We got peach and pineapple juice and it was so romantic. Then it got dark and we went outside to the park and it was a holy day for a virgin and they had all these amazing fireworks. We took a video, I´ll put it up later.

The next morning we woke up early and took an hour and a half taxi ride to somewhere else in Ayacucho where the Spanish army surrendered to the Peruvian independence army. It was a group taxi, and we sat with a Canadian nun who has lived here for four years. She went with us to the site of the monument to the generals in the war. A ton of other countries helped peru defeat Spain.


Then some kids who were hanging around asked us if we wanted to take a horseback ride to see waterfalls nearby.
It was fun. I haven´t ridden a horse in so long. We only walked, but it was still fun. Jorge´s horse was way too small for him, which was pretty entertaining.


It was so beautiful! We got off our horses and walked down this steep trail down to the stream, freezing cold from the andes mountains. They had a few mini huts with benches to relax, so we sat down and looked at the mountains and waterfalls.

Then we walked around different artisinal markets and food markets. We ate ceviche and caldo gallina, hen soup. So good. We wanted to try cuy (guinea pig) but it seemed too hot to eat weird fried pets for the first time. Oh yeah, also, this whole time I´m getting sunburned. I haven´t worn sunscreen in like 4 months, and I didn´t think it would be that hot in Ayacucho. I brought face sunscreen, but it wasn´t enough.

Then we went to the house where the Spanish signed surrender papers. This is one of the cannons from the war.

And this is a doorway of a really old church.

Then we rode the bus home and took another nap. We woke up a little irritable-my shoulders were burnt to a crisp and Jorge was coming down with the flu. But we agreed that we had a wonderful trip. Then there was a thunder and lightning storm! I didn´t realize how much I´ve missed those. It never even rains in Lima. This one was awesome, and felt so good on my sunburn. Then we packed our stuff, and went back to the juice place. Then took the bus back to the Lima. There was a crying baby on the bus. But he wasn´t too bad. He only cried for like half an hour of the ten hour ride, so we counted our blessings. That´s all I can think of for now. One last picture: