Mis hermanos...

Yesterday I took a walk around Cuzco after having lunch with my brothers- The plaza de armas is A-MAZING... seriously the most beautiful place. It is a huge square with all ancient buildings and churches surrounding- and a fountain in the middle. I love that everything is historic here- nothing new and yuppie.... every building is just beautiful.

I went home to watch Peru play against Columbia with Juanca- perdimos...we lost :(. These boys crack me up! They are so great though- we laugh a ton and they are teaching me the "spanish lingo" of how to talk hip in Cuzco. We ate dinner all together- which was nice. In the evening Juanca and I walked to the plaza so he could give me tour of all the places. There are little stone allys in every crevice here that i would have never found on my own... that have a lot of international restaurants & discos. We walked through just about every one of them. At 11 Richy (that´s what they call Ricardo) got done working so we went to his bar/lounge. It is such a cute place. Lots of bean bags you can sit on- just a hip chill place. We played darts for about 2 hours- I got addicted. We played a game and I was within 2 points of beating them both... but Richey won- I got second.

This morning I had breakfast with Marina- my host mom again & this time she spilled everything. She opened up and told me all that she had been through- why she is a single mom and how she has/is struggling with depression. She was crying while she told me & it broke my heart... but I was able to tell her how much strength I see in her and that there is a joy that shines within her. All of that is true- she is such an incredible woman. It has just been such a blessing to be in her house- really.. divine. There is a reason that I´m there and I am just so glad I can be there for her to listen. What a blessing it has been to understand everything and be able to express myself. I love spanish soooo much. Last night Richy and Juanca were giving me a hard time for something that I said- and I realized that in this trip there hasn´t been a moment that I want to stop speaking in Spanish. In the past my head would be spinning and I´d want to be away from it- but this trip it is almost addicting to be in conversations. I´m loving it! Everywhere I go someone wants to have a conversation- and I love talking with people.

The most interesting thing that I´ve talked is politics... the peruvians have so many questions they want answered. It is interesting to hear their views also. I try to stay away from it for the most part- but they don´t want to argue it- more so hear about it.

Okay- enough for now. Off to my next clase de espanol....