I am much better rested now, thanks to sleeping in a bed for the last two nights as opposed to a bus that stops every hour and turns all the lights on. Amazing, eh? We spent about 3 hours in Milan and that was perfect, we saw the Duomo, walked around a bit and mostly sat in the piazza, where I read and Kara curled up and slept. Genova has been a great experience. The people here are amazingly helpful and eager to strike up conversations with foreigners that speak broken Italian, and most know English as well. For example, while walking into the center of town yesterday we passed a 60 something year old woman sitting on her wall with her cat and a bowl of food. I said bongiorno, and she replied with, 'I'm just waiting for him to eat'. So we stopped and chatted for 5 minutes in a mix of english and italian and she gave us recommendations on where to swim. Genova, unlike Paris, is build on one big hill rising up from the port. Stairs run up and up and up the hill, making a much more direct route into the city that the narrow roads that form winding, narrow switchbacks. The hostel, which is the only hostel here, is at the very top of the hill, a 20 minute walk down but a very long sweaty walk up, so we take the bus up. But the reward for that is a stunning view of the city. We have walked around quite a bit, eating pizza, pasta, gelato and vino. Yesterday we took the bus out to the edge of the city and went swimming in the sea. the water was warm and the beach was packed with people, all of whom seemed dead set on getting as tan as possible with no regard to the possibility of skin cancer. It was wonderful. Now, we are getting ready to head to the train station to get on the bus for the cinque terre. We are staying slightly out of the area, in La Spezia, because when I thought I booked us a room in a hostel almost a week ago, the email response 'room is fully booked' I read that as we were set and I had booked the room. But no, when I opened it again it was abundantly clear that it meant there are no available rooms. All I can say is that I was tired...oops. So Kara has taken over hostel bookings now, she is very good at it, very organized. Really so much better at it than I am it is pretty amazing. The other great move I pulled was buying our tickets online from Milan to Genova. Everything was great except for the fact that I booked them for 26/8/12 not 26/7/12, so they were perfect for the 26th next month, but for this month we had to buy tickets on the train at double the price. Ouch. Anyways, live and learn! Double check your tickets and your reservations!!

Buona Sera!! Checking in from Genova, Italy, where it is HOT. Just a bit sweaty all of the time, ideally with a few cold showers thrown in a day. Since the last time I wrote Kara and I have 1. Left Berlin via train 2. Arrived in Paris to stay for 4 nights 3. Took an overnight bus to Milan 4. took an intercity train to Genova 5. Rode all around the city of Genova with our backpacks on figuring out the train system.

Kara and I spent our last two nights in Berlin staying with a friend of hers, Craig, a 29 year old New Yorker who just moved to Berlin. He was super nice and went with us to treptower park, where we walked around and explored some more huge soviet monuments and sat by the lake enjoying patchy sunlight.

We went to Tacheles, an urban artmovemnt?building takeover/cool art studios that are controversial because they attract about 500,000 visitors a year but the city wants to kick them out and re do the building so they have shut off electricity and water and sent in private security forces to close the building but were forced to reopen due to public protest. That night we went out! To a club called E4 near Alexanderplatz and we stayed out until 530 am, the metro ride home all I could hear in my head was the '5 oclock in the morning song'...very fun going with Kara's language studies friends. Next day, to the train station!

We arrived in Paris at about 930pm and followed directions to my friend Kyra's apparment. She lives in the historical/jewish/gay section of town, a very cool combination. Their building is super old, on the 5ht floor with a wooden winding straircase that is all worn down in the middle from ages of people stepping on it. Their place was tiny but very picturesque, with exposed wooden frames and hardwood floors, and from the window you could see the Church of Sacre Coure, sacred heart. In Paris we walked and walked and walked and walked, saw the Eifel Tower, the Lourve, walked along the Seine, had a romantic dinner with Vin rouge, fromage, baguette et salami along the canal. We saw the Moulin Rouge, the Lafayette gallery with it's free and gorgeous view of the city, the Hotel deville, the arc of triumph. Paris is great because you hardly have to try to find something beautiful and cool, because there is something everywhere you go, so it is easy to just wander. A fun city, but very hot and very full of people and very expensive! So far it has been nice to get to Italy so it is easier to communicate. It makes life so much easier...

