April 2nd-3rd journal entry

This is my first journal entry for this trip...

Woke up later than I wanted to this morning, I felt a little ill this morning, didn´t sleep much the night before, stayed up talking to Cody. Packed up all my stuff and forgot my wristwatch. The craziness didn´t hit me until I got on the plane. I sat between two guys who spoke less Spanish than me. It was a good plane ride. Talked to the guys, tried to watch Pirates of the Caribbean in Spanish, but got a headache and turned it off. Navigating the Lima airport is pretty crazy, but there was lots of English. Met up with Alex, Ben, and Shannon. I bought Caprece at a restaurante a la aeropuerta. We hung out in a hallway in the Lima airport, got a lot of comments from people walking by. Met two people from Cusco who were very friendly. I bought a large Mango drink for 15 soles. It was really good and I had a good conversation with the guy who sold it to me. Can´t get my boarding pass until 3am, kind of inconvenient, but we´re just gonna chill. I´m trying to get some sleep, but I don´t know if I´ll be able too.

We are homeless bums at the Lima airport, ánd we can´t even understand the comments that the Peruvians are making about us. There is a chapel at the airport. I think I´m going to go there tonight to pray and read the bible. I got 400 soles from the ATM, can´t figure out how to unlock my phone and I don´t have a place to stay tonight in Cusco.

I went in to the Chapel and met Saul. We read Pedro y los Salmos 23-27, it was hard for me to understand him, but from what I got he had been deported from the United States. I prayed with him, me speaking broken Spanish with little bits of English and him speaking quietly in Spanish. He lives in Huaranca.

A dude quacked at us.

Peru LD

I realize that I said I was going to post every week. I may or may not post every week, but It´s gonna take some time to put pictures and journal entries up. I´m in Pisaq right now where the internet is awful. I´ll be in Cusco in two days where I´ll be able to post pictures and more entries. I will also be staying with a host family for two weeks and continuing Spanish classes. My Spanish classes started up this last monday and somehow I got put in a really difficult class, they say they can´t change the class until next week. Luckily I´m able to keep up, but I´m learning subjunctive tenses (for abstract concepts) before I fully know all of the indicative preterit tenses (for talking about the past), but I´m getting buy, learning more Spanish every day. The other day I hung out with an amigo, Jermaine, I met last time I was in Cusco, he´s a really chill artist, who has a studio in Pisaq, he paints and plays instruments. I got to pray with him and read the bible in Spanish which was interesting. Peru is the most Catholic country in South America, the most Catholic continent so it´s really interesting. There are all these huge churches and cathedrals everywhere. On Sunday there is a service in Quechua, the language of the indigenous descendants of the Incans, which I´m thinking about attending. I won´t understand a word, but it will be cool to see. The farther away from the cities and the deeper into the Andies you go, the more Quechua you will hear. In Pisaq there is a fair amount of Quechua spoken still, it is very difficult to pronounce because of the variations of Q and K that require gutteral choking sounds and sometimes clicks. I have picked up a few simple Quechua phrases from street vendors and friends. People are more than happy to teach Quechua words, and get very excited when you use them. In the last two weeks I have visited many towns including; Urubamba, Chinchero, Pisaq, and Ollantytambo. We saw many Incan ruins, which were amazing. I´m running out of time on the computer, but will write when I reach Cuisco.