In case anyone is actually checking this... here are just a few pics from my weekend. I literally can't believe that the month is almost over- I leave tomorrow night. Time has just flown by. Anyway, for my last weekend here in Peru, I splurged and went on a whirlwind tour of Cusco, the Sacred Valley, and Machu Picchu. It was incredible. Above, I am sitting on the very summit of Wayna Picchu, the ruins at the top of the mountain that towers above Machu Picchu, looking down on the ancient city.

There are llamas all over Machu Picchu... I would guess that it might be the only one of the new seven wonders of the world where domesticated livestock mingle with the tourists.

The postcard view- the tall mountain in the background is Wayna Picchu.

I will be sure to post more pictures and write more about my weekend later!

Unfortunately, I have basically nothing new to report this week, because I have pretty much been in bed sick since Tuesday night. Big bummer. I'm not sure what it was, probably some sort of flu or GI thing, and it was pretty miserable there for a few days, but I think I am on the rebound now. Just in time for the weekend. :) I took my regular Spanish classes all week, though, which I really enjoy. I am finally starting to feel like I am picking up a lot of useful vocab... I can't believe I only have one week left after this!

Anyway, I still can't get my pictures to upload very well, so I am having to do them one at a time... in any case, here are a few of where I have been spending the majority of my time.

This is where I live. Lucy and Alberto's home facing the street:

This is the view of El Misti (snow-capped!) from the stairs on the front of the house:
This is a view of the backyard and the garden:

Toto, the pet monkey (random, Lucy found him in an ad in the newspaper):

And the tortise that roams the backyard and tries to come into the house whenever she can:

Chilis from the garden:

Next door is a school, and so at various times throughout the day, you can tell when the students are out for recess. Also, I occasionally hear them all singing together in chorus at the tops of their lungs (music class? choir practice? English class? not sure)... this afternoon it was Help by the Beatles, and last week they were singing She Drives Me Crazy, by Fine Young Cannibals.

I will keep working on uploading more pictures from my trip to the canyon last weekend; stay tuned!

A little bird told me that there was something on the news there about an earthquake in Peru? I haven't heard any of the reports, nor do I know where the earthquake reportedly took place, but there was one here on Wednesday night! I apparently lived through some pretty big ones in Mexico, but the truth is that I don't really remember them. So I count Wednesday's as my first earthquake! It wasn't very big, I don't think, although people were definitely talking about it the next day. I was sitting on my bed, reading, around 9 0r 9:30 at night and all of a sudden I realized that the bed was shaking very faintly. The shaking grew at little stronger and a little stronger, and I looked up and realized that other things in the room were trembling, too. At this point it dawned on me that we were having an earthquake (I know, right? Wow... smart.) Lucy called for me from down the hall to put on my shoes and go outside in the garden, but by the time we all made it out there, it was over. Exciting! My teacher told me the next day that Arequipeños believe that earthquakes are the earth "unloading", and that they were are growing nervous because they hadn't had an earthquake in so long, and were afraid the next one might be big.

Alright, without further ado, more pictures from last weekend! The bus ride to the canyon from Arequipa was about three hours long, with lots of stops to take pictures (of clouds, in our case) and buy souvenirs and use the restroom. The slow ascent is purposeful: to prevent altitude sickness.

Here are my favorite little fuzzy alpacas. I'm not sure why I think they are so funny, but I do.

This is the so-called "Lookout of the Andes". Altitude here is 4,910 meters (or 16,109 feet, for those of you who, like me, can't do the conversion.) It supposedly has amazing panoramic vistas of five surrounding volcanoes and their mountain ranges... none of which we could see. Plenty of tour busses, though, and local women hawking traditional textiles as well as more touristy alpaca hats with "Peru" written on them.

A "traditional" mountain hut? I'm actually not totally positive; I'm pretty sure it is just there for tourist consumption. The many little cairns covering the mountainside supposedly bring good luck in love and life to their builders (a wishing-well of sorts.)

On Saturday night, we slept in the small town of Chivay, which is located very near the opening of the canyon. We were taken to a natural hot springs pool for a couple of hours, from which you could enjoy a nice view as well as a cold beer (and I did both.) Then, for dinner that night, we were all taken to the same restaurant to eat typical dishes and take in a traditional music and dance show. I loved the music and ended up buying a CD at the end of the evening. The dance was less interesting, although the costumes were elaborate and gorgeous.

Literally about five seconds after I took the picture above, the dancers all let go of their partners and turned to the crowd to pull in participants. One of them came to my table and grabbed my hand. So I tried to follow along in the dance that honestly seemed like it would never end (also, the air is REALLY thin up there!) One of the major disadvantages to traveling alone is that there was no one to take a picture of me looking utterly ridiculous.

The next morning, we were up bright and early for our trip down the canyon about an hour, to try to spot some condors hunting in the morning! This picture I took from inside the bus, but it still gives you an idea of how beautiful the canyon was. You can see the ancient terraced farming system that is still used.

Flight of the condors! These guys can be HUGE: up to 3m wingspan and 1m high, weighing about 30-35 pounds. They don't actually hunt, they scavenge. So twice a day, they glide and swoop around the sky, looking for dead quarry.

In this picture you can see four condors in the distance. For about ten really amazing minutes, we had six or seven fully-grown condors soaring right above our heads at the same time, putting on a show. It was really hard to capture with a camera.

This is an adult male; you can tell by the white ring at the neck.

Self-portrait when the condors had all moved on.

Along the way back up the canyon, we stopped at a tiny little town for more pictures, trinkets and crafts shopping. This is a woman peeling a tuna for me, or prickly pear fruit.

Local llama dressed up for the tourists gets a snack of orange rind.

The two young boys from the family in my tour group pose with a little local girl and her baby goat.

I am going to write a much longer post about the trip I took this past weekend at some point later on this week, but for now my pictures are not uploading for some reason, and so I only have four for you here. I went to the Colca Canyon on a little tourist bus trip on Saturday and Sunday. The trip basically involved a lot of time in our 15 passenger bus, a lot of stops at viewpoints (all of which were under clouds on Saturday, big bummer) and a lot of eating traditional regional dishes in restaurants. It was pretty fun, and I am glad I went. Here is a preview:

These are wild vicunyas, whose wool is softer and more valuable than cashmere, apparently. They are protected in this national park that we drove through, and we saw a ton of them.

Vendors at one of our rest stops, selling alpaca sweaters, hats, gloves, scarves, bags. They are dressed in traditional clothing and expect payment in return for pictures taken of them.

I couldn't resist. I figured this picture was worth about 35 cents.

Alpacas! They are pretty funny-looking, like cartoon characters or something. They are also delicious, as I discovered a few times over the course of the weekend. :)