Berlin

I won't lie, it just took me 10 minutes to figure out how to write a new post, because everything on the site is written in German, and after 36 hours here in Germany, I still do not speak German. I am at City Hostel in the center of Berlin, it is overcast and just finished the buffet breakfast that consisted primarily of bread meat and cheese, which seems to be the big thing in German cuisine for all meals. But let me start at the beginning of my travels and then lead up to the present. So on Monday evening I flew out of Seattle with a direct flight to Frankfurt, a 10 and a half hour flight. I sat next to a very interesting and chatty 31 year old man, who told me quite a bit about himself in the hour after take off and before the movies began. He is a successful entrepreneur who with his brothers started up his own software something company, he and his brother fly all over North America meeting with their clients, while their younger brother went back to Harvard to finish his degree. Their younger sister is midway through Law school at Stanford. He is a 100 mile marathon runner, and likes to run at high altitudes on mountains. At 15 he went to Berkley school of music in Boston and at 17 release an album. He recently became single and has been constantly propositioned by women ever since he noted 'single' on his facebook, and when he puts things up on facebook, approximately 80 people 'like' or comment on them. Clearly very successful and clearly is very proud of his accomplishments. He told me multiple stories about personal experiences with women, with an unabashedly condescending attitude. He told me multiple times how 'women are'....Thanks man, I've been waiting for someone to tell me how I am for so long. All in all, a very interesting fellow. I arrived in Frankfurt and had 30 minutes to get to my train, so I had enough time to change some money and get some water and a snack. I then had a beautiful train ride through the countryside for 6 hours, with one changeover in Naumberg, which was a bit stressful because I had 2 minutes to change trains. That neeeevvvver would have worked in Italy, because the trains were so erratic, but I am in Germany, so it was not a problem. Compared to my experiences in South America and other European cities, it seems quite safe here. People sit on trains with Ipads and leave there things at their seats in trains while they go use the bathroom. Wow! Kara picked me up at the main train station, Berlin Hauptbahnof. Our hostel the first night was near the Augsburger Strasse, Southwest of where we are now. We woke up and saw so much! We went to the DDR museum which was a really cool hands on museum of life in Eastern Berlin before the wall fell. After, we went to Checkpoint Charlie, the main point of entrance/exit into East Berlin and saw part of the wall. I felt like it should have been bigger for how much it divided the two halves. We saw the crazy TV tower, the museum Island, the Holocaust memorial site and the accompanying museum-really cool memorial, really sad museum. We went past the Berliner Dom and through Tiergarten and went to the Soviet monument. I had currywurst and Doner kebab and Berliner beer. We went out to have a drink with Kara's friend Peter from the UK who is taking classes here and had a very jolly metro ride home. All in all a very pleasant day. The only sad part is that is rained quite a bit yesterday, and my shoes got soaked through, and they smell really bad now. They were already on their last legs: holes in the bottoms, holes in the inserts...I'll keep my eyes out for replacements. Tonight we are going on a pub crawl with students from Humbolt University (here, not Northern California). I hope I can stay up late enough!!

