Temple of the Moon

Hi friends!

So exam week was awesome, but the days post exam week are even more awesome! I obviously had to do no planning which is great, but I also get to sit on my butt during all of my classes! I have the quizzes and grades, so students can come in as they please to check their grades and then leave after they've asked questions. No one came to my first two classes, so I sat on the computer and talked to Mom for a while. A few of my jovenes came, but they left after getting their grades and asking if I was going to be their teacher next month (how cute). So now I get to play on the computer and update my blog! Aren't you all lucky. And tomorrow, I get to sleep in!!! We come in at 9:00am, have a meeting, then grade exams if we had any (as opposed to quizzes, exams are 2 days long). We finish up at 5! It's like a normal human being's schedule for once. Should be spectacular. Oh, and it's payday! The rest of the week is "first days of classes" so not much to plan for. Such a great week.

As for this weekend, it was another good one! We went out for a few drinks on Thursday because Friday we just had to give exams. I'm really in love with this "maracuya sour" drink. It's a Pisco Sour, but made with fresh passion fruit (maracuya) juice. Delicious! Friday we had a few drinks at our house, then I went with my friend Maddy to salsa a little bit (i just watched this time...), and the rest of the gang met us out later. Saturday we went to brunch at this adorable little place that has phenomenal waffles. I haven't had a waffle in so long, it was a treat. Afterwards, we went to the market to get some produce. I was adventurous this time and finally got some fruit like apples and peaches. Maddy gets fruit and veggies all the time and hasn't gotten sick, so I'm throwing caution to the wind and eating what I want! We had a relaxed night...I made curry-ginger-lentil soup again and we watched 50/50. Great movie if you haven't seen it yet. Sunday, I woke up early and went to free yoga finally! It felt phenomenal. I'll definitely be going every week. Maddy made us breakfast at her place, and then we hiked up to the Temple of the Moon up in the hills above the city. It is definitely my favorite hike in Cusco so far. You would never know that there's a city just over the next hill. I'm definitely taking all of my visitors there.


All good things here in Cusco! I have at least 2 packages on their way which really gives you something to look forward to....thanks Mom & Aunt Cathy! Love love love my friends & family!

Exam Week!

Exam week is GLORIOUS. I only had to plan 1-2 days of teaching. The rest of the week I'm playing review games like Jeopardy and Bingo, and giving practice quizzes during which I get to sit on my butt. Phenomenal! I've had so much time during my breaks I've actually been productive! Well, Monday I napped, but yesterday was productive! I dropped off my laundry, went to the supermarket, went on my first run in Peru, went to the market (produce & such), baked chocolate-banana bread, AND showered. Amazing. Today so far I've picked up my laundry, cleaned, and am in the process of cooking granola. Exam week + coffee=amazing.

Anyhoo, since my last post 2 days ago I've received numerous (like, at least 6) e-mails/messages asking what I want from home that people can send me. A. I have amazing friends and family. B. If people want to send me goodies, who am I to stand in their way? Haha. So I figured I'd make a little list and put it on here.

1. Things that smell good (candles, lotions, etc). Cusco is a city of many smells---none of them good. I miss things that smell good!

2. Anything involving nuts. JIF peanut butter, the flavored almonds & toffee pecans we snacked on at BFG, trail mix...

3. Magazines!

4. Shampoo/Conditioner/Face Lotion...Even the weird Peruvian brand shampoos/conditioners are outrageously expensive, and any decent quality skincare products cost more than I spend on food in 2 weeks. The ONLY reason I miss Walmart is simply that I can't buy this stuff without forking over 1/4 of my paycheck.

5. Coffee. Peru exports almost 100% of their delicious coffee, so we're stuck with Nescafe instant stuff. It's like mud. I will cry tears of joy the day I can step foot in a Wawa or Dunkin Donuts and have a cup of amazingly delicious coffee. And a hoagie :)


For the millionth time, you all are the best friends & family a girl could ask for! Even the THOUGHT of sending me stuff makes me super happy. I'll obviously be returning the favor by bringing home tons and tons of sweet Peruvian gifts :) I already have a drawer full!

