Good and Magnificent

March 7, 2009...
“You have to be willing to take risks,” Nael told me with a playful hint of disdain. I ignored him and continued to carefully withdraw my sure-bet middle cube from the row of three. My face, a wall of focus, gave way to a tiny triumphant smirk. I glanced at Nael, also smirking; at his disapproving, smiling green eyes watching me, before I placed my sure-bet cube on the top of the Jenga tower. Without the minutest physical change in expression, his look became one of defiance. He reached down to the foundation of the tower and removed the last cube vital to its stability. The tower wobbled and taunted me like a proud, remaining bowling pin, unwilling to forfeit victory. And succumb it did not…it swayed and yet stood tall as he placed his defiant cube on top of the stack. Now it was my turn to make another move…

August 4, 2009...
So I am preparing that gray bag to be heavy again; filled with a lot of stuff as I travel tomorrow. (If you are confused, refer to my very first blog.) It's going to be so strange to be back on San Jose Avenue in Burbank. It'll be strange generally greeting people with a hug instead of a kiss on the cheek. And how odd it will be to have hot water at any hour of the day. To be able to flush toilet paper and to be able to eavesdrop with ease. To drink 2% milk again, to walk down the street to the cinema, to drive again. To stop always carrying toilet paper in my purse. To say hello, instead of hola. It’s so incredibly weird to think about those things I was so afraid of in the beginning, when I woke up on January 9th and rode to the airport. The language barrier…missing my familiar warm bed. I’ll be sleeping in that bed again two days from now. And I’m heading to a place where everyone speaks my native language. Yet I feel those same nerves all over again. I’m sure I won’t throw up this time, but I don’t quite know if I’m really ready to leave this world behind.

Nael is right...you have to be willing to take risks. I took a risk coming here. And it turned out to be, without a doubt, the best thing I have ever done.

My life has almost always been a route on a map. But this year, when I went off the page and flew to Perú, everything changed. I stepped through a door, out of a fluorescent lit box with white tile flooring and into a colorful, roofless hallway. The brown, sand floor, the closed birchwood doors which boast of my choices, the backs of my caramel-colored, free hands, are all illuminated by perpetual sunlight. I run my fingertips along the the textured walls as I walk forward with closed eyes, unafraid to trip on anything, only feeling for the next doorway to step through and wondering, like an impatient child, what will be on the other side.

This feels right. It feels like love and breathing and warmth. It feels like the perfect mug of hot chocolate.

But now I am dying to know what comes next. I am hoping and praying that I will be somehow led to the next door or, like a polarized ion, drawn to it; or that it would even just fall on me. I can't say I have ever been this curious about what will come next because, along a route on a map, there is no such potential for the magic I feel awaiting me. I can smell it faintly and feel it lightly blowing back the whispy strands of my hair. But what is it? What's to come? Sometimes I thrive on the suspense and sometimes I just want a brick-solid plan. A what-I-want-and-already-know-I-can-have.

Such a thing does not exist at the moment and I stand frozen in the hall. With the light of the sun warming my face. With the hot mug in my hand, between warm, rich sips.

But certainty and knowing and brick-solid plans aren't the stuff that brought me here. What brought me here was risk. Being willing to be afraid and to take a chance. Being willing to mess up and then learn with the passing of time.

I can be nothing but certain that my next risk will deliver me to another beautiful place. This experience, this venture, has been so much more than I could have hoped for.

It has been Good and Magnificent.

But that's only the beginning.

