Back Home Again in Ollanta!

As much as I love the beach, I was very happy to fly into Cusco and land in between the beautiful green mountains. My friend Porfi met me at the airport so it was great to see a familiar face when I got off the plane. He had to stay in Cusco for work things, but we shared a taxi over to the combi/taxi area for rides to Ollanta. I got home to the volunteer house around 12:30pm. I was quite impressed that my flight was actually on time. That has never happened here before. Keri and I did not want to draw out a goodbye so she went running when I headed down to my taxi. Her flight was later in the day than mine. Luckily, we know we will be seeing each other again soon. I will probably make a trip out to Rochester to visit her and we have plans for her to celebrate Thanksgiving with my family this year!

I love living in the volunteer house. We cook great food (and chocolate chip cookies) and just hang out and talk a lot. I share a room with Hallie and then Marjo and Ben have their own rooms. Will and Jessica come over quite often so our little crew has been reunited. We miss Keri and Michelle, but we are all happy to be hanging out together again. There are lots of new volunteers arriving every week. Some are really cool and others just need to break out of their shells.

I have settled into my room and already gotten into the swing of going to the market every day to buy food to cook. As there are no refrigerators here, we have to buy our food and cook it daily. We also go to the fresh juice lady and get juices every morning. Yesterday, Hallie, Marjo and I shared two pitchers of mixed juice that had carrots, papaya, pineapple, apple and oranges in it. All for just 75 cents each! Amazing!

We had movie night at the pub last night. And tonight we are having a going away party for Elio, the intern at the health clinic. We are playing soccer against the clinic staff and then going out drinking and dancing. We just had a big lunch for him a the clinic. It is just so nice to be back. Everyone keeps commenting on my tan. Hallie's old host dad said to me, "You have changed color completely!". My taxi driver in Lima told me that he thought I was Latina. It cracks me up because here, they do not want to be dark and yet we go and lay out as much as we can.

Today was the anniversary of one of the kindergardens (el jardin) in town so the kids all dressed up in traditional clothes and danced traditional dances. It was the cutest thing I have seen in a long time. I took lots of pictures. I just wanted to squeeze them. You know how it is, 4 and 5 year olds really do not understand or remember all of the moves so you have some that are good and are dancing and others that are just kind of watching and others that are just running around. One of the dances involved the boys pretending to fight and fall down and the girls come and grab them by the collar and pull them away. It was so cute!

Okay, I'm going to try to upload my photos now so check back soon for a new and improved slideshow!