Still here

Hello!!
Sorry its been a while since Ive updated this blog. The last few weeks Ive been occupied with little sickness, just trying to keep consistent with my last trip to Peru in which I think I was a condidate for a frequent customer card at the regional hospital. Less serious this time, food poinsoning and a few colds. In terms of whats been up besides that, I will start back last weekend. A group from UPAGU, one of the local universities was doing a social project, so we took the kids to the next town over, Baños del Inca, at 830am and we played games with them and at the end the gave the kids a snack, it was nice to get out of Cajamarca for a brief change of scenery. The most exciting part of that trip was one of m favorite kids, Elmer, a kid who recently turned 8 and who is really shy in my class at Incawasi, finally started to open up to me, and since then in classes he talks to me and you can tell he likes and trusts me. I work with him everyday on his reading, and its amazing the progress he has made in a month, we were doing letters before, how they sound, and now we are reading stories.
Last friday I celebrated my returning health by going out to a party at another NGO until 5am up on their roof. That was quite fun but later involved me starting to get sick again. We painted and did a little makeover of the downstairs rooms in Incawasi, and it looks much much better, hopefully I will be able to put up pictures. Pictures are few and far between by the way, because it takes about 10 minutes to load 1 picture...The posters we bought from a store down the street of educational like things really add to the look, and are only 1.50 soles each, or 50 cents.
Inspiration struck and we have a new art project for next friday morning, we are going to buy wax and molds and make candles, and the friday after that, we are going to buy little pumpkins and paint them for halloween, after that I will be in Spain!!
Other than that...last night we went out to a funky little bar and I played a hand drum while some friends Oso and Walo played guitar and sung. I felt like a Peter imposter playing them drums, oh well!! It was quite fun. Today, rain rain and more rain...It feels like home

Ventanillas del Otuzco

This weekend we hosted two women in their 30s from France who have taken a sabbatical and are traveling south america. They connected with Fred through couch surfing, which is a network of travelers around the world that host or are hosted in whichever city around the world. Their coming was a breath of fresh air that made me realize again how exciting traveling is, and how improbable and sweet the connections you make with people here are. Such randomness, the people you meet when youve pulled up your roots, but so exciting and exhilerating! Im not really doing a very good job explaining this very concisely, but I really like the idea of couch surfing, I think it brings to a point the best parts about traveling. On either end, hosting or visiting, the action of two people from improbable ends of the world living together for a few days on the basis of friendship sort of zooms out your perspective on the world for a bit. You become aware of your life not just in terms of my building, my neighborhood, my city but instead my origins, my current location, places you dream of going, and how reachable the whole world is. Either end, the experience is extremely refreshing. Ive titled this post Ventanillas del Otuzco, because that is what we went and visited with them, but our site seeing is completely overshadowed by what their visit signifies, so I wont bother writing about the pre incan gravesites, although they were interesting.
This reminds me of a thought Ive had several times while here, another thing brought to a head by traveling, that being "everywhere you go, there you are". Traveling is very cool because I am aware much more frequently of the present moment, where I am, what I am doing, what I want to be doing in the future. I think that is promted by unfamiliar landscapes, people, culture, experiences. In the US, I am very accustomed to life there and its easier to sort of check out and get into autopilot. I should remember that home is another exciting place on the globe, so dont take it for granted!

Granja Porcon

All is well down south! My cold has subsided and the morning has been
good. We decided to go to Granja Porcon on saturay morning. Granja (meaning farm) Porcon is an evangelicist community about an hour away that makes their own cheese
and artesan products. We went in taxi and it was quite amusing, seeing
as some of the roads were under construction, so at one point it turns
into a one way road with dirt piled high on either side and the road
curves around a corner, and there are no men with reflector vests and
walkie talkies to tell you when to go. So, you just go and hope, our
first attempt we got about two thirds through before coming about a
foot and a hlaf away from a head on with a semi truck who through a
series of hand gestures refused to back up. so we did for about a
quarter mile. Our second way through, we came on to a car and this
time refused to back up, and they had to do the reversing. The entire
way there are signs along the road with bible verses, and all the
buildings in the center are covered with them as well. We staid in a
little house, and we were the only ones there, so we had the entire
house to ourselves complete with a stocked fireplace. The weather was
amazing, we went and waded in the river, crossed a hanging bridge,
walked through a pine forest to a little waterfall, and passed by the
zoo they have there. The menu there is trout, trout, and more trout
cooked in various forms, because they raise it there domestically. A
classic example of the way peruvian restaurants function is my order
"Ill have chicharron de chancho"
"no hay señorita" (there isnt any, even though its on the menu)
"okay then Ill have ceviche de trucha"
"no hay, señorita"
"okay Ill have grilled trout"
"yah señorita"
"and to drink could I have a bottle of water?"
"would you like it with gas?"
"is there with gas?"
"no, no hay"
really, its classic. Fred, whos from france dared to ask at dinner if
they had any wine, and she gave him a look and said its prohibited. He
then asked, with bravery I admire, if they had any beer. "no, no es
prohibido". The stars out there in the countryside were amazing, with
a perfect milkyway, the only bad part was that since it was in the
southern hemisphere I am not familiar with the constilations. We woke
up late on sunday and laid out in the sun and ate some more trout
before getting in the combi, a privately owned van used for public
transportation, and squeezing in between the 9 other people in the
van, the pile of firewood and the can of extra gas.
One back in the city, we showered and lazed around before going out to
dinner on the main plaza. Today I woke up in an excellent mood, I
think due mostly to a winning combination of good health, good
weather, and a weekend outside the city.
And pictures soon, I swear, it just takes about 15 minutes to load one picture...I am apparently not so patient...