A Few Things I Have Learned...(in no specific order)

1. Spanish (duh...still not fluent, though. But getting there.)
2. Salsa (yay!)
3. The irony in what we call valuables considering a few things: Our material possessions are constantly coming and going and therefore hold far less value than the non-material. The most valuable valuables are actually the least valuable, because they put you nearly within reach of the next best thing...enough to make you want it and inherently depreciate what you already have. Given the nature of valuables, a far more fitting term would be something like hold-looslies.
4. How frustrating it is to teach English as a second language.
5. How frustrating the English language is (here is the Rule. now here are the countless exceptions to the Rule.)
6. How long it takes to blog (a freaking long time. Especially if you're posting pics.)
7. That cereal in a bowl with ice-cold 2% milk is one of my great loves and I miss it dearly.
8. Pick-pockets have the gift of a ghost-like presence.
9. Having your purse zipped closed and slung across your shoulder and under your arm is not enough to deter pick-pockets from targeting you. Due to their ghost-like presence, you must clutch your bag in front of you whenever entering a crowd.
10. I have the best, most understanding, empathetic, and compassionate mother anyone could possibly get. (well, maybe I knew that already.)
11. That the saddest, worst part of being here is always having to say goodbye to the great people you meet.
12. I really enjoy painting.
13. All things have their end.
14. The vegetable-y flavor of coca leaves is best disguised when mixed with brownie batter.
15. I'm not as afraid of sharks as I thought. (went surfing twice!)
16. Wasi means house in Quechua.
17. I love Peru.

Ehem.

August 1, 2009...
Okay, so I may be one of the worst bloggers ever...let's just get that out of the way. Now that I'm about to come home, I am going to recount my past month and a half in a quick blurb. Well, hopefully it will be quick. Where do I begin?? Susie and I went to see this shaman (seer, fortune-teller, some rendition of Miss Cleo) who wasn't at all what I expected. In my head, I envisioned an old, gray man with a long beard, wearing a dusty, bleached-orange-by-the-sun poncho which hung loosely from his emaciated shoulders. But, I guess I have no future career as a shaman, since he turned out to be a middle-aged, clean-shaven (is that a word? clean-shaven. clean-shaven...) man wearing a Packers sweatshirt. I chuckled when I saw him. I'll leave the seeing to someone else. He told me a bunch of craziness that I didn't really like all that much. And it cost like 20 soles, which adds up to alot now that I'm making $3 an hour. Meh.

There's been some drama (an understatement). Roommate problems, boy problems, money problems (I love my mom). I won't go into the juicy details, but it was kinda sucky there for a little while. So it goes...whether you're in the U.S. or Perú.

Amanda came to visit!!!! Hurraaayyy! That was super duper awesome. She was here for two weeks. The first night we went to see a spectacular at the Kusikay theater called Paucartanpu, which was cool for two reasons...one, because it was an amazing show. And two, because I have a couple friends in the show. (Yes, I have Peruvian acrobat friends. I am so cool.) Next we did Machu Picchu by train, just as incredible the second time around. After that we did a three-day rafting trip. 90 miles down the Apurimac river, the source of the Amazon. Stunning. I got tossed from the raft on the first day, on a class 2 rapid. That was actually really fun and I couldn't stop giggling, even as the water bubbled up my nose and into my wind pipe (at which point it became more of a giggle-choke). We all remained safe and sound for the rest of the trip, paddling in sheer panic down the class 5s. Then it was time to do the must-see stuff around town, so we hit the cathedral in the Plaza de Armas and a couple neighboring museums in one gloriously touristy day. Lucky for her, she also happened to visit during one of the biggest celebrations of the year, June 24th, Inti Raymi (which means Sun Party in Quechua). This festival takes place in the form of crazed parade madness in the Plaza de Armas and then everyone marches up to the ruined fortress, Saqsaywaman, to watch a re-enactment of a sacrifice to the Sun God. Other than that, Amanda got a little taste of Salsa dancing, met some of my friends, experienced a window of my life here, and before we knew it, it was time for her to go home.

We hosted some really fun dinner parties at our apartment. Susie did all the cooking, since anyone who knows me doesn't need me to explain why. BUT...I did bake! I made some cakes and my homemade apple pie was a hit! I was super excited about that because even the crust was made from scratch (and love).

Susie and I attended a party in honor of Michael Jackson one Saturday night (I still can't believe he died.) We dressed up as cute little black Mike and older white Mike. All they played were Michael albums, of course, and they showed a bunch of his videos on a projection screen through the night. They held a dance contest which we definitely didn't enter because our preparedness would have brought Mike no honor (shame, rather).

