Exploring. June 22nd

Today our mama took us around the city. She lives right next door to the university in cusco and probably within a 20 to 30 minute walk of everything else. There are a million taxis here-all of the drivers are insane. I think everytime we have gotten inside one my life is on the line. Luckily they can’t drive too fast because of traffic. Maria Elena took us to lunch with 4 other girls (all of which are from the U.S.  except one girl now is a Peruvian native). The lunch was different. It consisted of warm juice, soup with all kinds of meat chunks and vegetables, chicken, rice, and beets, and a small warm juice dessert after. After lunch we went to the market to buy more bread for dinner and breakfast the next day. As we were walking out a man asked if he could look in Maria Elena’s purse and she told him it was no problem. She showed him and he said that on the store camera he saw her shove contact lenses in her bag. She was furious-she went and found the ‘jefe’ (boss) and gave him a piece of her mind. In the markets down here, you are supposed to leave your (bigger) bags in little bins/shelves toward the front of the market to prevent from stealing. Talk about sketchy…haha. After the market Maria Elena took us to our Spanish class where we met our teacher, Walter. He is the cutest man ever. He is 62 and has the patience of a saint. He wears a little ‘newsies’ cap and has little wispy hairs that come out from underneath it. If rach and I start to laugh about something uncontrollably he laughs too.  Needless to say, we love him. We also met this boy that works in the front office of our Spanish class. He is originally from California so he speaks good English. He moved to peru in 2004 and has only gone back to the states to visit every year. Anyways, he is hilarious and such a womanizer. Rach and I still have no idea how to pronounce his name. As we left class tonight he gave us his card and said the funniest thing ever-“Maria Elena will be the angel on one of your shoulders and I will be the devil on your other.” We died laughing. People here haven’t really understood that we don’t drink-not just because we aren’t 21. The drinking age here is 18 and seriously it seems cusco finds a reason for partying and celebrating every day of the week. It has been so interesting here! We then went to the orphanage where Rachel and I were whisked away from each other with no explanation of what to do. We hung out in separate houses with different girls and it was somewhat awkward because most of the time the girls just wanted to watch telenovelas! I taught a few girls some English words-they were infatuated with my eyes and English. When I first walked in they said “what is your name?” in very broken English, so I replied, “me llamo morgan.” Instantly the girls were like “no no no! in English please!!!” it cracked me up. Once 9:20 hit we left the orphanage and came home ready to go to bed since we had to wake up for Spanish classes super early!