La Segunda Semana

So the whole posting pictures thing still isn´t happening. Rats! Hopefully I can find somewhere that´ll let me download the camera software thing. Pictures make everything so much more exciting! For now, I´ll just post pictures from the Internet to show y´all what I´ve been doing :)

I´m living in Cusco, which is in the Southeast of the country. It´s in the mountains, at somewhere above 3000 meters, and has a population of 350,000. It´s the Inca capital and relatively close to Machu Picchu, where I´ll be going in a few weeks. I am super excited for that! It´s crazy that I´ve already been here for nearly 2 weeks and only have a month left!

I live in a neighborhood that´s a little ways from downtown, which is kind of a pain when I have to get to class or want to wander around in the afternoons since I have to take a 30 minute bus ride. But it is also closer to the school where I´ll be working next week, so I´m going to be glad of that. This bridge is pretty close to my house and spans the main street that goes by the neighborhood.

I haven´t done much touristy stuff yet, since I´ve been figuring things out, getting an international student ID card (discounts for me!) and hanging out with my family. But I did have a ¨field trip¨ with my Spanish teacher a week ago to San Blas, which is an artesan neighborhood by the main Plaza. There´s only two streets that you can drive through in the whole neighborhood, the rest is walkways - and the hills and steps here make San Marcos look flat.

In the next 10 days I´ll be doing lots of sightseeing with the Boleto Turistico, a tourist pass that gets me into 16 different sites and museums. That´ll be exciting. And then there´s a week full of festivals - Corpus Cristi, Inti Raymi, lots of dances in the Plaza with kids from the primary and secondary schools.

Well, that´s at least more colorful, even if I didn´t take any of those pictures. I guess I´ll just have a massive facebook album when I get back, not that that´s a bad thing. I hope everyone is enjoying their summer as much as I am mine! I´ll post another update in a week or so about all my sightseeing. Hasta luego, amigos!