I love it here...

Sorry it's been awhile since I last updated, I hardly ever get online and when I do it's pretty slow.

I'll start off with my volunteer news:

I'm going to continue working at the Jardín de Niños de San Cristóbal (Saint Cristopher's Kindergarten) and I absolutely love it there, BUT they have a two week vacation so during one of those weeks I'll work at Yanapay and we're still not sure about the second week yet. This means I only have 2 weeks left with the kids at Saint Cristopher's so I'm a little sad about that, but still glad I'm getting the chance to work there. A typical day consists of me hearing about how the US did in the world cup, Karla's pregnant mother, and Fátima's birthday party, but between the students' stories I have to stop Joaquín from breaking the copying machine and Clara from cutting off her pigtails. I love my job, I already want to come back to work there next summer!!

In Cusco news:

I keep getting more and more attached to this city, I couldn't have chose a better place to stay this summer. Most of the people from the ISA group went out to the discoteca last Thursday night and it was a lot of fun! Mama Julia even came!! Last Thursday, we also celebrated the Virgin Carmen. Mama Julia is devotedly Catholic and invited us to her house to pray and eat. It was a really great cultural experience and very sacred.

Last Friday, the whole city celebrated the Virgin Carmen.

We took the kids from Saint Cristopher's to a cathedral to watch a parade and the loved it! The people of Cuzco loved seeing a "gringa" working at a local school, seriously. Multiple people asked the other teachers what I was doing there, it was pretty funny for them. Last Friday, the group also took salsa dancing lessons together and it just reminded me how bad I am at dancing. It was still a lot of fun, though! I've been going to the markets around the city a lot, but still haven't really done any shopping, but I plan on starting today.

In travel news:

Yesterday we went to the Sacred Valley, which is made up of a lot of small towns around Cuzco. We visited ruins in Ollantay, which reminded me a lot of Machu Picchu. We also visited a Llama and Alpaca farm! We got to feed the animals and it was so much fun, we were like a bunch of 4-year-olds!!

We also went to Nelly's house. She is a woman who wears the traditional Inca clothes and speaks Quechua (and Spanish and English). There, they showed us how the dye the yarn to make clothes, scarves, hats, bags, etc, out of alpaca, sheep, and llama fur. It was really interesting and I took some cool photos that I'll put on facebook later.

When we got home Estéban and Mateo were dancing to Michael Jackson, which is what they do most nights. Mateo was wearing a bandana around his head because he wants to look more like Micah. It was so funny and cute I had to take a picture!

I'll try to be better about updating my blog this week. We're taking the students at Saint Cristopher's on more field trips so I'm excited to have some good pictures and good stories.