Today is a nasty, rainy day so my butt is headed to the couch for a movie! While I cook of course!

"My friend Adan is kind of gay"

Hi friends & fam,

First of all, I have to say how much I'm loving all of you right now. I've gotten 3 packages in the past 10 days chock full of things I NEED like Clorox wipes, a wine key, socks, and clothes...to things that I miss from home like PEANUT BUTTER, nuts, mac & cheese, mike & ikes, tuna, etc. It has been like Christmas, which is great since Christmas wasn't so hot here. I've also had some great Skype dates and e-mail updates (thanks Kase for reminding me that I need to blog!). Lots and lots of love. It makes me way less homesick, especially when I'm dying to be home with my Mama while she's recovering from surgery (shout out to Mom who is an absolute rockstar and handling her recovery better than I ever could have imagined...love you!)

Teaching has been about the same old. Lots of lesson planning, but I've finally decided to dedicate a few hours of the weekend to plan my whole week so that I can have free time during my breaks. The students are hilarious as usual. I have one guy who takes pictures of the white board to use as his notes. He came up to me after class on Friday to show me the picture he'd intentionally taken of me when I wasn't paying attention. Slightly creepy, but the huge goofy smile on his face told me that it was supposed to be funny. I got to elicit the word "underwear" in 3 of my classes last week during the unit on clothes...as well as bra and panties a few times. I had a very memorable incident explaining the difference in meaning and pronunciation between "hold" and "hole" but it's something I can only explain in person. It was epic, i'll leave it at that. Today, during vocabulary Bingo i called the phrase "kind of" which they're having trouble with. In the middle of their struggling to come up with a sentence, my jokester student Eduardo comes out of the blue with "My friend Adan is kind of gay" (Adan happens to be in the same class). Tons of laughter ensued obviously. It was a fantastic moment. And the best part is that if they didn't know what "kind of" meant before, they're never going to forget it now. What else? I started getting observed by people who are taking the TEFL class now, just like I had to do while I was in the course. It's strange to think that that was me just over a month ago. So glad I got a job!

I've made some really awesome friends in some of the teachers at work. A bunch are from California and other parts of the country which will make for a sweet road trip when we're all in the states at the same time. One girl is from Baltimore and vacations at the Delaware beaches (hollerr!!) and another grew up in Lancaster and went to school in West Chester. Small, small world. The past 2 Sundays have been spent at our apartment cooking and watching football and maybe having a few beers. I've made bangin' homemade guacamole and chips (yes, homemade chips!). Maggie and I made amazing curry ginger lentil soup one night and homemade pasta sauce another. This weekend we made chocolate-banana bread and homemade granola. I'm officially on a granola kick and am heading to the market tomorrow to find some more goodies to put in it! It's phenomenal and I can't wait to do it at home.

This Saturday a group of us went to Ollantaytambo for the day. It's a pretty little town in the Sacred Valley about 1.5 hours outside of Cusco. The drive was gorgeous and it felt so good to be in some fresh air, away from the polluted city. We got food at an adorable little cafe where all the proceeds go to charity, then walked around town for a bit until we found stairs that led to a path to some ruins. We didn't go into the Incan ruins because you had to pay, so we hiked to our own where we had a view of the Incan ruins AND our own. It was a nice little hike and as usual we made friends with a dog that led the way. Afterwards, we checked out the market where I bought some earrings for someone and got some more gift ideas. Then, we had dessert at the same cafe and I tried "banoffi pie" for the first time. It's banana-toffee pie and it's delicious and I'm so surprised I've never heard of it! Then it was back on the bus for the long ride home. Sidenote: My camera got stolen on the bus there so I wasn't able to take any pictures, but my friend Maddie did for me so I'll upload them as soon as I can :)

The ruins we hiked to. Stolen from Google. RIP Camera!