I pierced my nose again and seriously considered getting a tattoo (which I will get eventually) but, alas, finances would not permit. Then, a couple Sundays ago I did some more shopping at the Pisac market, where I was devastated by the sight of a cage full of cuyes, destined to die and be eaten. (This is a really boring blog, isn't it? You can be honest.) I went cuz I had to get gifts to bring home, and I'm actually really excited to hand them out. It might feel like bringing a little bit of my experience to you. I hope it feels that way.

Time flew by (hence the non-blogging) and Susie and I decided to leave Cusco a little early. So we had our despedida, just the two of us. We got dressed up and went out to a nice dinner and drank too much red wine. The day before we left, Anke made us a despedida breakfast. It was our last Sunday brunch in that apartment. And that night, our final night in Cusco, we spent with a few friends going to the circus. This circus was a fantastically third-world spectacle (the bleachers were these thin, plywood boards thrown across some metal piping. I was sure I would fall through one). Still fun, though. And I came out alive (not even a splinter, can you believe it?) but not without 100 soles disappearing from my pocket. Of course. Had to happen on my last night in town. Susie and I got on a plane Monday to spend our final week and a half on the beach (we fly out of Perú on the same day).

So now, here I am, in a beach village an hour south of Lima called San Bartolo. It's really beautiful here, but really slow and quiet. I'm thinking about whether or not I may see my future self here for a while, or if it's too tranquil for what I'm used to. I'm journaling more than I have in the past two months. Dancing less. Well, dancing none. Going for chilly seaside walks where I can think alot. I'm eating ceviche and drinking hot chocolate. (Not together. That would most likely be gross.)

When we boarded the plane on Monday, I couldn't believe I was leaving Cusco. I think it still hasn't hit me. I didn't cry like I thought I would. But I wrote Cusco a letter:

I felt alone and terrified coming to you, and now I feel alone and terrified to be leaving. What is in my future? I don't know. Right now I just know that saying goodbye is hard, and harder not knowing if I'll see you again... So goodbye Cusco. Bye cute little apartment. Bye Coco. Bye Pablo. Goodbye salsa friends. Goodbye Anke. Goodbye delicious coca brownie shop. Bye dogs in the street. Bye Plaza de Armas. Bye street vendors. Goodbye cheap sandwich place. Goodbye cholitas with your little goats. Goodbye Pachakuteq impersonator. Bye beautiful churches on every corner. Goodbye little man at the bodega across the street. Goodbye Inca Kola. Bye little cuyes. Bye discotecas. Bye many travelers. Goodbye impossibly hard to walk on cobbled streets. Bye to you cold nights and hot days. Goodbye to you wind smells of pee and llama. Goodbye afternoon walks up to Saqsaywaman... Good things, bad things, whatever hurt and whatever made me smile, I will miss you all.

These Days

(Pics: 1st-5th, Our apartment. 6th, Girls of the rueda performance with one of the guys.)








