I've been in Cusco 5 days

8.25pm Fri 9 April

Time really does fly!! Its hard to believe that ivy almost been here a week. Don't have that much time left at the internet cafe so Ill just do a quickie run down on what ivy been up to.

- Spanish school is a little harder than I thought it would be, the teachers don't speak any English so its a bit hard when they're trying to explain something & you don't get it... Was in a class with 2 other people, Gemma (Australian but has lived in Canada for the last year) & Dan (whose form Israel). They're both really cool except they both understand & speak a lot more Spanish than me. Decided to change form a group class to one on one classes & started them on Wednesday. I'm understanding a lot more but my new teacher doesn't speak English either so all I can say is thank god for the Spanish dictionary I brought.

Tuesday night - Went to salsa lessons at the school with Gemma & Dan. It was a lot of fun. I haven't laughed so much in ages. Then we went to a neat little place & chilled out with the group of people form the salsa lessons.

Wednesday night - Met up with Gemma & walked around the shops for a bit. Brought a top that'll be great for Africa & the middle East. He wanted $25 soles for it but ended up taking $20sl. A 100% cotton long sleaved good quality top for $7.50au, not bad me thinks. Everything here is so cheap. The prices are pretty much the same as they are at home but with the advantage of the exchange rate its just so cheap!

Yesterday - Easter is pretty big here & they have both Thursday & Friday off. Yesterday was this huge lunch (bigger than normal) it was something like 12 courses as opposed to the normal 3. They said it was about the last supper... Basically how it works with lunch is that I finish school at 1pm & make my way home (so does everyone else, they all go home for lunch!) then the food starts coming out. Like I said its usually 3 courses consisting of soup, a main & desert - this is everyday! They think I don't eat a lot cause the soup usually fills me up. Anyway yesterday was 3 soups, 2 mains & however many deserts. I tried all of them which was cool & I couldn't eat a couple of them cause they had wheat in them (thank god). By then end of it I felt like I was going to explode :o)

Last night - I met Gemma & Dan about 8, went & grabbed some food then met up with some of Dans friends, that he met in Bolivia, at a Irish Pub (that's right Irish pub in Peru!). Ended up going to a Discotech (club). It was a really good night & I was happy to sleep in this morning cause it was a bit of a late one :o)

Today - my host family are so cool. They're like would you like to go to the country side today? I was like that'd be good (in broken Spanish & English as per most conversations). They took me to the markets in Pisca then to Calca where they were getting ready for the Easter procession that was this afternoon. They make these banners on the ground out of crushed flowers of all different colours. Some of them were pretty amazing. Then we went on to Urubamba & had a walk around there. It was pretty cool. I didn't see any ruins or anything like that but it was neat to see the towns & the sacred valley is pretty dam breath taking. I took a heap of photos.

Anyway must go. Having a quite night tonight. Doing a hike tomorrow to Tipon -haven't read up about it yet but I'm sure it'll be good. Lets just hope I'm not to unfit! ;o)