Now for the grand finale of stories since my last post....the MSG Pisco Sours....
After our day in Ollantaytambo, we decided to pregame at our apartment with homemade Pisco Sours since our friend Carolina knows how to make them. Pisco is the local liquor that is kind of reminiscent of tequila. A Pisco Sour is: Pisco, lime juice, sugar, ice, and egg whites all blended together. So, we got the ingredients and let Carolina do her thing in the kitchen. We tried the first batch and it was super limey so we added more sugar and Pisco. Still too limey. More sugar. STILL not right. More sugar, more Pisco, and so on. Something was just not right. They were god-awful. Could have been the limes, maybe we bought crappy Pisco, maybe the eggs? NO no....20 minutes into the fiasco, we realize that the sugar we'd bought was NOT sugar. It was MSG. A bag full of MSG which we kept adding and adding and adding to our drinks. OOPS! Huge oops! It was hilarious. And no, we did not drink them. But I had 2 sips of one drink and it was the worst thing that I've ever tasted in my life. I switched to shots of vodka and/or rum after that (of course). Think I'll stick to that!

Miss everyone terribly! Thanks again for all the love and care packages and happy thoughts to get Mom, me, and the rest of the family through her surgery! Love love love<3

Third world problems

I should really be sleeping, but my melatonin hasn't kicked in yet so here I am. The 2nd week of teaching is going better than the first. My students are awesome and funny. It's very rewarding to teach to a class that actually listens and wants to learn the material. They participate, they ask questions, they challenge me. I love it. I've gotten better at lesson planning and actually got most of my week finished up today. Yay! My sleep schedule needs work, but I'm surviving. I'm generally asleep by 12 and up by 5:45am. For those of you who know me well enough, you know that I'm an 8 hour girl (at least) so this is not fun for me. But, if I'm lucky I'll get a 1-2 hour nap during my break...or a shower. Usually it's one or the other. Speaking of showers, I've been making a mental list of things that I miss (and took for granted) in the States.

1. Reliable hot water.
Since moving into my new place, I've had maybe 4 hot showers. Most are lukewarm. The past 2 days however, we haven't had hot water at all. This is why deodorant and perfume were invented! (yes, ew)

2. Drinking water when I want, where I want.
I can't believe there are countries in which there is no such thing as potable drinking water. Having to BOIL water and then let it cool just to have a freaking glass of water is God-awful. Not to mention the ridiculous amount of waste this country must produce from water bottles. NOT a fan. I miss my fridge that gave me cold, delicious water whenever I wanted it.

3. Sanitation.
In Peru, you can't flush toilet paper. You throw your toilet paper in a waste basket next to the toilet. Yes, even in public bathrooms. Just think about that for a second....

4. Food
Sweet Jesus I miss food from home. Things that don't exist or are not the same here include: Peanut butter, cheese, all dairy products, coffee, meat, pizza...I could go on. Seriously, peanut butter costs about $6 a jar and is Peter Pan brand. They don't have JIF. I am dying. And cheese? Forget about it. I think they have 1-2 types of cheese here. Neither are good. Dear cheddar, brie, and feta...I miss you. I also hate the fact that when I buy produce at the market, I have to wash it in water that I had to boil and let cool. Even then, I'm still taking a risk that I'll contract some sort of parasite....

5. Doing my own laundry.
Laundromats don't even exist here. You drop your clothes off and pick them up later or the next day. This means anything that says "handwash" or anything you don't want to ruin...you wash in your own sink. Sweet.

I'll add to this later I'm sure, but for now...everyone appreciate what you've got because there are people in the world living in much worse conditions than even my spoiled American butt can imagine.
Also, if you're feeling generous and want to send care packages, I won't be mad! Peanut butter, nuts, scented candles, and toiletries (all either nonexistent or outrageously priced here) are always appreciated :)

OH! Also, thanks to everyone for the love and support during Mom's surgery & recovery! Such amazing friends and family we have.

Much love<3

Noo teacher noo!

