Some tibits for our two regular readers :-)

Krista is in the midst of composing the story of our epic bus ride to Cusco (I couldnt bring myself to re-live it and thus it´s nice to have someone to share the blogging with!) and she has done a good job describing our first days in Cusco, too. That is all coming soon, so I thought I just share some fun and funny things about our trip so far in case all of our puke stories were scaring off readers!

1. Dan, the dance instructor, remains the ultimate ex-roomate from our hostel in Lima and ultimate inside joke. I don´t think in the next five months we will meet anyone as dynamically involved in giving salsa lessons to the world as Dan. He had all of his salsa clothes -red silk shirts, etc - hanging outside on the hostel balcony, he had very sexy business cards (one of which is safely pasted in Krista´s journal), and he spent hours in the hostel patio composing lists of people who had attended his class at some point.

2. Inka Cola. For the Scots, ex-Scots, or Scotiaphiles reading our blog Inka Cola is Peruvian IronBru. It´s wonderfully sweet and flourescent yellow and highly caffeinted and somehow drinkable even on an upset stomach.

3. First days volunteering. Krista was thrown right into a low income clinic with an abundance of patients and a lack of doctors. It sounds like she proved her competence (in Spanish and basic healthcare) and is well on her way to being a major help. She´s going to be working there from 8-1 everyday. I started with a group of about 12 girls between the ages of 12 and 19 who have been abused at their home and or run away for some reason. I´m really on my own to come up with 3 hrs of engaging lessons for these girls every afternoon. We´re doing a little big of English language learning and I´ve also been asked to pass along any ¨life skills¨...For example, today we made banana and chocolate chip pancakes (a life skill, possibly?). The eating certainly went over well and I think a few of the girls really enjoyed learning to cook the pancackes. Frantically coming up with life skills to impart for the rest of the week...

4. The people at Maximo Nivel. The people who work here and run the volunteer organization full time are amazing people who mostly have stories of abandoning their ¨real¨ and sometimes intense jobs and city lives and coming to Peru to help people. There´s Carlene, a spunky, actressy blonde from California who just up and left her LA life and came to Cusco last year. There´s Silva, a beautiful German girl who worked in disaster relief for the United Nations for 8 years (with a staff of 60) and decided to take two years off to run Maximo Nivel. Stephen, who was legal counsel for a big cosmetics firm for many years, and now runs Patas, the adventure tours side.... Anyway, the list goes on, but everyone is mellow and well-traveled and passionate about their non-traditional lifestyles and the service they are doing.

5. Where is THE Maximo Nivel? Apparently for those of you who have never taken Spanish, Maximo Nivel translates to ¨The Highest Level¨. Since we learned about our volunteer project, I´ve been excited to meet Maximo Nivel, the dynamo who founded the language school and bounds around greeting all of the students and kissing all of the teachers. Krista broke the news to me on Day 1 that Maximo Nivel is not actually a man! Fortunately, we met Ken Jones who is the equivalent.

6. Trivia at a totally English pub. Last night a group of us went to The Real McCoy which is an English pub just off of the main plaza, Plaza des Armas. After our bouts with Peruvian food, it was so nice to be in a place serving all recognizable foods from university including salad cream (eek!) and Haribo gummy bears!

7. How we feel about the handicaps? After the pub last night, we were stopped by a student interviewing tourists for his English class. He asked a few understandable questions regarding our stay in Cusco and then asked, ¨How do you feel about the handicaps?¨. Krista and I both began to go into a rather heartfelt response about how Cusco must be a difficult city for handicaps given the cobblestones and high alititude, quickly realizing that he meant ¨handicrafts¨which are in fact very beautiful and difficult to pass by!

8. Our first friend, Sam. We made our first friend. This is pretty exciting given that it is just the two of us for 5 months. Sam is cool and kind of goofy and good to talk to. He is a fourth year medical student at the University of Portland, Oregan about to specialize in Internal medecine. He came to medecine late, too, so Krista and him have lots to chat about and I interject frequently.

9. Ana Maria. Ana Maria is our host mother. She teaches English at Maximo Nivel. She is full of life, has a lot of insider info on Maximo Nivel and getting around town, and is taking pretty good care of these chicas!