June 12, 2009...
Susie and Anke and I have decorated the apartment to our liking. We ventured to Molino (the black market) and found fabrics and lamp shades and candles and fresh flowers, and threw it all on shelving, walls, and couches, along with recycled beer bottles and home-made paintings. Our apartment feels like a montage of color and life—and all for under 40 bucks! I love the environment I live in.
Also, I found a job! Or should I say I got really lucky and a job found me…well, it’s actually two jobs. One is teaching private English lessons. I have two students and they are at a very basic level. So we are beginning with daily-life vocab, present tense, and telling time. They come over, generally, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday nights and I serve them cinnamon tea and then we begin with checking their homework. The lesson goes from about 7:30 to 9:00 p.m.
My second job is also a work-from-home gig. Okay, get this: I met a guy on the bus, traveling home from Urubamba in my last week working for Projects abroad. We got to talking and he asked me what I do. So I told him I’m a writer…unpublished, but an aspiring best-seller. His jaw sort of dropped open and he then imparted that he is also a writer. A published one. And he has a book he is in the process of writing, a historical novel about the last Inka of Cusco, Pachakuteq, which he needs translated into English. Would I be up for the job? Ha! Are you kidding me? I was doing that anyway, reading Once Minutos for pleasure and for improving my Spanish! Heck yes! (This was not my reaction while in front of him. I responded very professionally, assuring him that I am 100% capable of such a task and would be honored.) So, I am translating a book! I get paid by the page and my name will be on the publication as the translator☺ ☺ ☺ Happiness.
Besides my two jobs, I have been getting even more involved in salsa. First, Anke and I performed in a rueda for the 4th anniversary party of the local salsa school, Salseros Cusco. Now, we have both been asked to be part of a dance group for the same salsa school. There are four couples in the group (Carlos is my partner, then there’s Anke and Renato, Romina and Hector, and Raquel and Kevin) and we have been preparing a routine that will be on reserve for regular performances. This is such a cool feeling, being a gringa who somehow found her way into this salsa world and will now be performing an amazing dance for local audiences. I love it.
I wake up around 10:00 a.m. everyday, work for about four to five hours, then usually go to Salseros Cusco or Renato’s place for rehearsal, come home and have a bite and maybe teach an English lesson, then head to Inka Team for a night of dancing.
These days are good days.

¡Feliz Cuy-mpleaños a mí!

(Pics: 1st, Bday dinner on the patio. 2nd & 3rd, Celebrating at Trotamundos Cafe. 4th & 5th, The cuy experience.)





May 17, 2009...
I had a wonderful 26th birthday. I was with Anke and Susie, of course. It began with dinner Saturday night. Susie made pasta and bruschetta and we ate on the patio with candles and wine and chatted about our memories of 19, 20, and 21 and how old we’re getting when we’re really not, but we kind of are because we’ll be 30 before we know it considering how quickly the last four years have flown by, but then again 30 isn’t really that old so, at 26, we’re still okay. Phew. At about 10-ish we went to the usual place, Inka Team, to ring in my bday at midnight. When the clock struck 12:00, the girls disappeared to the DJ booth, where they made an announcement, “Alanna, we love you! Happy birthday!” and then the DJ played a birthday song while I danced and pranced to the music with my friends and a little Peruvian club-full of strangers singing along. We stayed out dancing ‘til 6:00 a.m. It was splendiferous. The next day, we did our usual Sunday brunch, barely awake, and then slept all day. I went with the girls to eat dinner at Pachapapa, and then to Trotamundos Cafe for cake, where I made glorious use of the Birthday in a Box Tashi and Manz sent in my birthday care package from home☺ (Thank you, girls!) It was so fun. The people in the café must have thought we were nutty. Us three silly girls, blowing up balloons, lighting candles, sprinkling confetti everywhere, disrupting the quiet cafe atmosphere with our birthday noise-makers and fits of laughter.
It is customary here to commemorate the passage of another year of life by eating cuy (cooked guinea pig). But since it is generally served at lunch--and on my actual birthday I slept through lunch--we went to eat cuy later in the week. I hadn't tried it yet. Frightening...cuy is literally a cooked rodent on a plate. You could pat its head, count its teeth, give it a kiss, shake its paw. You can see the horrified expression it was making just before it was skewered. It's disturbing, really. Getting past the fact that it should have a coat of fur, and little black eyes behind those empty slits, and should be in a cage, running on a wheel, is not worth the taste. Not. Worth. The. Taste. Ehem, in my humble opinion, anyway. An experience, nonetheless.
So I'm 26. Twenty-six...I've heard, though, that you are as young or as old as you feel.
I feel fantastic.

Peroomies

(Pics: Top, Anke and Susie wishing me a happy birthday. Middle, Sunday brunch. Bottom, out for dinner.)


