Alright, so, after such a delay, finally I am able to post this blog about our stay in Cusco. We all had such a crazy experience in the jungle, and even though our time seemed short, I think that we were all anxious to get back to some clean clothes, internet, and hot showers. As soon as we arrived in Cusco that night, we immediately set off to find a pizza joint, and we easily demolished 5 large pizzas. And oh man, at the time it had been the best meal the entire trip! Being back in Cusco was very exciting because our 1st spanish classes began, and it was our 1st experience being split up and living with a homestay. In school, we were divided up into 3 groups depending on our level of spanish. For me, I was pretty nervous because I had no spanish experience at all, just 7 years of french which is pretty useless here. I was so excited to finally be learning some spanish, but was a little disapointed when at the end of our 1st class, all I could do was read the alphabet and pronunciate correctly. There was no way I would be able to commuinicate with my family! Luckily though for me, my homestay brother knew a little bit of english, so he was able to help teach me a bit more, and we could comminicate alright with a dictionary. I´m not quite sure how everyone´s homestay was, but I was with a pretty big loving family that ate breakfast and dinner together every day. My family was so nice, and I really wished I were able to talk with them more so badly. Towards the end of week though I was defintely able to understand a bit more, so that was very exciting for me. Everyday we had classes from 9 until 1, which throughout the week everyone seemed to be getting a bit tired of. The spanish was useful, but the classes just dragged on for so long. It was really nice though to have some freedom in the afternoons after class to just hang out and explore Cusco a bit. Cusco is a really cool city, with really old roads and buildings and churches that date back to the Incan times. The mountains surrounding Cusco are just beautiful, and it was definitely a lot colder than expected. On the weekend, we all hopped on a bus and headed into the sacred valley to volunteer at an orphanage called Casa De Milagres. The city is really fun, but it was really nice to escape for the weekend. The orphange was so cool, with organic gardens and all kinds of animals and beautiful murals on every wall, inside and out. While down there we re-painted this huge mural on an outside wall that turned out looking awesome. We didn´t really get to spend much time though with the kids; they were off doing other things that weekend. One morning after breakfast, everyone was freaking out and rushing outside to see this rainbow that encircled the sun. I wasn´t sure why everyone was so ecstatic about it because I´d seen those plenty of times. I never knew that so many people had never seen them before, it was pretty neat. After returning from the orphange, we had 2 or 3 more days of spanish school and homestays, and then we all got to go horseback riding through the mountains to check out some Incan ruins and caves. The horseback riding was a lot of fun! We then all had a last dinner together in Cusco before packing up and preparing for our trek to Machu Picchu.
Megan