Tierra Sagrada

Okay, I apologize to those of you who faithfully follow my blog for not having written in several days. My life in Perú continues to get increasingly more hectic and so I haven´t been able to find the time to sit down and write. I´m going to give a pretty brief run down of the goings-on in my life for the past several days because I don´t have time to go into extreme detail.

Last Thursday night I climbed up to Cristo Blanco which is a large statue of Christ outside the city near the ruins of Sacsayhuaman (sexy woman, for those of you who don´t speak Quechua). Like I said, every time I have to climb some giant hill I always end up seeing something spectacular. In this case, I got a view of the entire city of Cusco which was absolutely breathtaking. What´s so amazing is that Cusco cannot expand because of the mountains, and so it will essentially be the size that it is now forever. That concept is so refreshing given that I live in a city (and a culture) that lives for expansion.

Friday morning I went to the boys´ home and was the only person that day. I worked with Ronald and we were much more successful, but a pattern with all of the boys is that after awhile once they know they´re nearing the end of their work, they go absolutely insane. Luckily I got him to stay with me until we finished, but as soon as he was done he bolted out the door to go play. I spent the next hour or so just playing and hanging out with the boys and then told them I had to leave and they all got really sad and told me not to go. I told them I had to go to lunch and they told me to eat with them. So I told them I was going to come back later and they said, "Yeah, but if you stay, then you won´t have to come back!" It was so cute and wonderful. Finally they let me leave, but I was almost crying because I was so touched.

Anyway, I went home and ate lunch with the family and then Jackie and I came to town to go some shopping. I needed to go to the pharmacy to buy bandages for the boys (something you´d think they´d have...) and also lice shampoo (as a preventative measure, because some of the girls have them). After that Jackie accompanied me back to the boys´home so I could perform some basic impromptu medical care for one of the boys, Kevin, who had a really bad open wound on his hand that apparently no one thought to treat. He was so quiet the whole time I was wrapping his hand, but afterwards he was really appreciative.

Ashley and Danielle were also there and told me that they were going to take one of the boys out to dinner on Saturday for his birthday and asked me if I wanted to come. Then he came over and asked me if I was coming and seemed so excited and so I said yes. This kid is absolutely wonderful but is usually pretty quiet and so I was never sure if he liked me all that much, but he seemed pretty insistent that I be there as well (potentially because I´m the only one who speaks Spanish). So we settled on that and then Jackie and I went home for dinner.

Later that night Ashley, Danielle, Jackie and I went out to Mama Africa which is this ridiculous club in the heart of Cusco. I went solely because I´ve seen Ashley dance before and it´s the single most hilarious thing I´ve ever seen. I saw one of the teachers from the Spanish school there which was kind of awkward (I then had class with him today for the first time which is funny). It was kind of nice to hear some ultra poppy music that reminded me of home.

Saturday afternoon, Jackie and I went on a city tour with another girl who goes to Yale. The first stop was La Catedral, which I already saw for free during Corpus Cristi, so I decided not to pay the ridiculous entrance fee of 25 soles and waited outside for 45 minutes for the tour to finish. In that time some Peruvian men struck up a conversation with me (an every day occurance) which was a nice way to kill the time. Once the rest of the group came outside, we headed to Qorikancha (which was the Inca Pachacutec´s palace back in the day). So, a little sidenote is that Cusco has this thing called a boleto turístico which allows entrance into 16 museums and ruins sites in and around Cusco. The crappy thing about this ticket is that you can´t get into any of them if you don´t have the ticket. I assumed that the tour was going to hit all the points on that ticket (Qorikancha is not on it, nor is La Catedral) so I didn´t bring any money with me other than what I was going to use later that night to take the boys out to dinner. It would have been nice had someone indicated that we would be going to places that required a separate entrance fee, but that´s okay. Jackie also did not have enough money to enter, so she, the other girl and I went to grab a cup of a coffee while the rest of the group was in Qorikancha. After that we went to Sacsayhuaman, Puka Pukara and Tambomachay which are all ruins just outside of Cusco proper (and all on the boleto turístico). I enjoyed this part of the tour except for the fact that we were only at each place for a very short period of time and the ruins were somewhat unimpressive having already been to Machu Picchu.

