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 So I told him I’m a writer…unpublished, but an aspiring best-seller.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.