A Day in the Life

Just a little glimpse of what I usually do in a day, because I sùppose I havent really made that too clear, other than kids, hw, spanish, etc which is a bit vague. SO
I woke up around 830 and laid in bed a bit remembering the strange and vivid dreams that accompany traveling. Then I get up and note that after two weeks here, I really should do my laundry, so I put on my least dirty clothes, and take the rest up to the roof, where we have a sink and some detergent and a bucket. Its been sunny the last few days, but today was actually pretty chilly, made even more so by the cold water. Once I had washed about 2/3 of my clothes, I got bored and decided to save the rest for later. So I went down (the building is 4 stories tall, all outside stairs/hallways) to the kitchen and chatted with the cook, Sebastiana and had some tea and some cereal. The kids all greeted me with "profesora crazy" and "the question of the day, profesora, have you combed your hair" which I get asked at least 5 times a day, and I always respond obviously, 3 times already. They always respond, you cant tell. hahha, I enjoy the exchange. Erla, the head teacher yells "to your classrooms!" and I hed off to my room, I have the youngest students in the morning. I have three students, Amy, Raul, and Elmer. First I have them get out all their notebooks and I check all of them to see what hw they have left and check what theyve done. Raul, who is 13 but has severe learning disabilities so is way below his grade level always needs extra work on his math, so I set him on that if hes finished, and its great watching him do his math, because its ALL out loud, so all the multiplication is muttered in a constant stream from his corner of the table. Amy is 9 and is great at art. When she is done with her hw, I always have her find something from the library on the 3rd floor and she has to give me descriptions of what shes read every so often, because she has a tendency to read without retaining anything. Elmer is 7, and absolutely adorable. Just to give you an idea of the size of the kids, and the extent of their malnutrition, ELmer at 7 is the same size as the 2 year and 2 month old of an ex volunteer who was over here for dinner last night. Tiny. He is learning how to read, so usually his hw is copying lines in cursive, and then we start to read, going letter by letter, syllable by syllable. That is for an hour. Today at 11 we had computer class, so a Puervian named Giancarlos comes to teach them in the lab we have upstairs, with 2 to 3 kids at each computer.
Lunch today was mote soup. Mote is like huge kernals of corn, as in the size of my thumb from the knuckle up. Its always astruggle to make the kids finish up, because the portions they are given are enormous, because this represetns their only nutritious meal all day. They hurry to eat their piece of fruit and brush their teeth to get to their classes at 1. The Afternoon shift comes then, and they have the same lunch routine. At 2 they had Dance class, which a Peruvian volunteer teaches, and is an absolute trip to watch, altough the kids hate it. My class inthe afternoon is secondary kids, one each of a 14, 15 and 16 year old. Jorge, Ramos and Rosa Margarita. Me Ramos and Jorge had a Sudoku race today because they didnt have hw, (I won, no big deal) A bit before 4, I went down to the kitchen to warm up the milk and put out the bread with jam that had been made this mronign by the person with the morning shift. I heated it up and served it to the kids, and then we kick them out and I bug the girl Maria, 15, who cleans Incawasi, whos little brother is in the program. I usually give her a hand cleaning as well. After that, we went out walking around the city doing little errands, and now here I am! Tonight we are going out to drink Pisco Sours, the drink of Peru. There is a day in the life!