Up Tempo

It's been a busy couple of days down here in Cusco. For starters we reneged on our first apartment. The noise from the street was almost comically loud. I wondered if we were being punked. The fact that it didn't get much light also made it cave-like, even during the day. Oh, and caves are cold too. We asked if we could move upstairs and, well, here we are. I think it was a great move. We have expansive views of the city (see the night shot I took from our bedroom window), and we are much more insulated from the noises of the city. It was a bit demoralizing to be moving again, but I think this apartment will stick.


Sophia has begun riding the bus back from school and LOVES it. It is a tiny little minivan, 9 kids, nobody buckled (I know, I know, but there is so much traffic that nobody goes much faster than 15 mph), with a sweet woman who works as a helper. According to Sophia she got to play with some play-doh for a long time and it was really fun. Sophia is getting pretty attached to school and the "big girlness" of it all. Things like riding a bus, getting homework, walking in parades, and having gym and music class really prop her up. And she is really picking up Spanish quickly!

Isabel is pretty intent on keeping the homeschool thing going, which is fine with us, although it is a bit hard to swallow. Ausangate Bilingual School appears to be a great opportunity, but she is just not into it. She is bored to death in the much-too-easy math/English portion of the day, and completely clueless in the Spanish portion of the day. The school community is really welcoming and kind, so I am glad at least one of our children has us connected to it. Isabel will continue with her one-on-one Spanish lessons every weekday from 3:30-5:00.

We marched through the city last night carrying "antorchas" to commemorate the 8th anniversary of the school. It was fun to have tourists taking pictures of US as we paraded around the Plaza de Armas. The procession culminated in a very homespun fireworks display. Let me backtrack for a moment to help you capture the incendiary nature of it all. Antorchas are sculptures (animals, airplanes, faces, etc.) made of tissue paper built around a wire frame, and you put a candle inside them to make them light up. Yes, I said tissue paper, and candles...
Then you hand them to children to try and carry upright for a mile or so. The serene vision of a hundred softly glowing shapes bobbing down the street was occasionally punctuated by a burst of flame as someone's antorcha bit the dust. At the fireworks display we were warned by a veteran to stand a safe distance from the launch zone, and then take twenty steps further away, just to be sure. This, as it turns out was good advice. We watched in alarm as flaming ashes rained down on the spectators in the expensive seats.
After the parade we were invited to a coffee shop for refreshments which turned out to be a sort of "Baptist ice cream social" kind of affair. How ironic to be spending the first night of Rosh Hashonah amongst born again Christian missionaries inviting you to the Sunday night service. Irony aside, they were a really wonderful group of people, one of whom is a physician from Britain who was eager to have us call her if we ever had any need. Krista also made some excellent connections with a variety of people involved in orphanages, something on which she is hoping to conduct research. One of the missionary families (from Corpus Christi Texas) has two daughters ages 8 and 12 who are home schooled. Isabel was PSYCHED to meet the older girl and they seemed to hit it off right away. Perhaps they will spend some time together since they live just a stone's throw from our front door.

Today we ventured up to Saksaywaman, the Inca ruins just above the city. The scale of the place is hard to describe. I still can't imagine how stones, many of them hundreds of tons, were quarried miles away, moved here, and then carved and fit together with such explicit accuracy that 500 years and three high magnitude earthquakes later, they remain today as they were on the day they were created.

While touring the site with our kids, darned if we didn't see another gringo family walking around with their three kids. This is how we met Dennis and Bergite and their three children from Denmark. They are taking two years to travel the world. They shipped their VW camper van to Australia, drove it across the country, took a ferry to New Zealand, drove around there, then shipped it to Quito, Ecuador. As of today they have been traveling together for 455 days. They both have to report back to work in August of 2010. Every parent in Denmark is given one year of paid leave for each child they have. How civilized, no? Dennis and Bergite opted to stockpile their parental leave and use it to travel the world with their kids. Well played! I tried to convince them to head north in their van as their trip draws to a close so they can leave that 1990 VW turbo-diesel 4 wheel drive camper bus in my driveway in time for our return. I'm only half kidding -- this is an amazing vehicle that, as I type this, is causing saliva to build up in my mouth. They actually do want to sell it before they head home, so perhaps we will stay in touch...

Hopefully tomorrow will be a quiet day, un dia de descanso. We are all kind of tuckered out and need a day to just lounge in our new abode.