I’m a teacher!!!

I had orientation right after Christmas where I found out that I would start my job as an ESL teacher on Monday, January 2^nd. I teach 6 classes a day of mostly adults but I have one “jovenes” class, or class of teenagers. The schedule is not ideal, but all of the teachers are on the same one so we’re all in it together. I teach two classes in the morning, 7-9am, then one class at 4pm, then three classes from 6-9. I got mostly low-level classes because of my proficiency in Spanish. When they translate a word in Spanish (I can’t translate for them, that’s not how we teach) I can tell them yes or no. I also can communicate with them about important things like test dates, books, etc. I love all of my students! The wonderful thing about teaching at an institute is that most of the students are there because they need to learn English for their job or to graduate University. In other words, they WANT to be there and they WANT to learn. I’ve had students ask for homework before I got around to giving it. All of the students---sorry, learners…we’re not allowed to call them students---call me “teacher”, very few of them call me Molly except some of my jovenes girls who love me.

So, I started on Monday bright and early at 7am! And lucky me, I had no voice! From a weekend full of partying and a lack of sleep, my voice was shot. Not a good way to start the week! Luckily, the first 2 days of classes are relatively easy because most of them time only a few students show up. I actually had 3 classes with no students! In the ones that I did have students, I played a lot of ice breaker games and asked “get to know you” questions and such and did very basic lessons. By Wednesday most of my classes had filled up anywhere from 8-13 people. Naturally, my biggest class is my class of teenagers!

Throughout the week I’ve taught things as basic as the alphabet and numbers, to conjugating the verb “to be”, to demonstratives and possessive adjectives. I’ve done readings, listening activities, and lots of book work, but my favorite thing I’ve done by far was play Battleship with my jovenes. They went nuts for it! I obviously made it educational and had possessive adjectives built into the game, but they really got into it. I think I won them over that day. We also played Jeopardy as review on Friday and I gave them candy.

Some funny things from the first week…I got to elicit (eliciting is pulling words or meanings from the learners, we do not explain or define anything for them) the word “stepbrother” and then talk about the movie. I had to elicit the word “diaper” for a reading and tried to physically demonstrate it. Awkward. But the very best and funniest thing from this week is that my 3 night classes are in the basement. What I didn’t know about the basement is that across the hall from our classrooms is a nightclub. This nightclub starts bumping music around 7:30, halfway through my night classes. And to top it all off, this nightclub is rumored to be a STRIP club! So while I’m teaching my students English to help them get farther in their careers, there are girls getting naked 25 yards away. One night, I finally started talking to my students about the club because the music was particularly distracting. I said “have you ever been in there?” and I was met with a look of horror and the response “NO! Bad place! Bad place!”.  Confirmed: I teach next to a strip club.

Holidays in Cusco!

Hola friends & family!

I have been terrible at keeping up with posts! I’ll try to get a few in this weekend. First off…holidays in Cusco!

We got home from Machu Picchu late on Friday the 23^rd. The next day, we had to move out of our beloved “family home” by the late morning. Still exhausted from our trip, we packed up all of our crap and booked a hostel for the night. We had a potential apartment, but it was Christmas and people were busy so we couldn’t move in for a few days. The hostel was fine, but a little cold and dreary which was exacerbated by the cold and dreary weather. Nonetheless, we geared up and met our TEFL friends out for a nice Christmas Eve dinner and drinks. We talked about our own family traditions and funny stories, so I naturally told the infamous “black panties” story which will forever crack me up. With no other way of dealing with the fact that we were all away from home for the holidays, we set out for the bars and got a good amount of drinks in us.  We eventually went our separate ways, but Maggie and I stayed out until well past Santa would have come to visit. We met some really awesome friends from Argentina! Christmas Day was a hard day. It was cold and rainy, and we were really feeling the effects of missing our families. I thankfully got to Skype with Mom and Ben, but not without a few tears.  Christmas away from home is something I’ll never get used to, and hopefully won’t have to do again for a while! We went out again as a group for dinner which took like 3 hours and was awful…such a lovely end to a lovely holiday!