Anyway, we made it back to the city around 6:20 and I basically ran about 15 blocks to the boys´home to meet up with everyone in time. What happens from this point on is extremely complicated so I will give the abridged version. Ashley and Danielle asked on of the directors if it was okay if we took Floy (the boy whose birthday it was) and his brother out to dinner and she said yes but we had to fill out a form. When we got there on Saturday, the woman working said there was no way to access the form because the office was locked and she didn´t have keys. She told us to come back the next day or sometime later that week for a rain check which was not what we had promised Floy. So I had to search for like 30 minutes to find a way to call the director (none of us has a cell phone) to ask her permission and when I finally did, she was all for and totally enthusiastic. She simply said to have them back by 9:00.

So we all went out to dinner in the Plaza de Armas and the boys were absolutely loving it. We were playing and joking around and it was great. Then Danielle looked at her watch and said that it was 8:30 and we still hadn´t gotten our food. So then all of start to have a bit of a panic attack so I run out to the street and find a cell phone to call the director. Luckily she was totally fine with it and told me not to worry and just to have the boys home as soon as possible. Once I told the boys that they seemed so relieved and started to enjoy themselves again. Floy said, "Adriana, if we don´t have to back at nine, can we just go back tomorrow?" It was really endearing.

As we leave the restaurant, I asked Floy if he wanted to take a walk around the Plaza de Armas before heading back to the hogar. He said no and said he was bored and wanted to go home. Literally five minutes before he was having the time of his life and none of us knew what had happened. On the cab ride back, he wouldn´t look at or talk to any of us. When we got back to the hogar, I asked his brother what had happened and he told me, "He´s bitter because you all have money and he doesn´t." So I tried to talk to Floy but he wasn´t feeling it which is completely understandable, so I told him we´d all see him on Monday. As I was leaving, a different woman from the one earlier asked me what happened and I told her what Armando told me and she started saying, "You´re not supposed to give them money (we didn´t) and you´ve made all the other boys feel bad for favoring the mal criados (which means "poorly raised") and you were supposed to be back at nine and it´s almost ten" etc. I told her that we didn´t give the boys money and that we only took Floy out because it was his birthday and that I had talked to the director about being late and she said it was okay and everything but it didn´t really make a difference. I started crying and at that point she said, "Oh, but thanks anyway for taking them out." So the evening ended on a very poor note.

Sunday I spend the entire day in the Sacred Valley and went to Pisaq, Ollantaytambo and Chinchero. This was by far the best tour I´ve had because it was in Spanish! Again, the ruins were not quite as amazing as Machu Picchu, but still lovely nonetheless. The main problem was that I was so exhausted emotionally from the night before and physically from being so busy all week that I just didn´t enjoy it to the full extent that I could have. I got back to the house around 7:30 (after leaving twelve hours earlier), ate dinner and went straight to bed.

This morning I went to the boys´house and all things considered had a pretty successful day. Floy was more or less responsive to me but he´s definitely still coping with all of his emotions from the weekend which is understandable. I just told him that I´m open to hearing whatever he has to tell me but he doesn´t have to tell me anything if he doesn´t want to. I have a lot to say on this matter but not at the moment. I re-wrapped Kevin´s hand and then all the boys started running up to me showing me random cuts and asked me for my magical crema (aka Neosporin). One of the boys had some really bad sores so I wrapped his hand as well. I´m so excited that I get to go again tomorrow!

I had Spanish classes this afternoon with the teacher I saw in the club (which made for a really funny start to our class) which went well. As I was leaving the school I met a guy from Belgium and another guy who lives in Denver (!) and talked to them for a bit.

And now I´m off to my house to eat dinner and then I´m coming back to the Plaza to hang out with one of my new Peruvian friends. I think there´s a party going on in Cusco tonight...but then again there´s a party going on in Cusco every night.

Chau,
Adrien