Who has more awesomer roomies than you?
I know of a girl who lives in Peru
Whose peroomies inspired this little Haiku
Although a Haiku it cannot really be
Lo que te digo is still plain to see
‘Cause no one has awesomer roomies than me

May 15, 2009...
A little bit of background information: Tyler was ready for other things. Things back at home. So he left at the end of April.
Now, there’s Anke and Susie…
Anke was coming to live here anyway, with me and Tyler. I met her through Projects Abroad back in January. She is from Holland and I always had a feeling she was truly awesome.
Susie, I met through Tyler. She’s from Chicago. He worked and lived with her via his org in Lima, Cross Cultural Solutions. When he knew he’d decided to leave, and knew that she was planning on coming to Cusco for 2 months, he asked if it would be okay if she lived with me and Anke, and I said, “Is she cool?” and he said, “Yeah. And really easy going and fun.” Boy, was he right. She’s an amazing cook, too. So I said, “Sure, the more the merrier! Plus, it makes rent cheaper.”
And now, I really feel like I couldn’t be living with better people.
We’ve begun decorating the apartment and really making it ours. Susie and I ventured out one day and found pieces of scrap wood and bought paint in order to create our own personal gallery (One is a broken piece of tinted glass that used to be our coffee table top, but cracked when the space heater got too close—we got a new piece of glass for the table.) So now, we’ve completed a few paintings to hang up around our place, with many more to come.
We have dinners and Sunday brunches on our patio. Susie usually makes dinner…wontons, pasta, bruschetta, salad, and always cuts up the pineapple for the brunch mimosas; while I usually make the brunch…pancakes and eggs.
Now that I have completed my six weeks working in Urubamba, I can stay up late-ish. So the three of us go out salsa dancing just about every night to the discotec, Inka Team. All the friends we’ve made, Coco, Elvis, Renato, Raymi, Amilcar, Jimi, Mariella, Viviana, are there from 9:00pm until about midnight. (If you enjoy dancing, I strongly encourage you to find the salsa niche wherever you live. It is so fun, I can’t even tell you.)
Anke works every day, walking distance from our place. Susie goes to Spanish classes for four hours a day, and I am having “me” time, while looking for another job. I’m reading Eleven Minutes, by Paolo Coehlo, in Spanish—Once Minutos. (He is the author of The Alchemist, which I read a couple months ago in English.) And I’m painting, and writing again, and dancing alot.
Us three girls, Anke and Susie and I, are getting to know each other: learning each other’s stories, talking about everything that passes from day to day—Peruvian boy trouble mostly—and sharing the truth about where we’re at right now in life. And somehow, we’ve found each other at the same crossroads, in more ways than one.

725 Calle Hospital, Level 3, Apt. A, Cusco Peru

(Pics: 1st, View from our living room. 2nd, Tyler and guests in our entry foyer/patio. 3rd, Our street--walk through that archway and our place is 5 minutes along. 4th and 5th, Plaza de Armas. 6th, At work.)

April 14, 2009...
DON’T SEND MAIL HERE!!! It won’t make it. My mom tried and the mail she sent will remain forever and mysteriously lost. Maybe there is a paper graveyard, for letters and packages that never reach their destinations and never get returned to their senders. I don’t want any young letters, full of life and potential, reaching an early grave. So, if you just so happen to want to be a nice U.S citizen and send me a letter, here’s where to send it to:

