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 :)
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| 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
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