So after an adventure with the Dutch, I was finally able to move in the Family House - a little bed and breakfast type place run by Maximo. About 15/16 people are living here now from all over the place, but mainly from the states or UK. I'm sharing a room with one other girl, Leilah, who's from Boston and like Lindy, became certified to teach English as a second language.
Classes went really well the first week, both my group and private classes. Spanish is almost easier to learn here since the teachers always speak Spanish, never English unless you are really confused. My private classes centered on medical Spanish and some verb conjugation. Group classes center on basic grammar, vocab, verb conjugation, etc. It's been a great refresher! I also got to meet some really cool people through my class. One girl, Mary Beth is volunteering at the same clinic where I will be starting and is also in the process of studying for the MCAT and will be applying for med school like myself!
Now, one important (haha) thing I've learned is that when it comes to winning random things, I'm really lucky! When I traveled down to Costa Rica, I won a hat on a coffee plantation. My second night after moving into the family house, we went out to a bar called Muse where they have trivia nights run by an NGO called Bruce Peru. This NGO is all about getting kids into state schools by tutoring and assisting with finances. Unfortunately for me, Bruce Peru questions are usually centered on English culture... Luckily we had an Aussie who had spent a good number of years in England and helped us (ok, carried us) to second place out of 13! We also won Best Name - which I picked out - but they only had one t-shirt as a prize. So they asked our team one final question: In what year was Mickey Mouse first animated? The answer was 1928 and I was the closet guessing 1933!! So I won an authentic Muse t-shirt =D If only I was that lucky with test questions in university...
The weekend also had some exciting activities...
Friday the TEFL people finished their certification and it was Lindy's last day in Cusco. So we went out for that, meeting up with a ton of people from Maximo. The last place we stopped had a local cover band playing American rock songs (good ones, that is), which was really fun. The only not so exciting thing was the guys who tried persuading us to stay out later with them, which was NOT a plan - Machisimo is alive and well in Peru, that's for sure!
Saturday was more or less the same, except we started out at Maximo with their "International Party" which more appropriately should've been called "International Awkward Junior High Dance". Overall it wasn't too bad once people loosened up and started (actually) dancing. My goal here is to learn legitimate salsa dancing, since it looks like soooo much fun!!
Sunday made me wish I had a million dollars and a million suitcases! I went to the Pisac market with Merel, the other Merel, and Sophie for the day. The market was HUGE and there was so much my head was spinning. The nice thing about markets is that you can bargain with vendors and buy fairly nice things for very little American dollars. It's good to know my money is good somewhere... I definitely plan on going back, especially to see the ruins, which are rumored to be the best around Cusco!
Hopefully tomorrow I will post about this past week... It's been quite the experience!
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