Alanna Brown
c/o Juan Carlos
Urb
Quispicanchi
Av. Nicaragua
H-9
Cusco, Peru

This address is tried and true (thanks Mommy!).
So life has been like a tornado since we got home from Bolivia. Our bus from Puno was painfully slow and wretchedly pee-smelling to have to sit on for eight hours. The potency of ammonia may have permanently singed my nose hairs. We got in past midnight, unpacked a bit. I was sleeping by 2:00am. Up the next morning, and every morning thereafter for the following six weeks, by 5:40am. I have to eat breakfast, shower, get dressed, and be out by 6:30am to walk the fifteen minute walk to the bus station. I arrive in Urubamba at 7:50am, with just enough time to walk the ten minutes from that bus station to the office by 8:00am, which is when I start work. I really enjoy my job and the people I work with. I just don’t enjoy the distance.
So, the Peru Projects Abroad is the top program of all of them as far as volunteer satisfaction and productivity go. And they have programs in several countries...Ghana, India, Cambodia, Argentina, Mexico, Costa Rica, just to name a few. Many of these countries don’t have the resource supply that the Peru volunteers are provided with. So my job over the next month and a half is scanning and/or recreating the games, flashcards, worksheets, posters, and various other supplemental learning material to put in PDF format and put online so that they are printable and therefore accessible worldwide. It feels like a really important job and I have fun doing it. For example, a lot of the games have their gameboards in tact to be scanned, but are missing game pieces. So I spent all of Wednesday drawing up game pieces in Paint!
Back to the apartment…I enjoy it so much. Bad news first though: the building is pretty shabby. It houses a gross, second floor hostel and bottom floor restaurant that I wouldn’t dare to try while I value my life. The hall outside often reeks of pee (though I've now complained to our landlord about strangers using our doorstep for a toilet and the smell has vastly improved), and there are always other UFOs (Unidentified Foul Odors) while venturing out of the building and into the street. However, I find these things livable in comparison to the perks: Our apartment is only a ten minute walk to the Plaza de Armas. It's also a really nice size; three bedrooms, one bath, fully furnished with all the towels, bedsheets, blankets, kitchen utensils, and appliances you could ask for. We have a nice flatscreen television with cable, a telephone line, and we’re working on getting wireless internet. The place is $250 per month including all utilities, so we each pay $125. It has an amazing view, too. From the entry foyer and kitchen and living room windows you can see the mountain that reads “Viva el Peru Glorioso.”
One thing we didn't have that we really wanted was a DVD player, so we went to Molino (the black market where I bought my awesome hiking boots) and found one for $40. Then, of course, we needed movies...each DVD costs $1, and since there's no cinema in Cusco, they pirate all the new movies. So far, our comprehensive list includes: Australia, Seven Pounds (a beautiful story of atonement which comes highly recommended by yours truly), Marley and Me, the Emperor's New Groove, Slumdog Millionaire, Bride Wars, The Wrestler, Revolutionary Road, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, and all five seasons of The Office, which was $3 per season. (If you think you sense a tone of braggyness here, you're right. This is my consolation for dealing with the UFOs.)
It's been really fun living here. I'm getting in touch with my inner baker/chef. I've made a few big breakfasts, a nice Easter dinner (which was deferred to Monday because, just when I'd seasoned the Lamb and had everything ready, the stove/oven ran out of gas), and I've baked a couple of pies, crust and all from scratch (still bragging).
I can say though, that despite the great view and all the cheap DVDs, I will never again take the small things for granted (okay, there's a little bit more bad news)...Like hot water. Or running water at all, for that matter. At first, only Tyler was getting hot showers and I would only get them when he turned on the water for me and I swore he had magical shower powers, or that the shower hated me. But eventually, after many days, the shower warmed up to me (no pun intended). Still, most days from about 10:00am to 6:00pm and 9:00pm to 5:00am the water shuts off completely. Some days it doesn't work at all. The thought of turning a left knob at an untimed moment and getting hot water, or warm if you give a nudge to the right knob, has become like an apparition or a hallucination, or a thing I dreamed of once that has yet to be invented. The dishwasher, too, has slipped into some synapse in my brain where all the unfathomable things go, or things that are seperate from reality; dishwashers and easy hot water now share a synapse with cartoons, Michael Jackson, and dinosaurs making a come-back (but only the nice ones, like the Bronchiasaurus, Steggasaurus, and Triceratops). On a miraculous and mystical day like today when I'm able to do dishes and fill the kettle from the faucet at 11:30am, I feel much like a caveman handed a lighter to play with. Oh, the joy!
But I'm really at home here. I think even more so than Nacho (nickname for Ignacio), the tiny gray mouse we found living in Tyler's room.
So, we store reserve water in a big plastic container and set up trails of Doritos to lead Nacho to his demise (he was really fast and smart, just not enough for cheese-wrapped, sprite-soaked poison). And we cook and clean and work or study Spanish and host overnight guests and watch DVDs and go out dancing, and that's life!