Free week: Planned!

Hello hello! Today starts week 2 of classes already - let's hope I can handle it. I was contacted this weekend and told that I got a mini "scholarship" to go and help out in English classrooms at the University - whooo! I will go once or twice a week to a Cultural class and just help the professor talk about what culture is really like in America, what I find different here, better/worse, etc. I'm looking forward to that.

After our trip to Azapa,I did a whole lot of nothing this weekend. It was wonderful! Walked around the Centro, went to the beach some more, and found a really nice restaurant along the coast that I'm going to try this weekend. You should probably read Nolan's blog if you have time...he got stranded in the middle of the desert when his family's car battery died! Ha! Don't worry, he made it home safe.

Last night we figured out all our plans for our free week!! It took awhile, but Antonio (Nolan's dad) helped us a lot with figuring out how to get there, bus schedules, etc. We're taking a bus all the way to Cusco, but we're breaking it up and stopping in Arequipa for a day at the beginning and a day at the end. We'll go from the Tacna station to Arequipa and stay the night and the following day. The bus ride to Cusco is 10 hours, BUT it's a night ride so we'll try and sleep the whole time and arrive in Cusco at 6 a.m. Depending on our hotel's check in time, we may just spend our first day in Cusco and 2nd day in Machu Picchu because the train to get there leaves at 9 am. We don't want to be rushing around! We'll spend 3 days and 2 nights in Cusco/Machu Picchu, and then return to Arequipa after that to spend one more day and one more night. Then, home we come for our last 3 weeks of class which will fly by!!

Kory/Kim/Anna/everyone else at Kim's wedding, I missed you all and thought of you a lot this weekend!! And Kory, we need to Skype again...I loved answering your family's questions, but I didn't get any juicy gossip from Chicago OR Muscatine :)

Everyone else, I'm still learning Spanish bit by bit. It is getting easier, but I think I'd need 4 years here to feel totally comfortable and fluent. I went to an English class yesterday with a Chilean friend to help her with a presentation about American holidays - it was really interesting! It made me feel better to know they are learning English in the same way we're learning Spanish - I felt much more useful in that class than I usually do muttering and stammering in Spanish :)

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