Hey everyone. Happy Mother´s Day!!! Mother´s Day in Perú is a BIG deal so this morning all of Hermalinda´s kids and grandkids were at the house. They were all eating ceviche and Edgar leaned over to me and said, "We eat this after drinking too much the night before." Haha. My señor and señora are party animals. Last night we all left the house at the same time and they got home two hours after I did.
Anyway, yesterday morning I took a shower* then went to the lavandería to have some clean ropa next week (always a plus). Then, I went with Hermalinda (my señora), her niece Ana and her grandson Mauricio to the cementerio so that Hermalinda could leave flowers for her mother before Mother´s Day. This particular cementerio is pretty far out of town, so we had to take a bus higher up into the mountains to get there. As much as I love Colorado, I have never seen tierra as beautiful as in the Andean countryside. Cusco looked so small and tranquil the higher we climbed. Hermalinda pointed out the railroad that goes to Machu Picchu as well, which snakes through these little towns further from the city. It just made me all the more excited to go to Machu Picchu next weekend (!!!).
When we got to the cementerio, almost every grave had a vase filled with flowers right behind the tombstone. Since family is such a big priority here, it seems like people go to great lengths to honor the deceased (especially on days as important as Mother´s Day). Hermalinda arranged her flowers, lit some incense and a cigarette (her mom was a smoker) and put them around the grave marker. It was a really beautiful moment and I´m very grateful that she allowed me to come to experience it.
Apparently yesterday there was a partido de fútbol in Cusco, but I was so tired I decided not to go (plus it was raining like crazy). Instead I watched telenovelas and read In Defense of Food (yes, I have time to read here, and yes Mom, Dad and Adam, I am almost finished). At eight o´clock I went with this guy I met earlier in the day on my walk back from the lavandería to the Plaza de Armas. He´s from Lima (brichero, maybe), used to live in Ecuador, and has lived in Cusco before. Anyway, it was nice to go out with someone and practice my español with someone who knows the city.
Anyway, today I´m going to the Museo Inka which is really exciting. Apparently they have an absolutely astonishing collection of all things Inca (as one would assume given the name). Mañana I go to work with the boys at eight in the morning, so no Cusco night life for me today.
Chau,
Adrien
*Abandon all preconceived notions of what it means to take a shower. When I say I ¨took a shower,¨what I really mean is that I stuck my head under a freezing cold trickle of water for about ten minutes just kind of hoping that shampoo was being washed out (and usually, it isn´t).
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In our dorms in China, the "shower" just meant you turned on the water faucet a few feet above the toilet, which had a shower head on it. (The entire bathroom was the size of Adam and I's bathroom here, so imagine if the bathtub and shower door were gone; that's kind of what it looked like.) It's weird to slip onto a toilet while taking a shower, but it made cleaning the bathroom easy!
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