Post Christmas Dinner!

We spent one more night in the hostel, and then moved into our apartment on the 26^th! Finally, a permanent place of residence in Cusco J Only one room was open for a few days, so Maggie and I threw all of our stuff (which  I have WAY too much of) in the room and slept on the couches for a few nights. Finally though, we were able to move into our rooms and unpack. We are living with 2 guys who went through TEFL a few months before us, one of which is a fellow teacher. Both are awesome guys and are from the East Coast! Dennis is from South Jersey, aka a Philly fan (woo!) and Ken is from New York, and much to my dismay a Yankees fan. My room is called “The Command Center” because it’s in the center of the apartment and came equipped with a desktop computer and TV that someone had left here before. The only window it has opens up into the living room, which is entertaining for me because I can stick my head out and talk to whoever is out there! The guys also started the awesome tradition of writing on this window with our teacher markers, and everyone who comes to the apartment gets measured so they have a line with their name next to it on the window. It’s kind of awesome…except it was a reminder of how short I am. I really do have a complex…I think I’m so much taller!

For those of you who are going to ask the standard questions: Yes, we have hot water, but only in the shower and kitchen sink.  We boil our water to be able to drink it. Yes, we have a kitchen! I will be cooking. We have a laundry room, but just a big sink to hand-wash things in. I take my laundry out to be washed, but will be washing my teacher pants and some other things in the laundry room. Yes, it is very safe. We’re on a very safe street, have a gate, along with a security guard. We’re also on the 4^th floor. We have really good cable…HBO and everything! No, not all 4 of us share the bathroom. One guy has his own bathroom, so only 3 of us have to share.

Overall, I love the place and my roommates. All good things.

Sadly, a few days after Christmas most of our TEFL buddies left Cusco L They are currently traveling up the coast to beach towns and eventually Ecuador, Colombia, or Iquitos respectively. We miss them TONS!

Next up came New Years! The traditions in Cusco are interesting. (1) Everyone wears yellow underwear and décor. It’s supposed to bring good luck. All of the markets were stocked full of yellow panties, shirts, leis, boas, masks, glasses, confetti, etc. (2) Amateur fireworks are HUGE. You can buy tons of them for dirt cheap. People set them off randomly every day, but on New Years it’s madness. (3) At midnight, everyone circles the plaza 1.5 times to bring “good travels” for that year or something.

SO, Maggie, Thor, and I were some of the only ones left in Cusco from our original crew. We got some yellow stuff and booze, and started drinking in our apartment with our roommates and a few people. Around 9, we went up to the Plaza to join the festivities and find one of our friends (who we never found). The plaza is like a tiny Times Square minus the ball. There’s a stage with a live band and around 20,000 people running around with fireworks and bottles of booze. Children walk around selling beer (no joke). It was mayhem. We found a good spot on the stairs and posted up drinking our vodka and people watching. Random people would set off bottle rockets no more than 2 feet away from us which was scary, but you got used to it. Maggie got her camera stolen which was a huge bummer, but we stuck it out until midnight! I had no idea it was even close to midnight until the crowd started the countdown. At the strike of 12, I made Thor pop open our champagne and run around spraying it on people. Then, we joined in the mass of people running in a circle around the plaza! It was like a stampede…pretty nuts. Afterwards, we posted back up on the stairs to people watch some more and met up with some friends. Thor had wandered around alone and gotten his wallet stolen. Such bad luck on New Year’s! My friend and I took a cab home with Maggie, and then headed back out to celebrate some more. I spent the rest of the night with a group of Argentinians drinking beer that we bought from little old ladies or children and dancing around the plaza. Like I always do when I drink with Spanish speakers, I ended up talking to a girl for an hour teaching her English so she could talk to a boy she met in Peru. I highly doubt she retained any of what she learned!

New Years Day was spent recovering and preparing for the very very very long week ahead of me…