back from the valley

So far my time in Peru has been a lot of Lima.  And a lot of working. Although not really working hard all the time.  More like I've just had work activities taking up a parts of every day and evenings, which make doing other things hard. For those who know Lima, we live up in el cono norte. Basically, super far from anything exciting or fun to do in Lima. It's about an hour and a half or 2 hour ride on public bus to get into town. So, as you can imagine, we don't get down there much. We live in a nice little neighborhood, but there really is nothing to do and we can't walk around at night. We do have a corner store and a restaurant that serves menu that we eat lunch at everyday. At night it serves chifa (peruvian chinese food). Point is, it feels like we are working all the time, even if we aren't always.


So, last week I took off from work and went to the Sacred Valley, just outside of Cusco, for four days. It was all around excellent and pretty hard to capture in a blog post. I saw old friends, met new friends, did old hikes (with new paths and new people), and ate delicious food. Now I am back and Lima and have noticed that in the Sacred Valley my spanish is a little different. Or I guess it's more correct to say that the language is just a little different there--the words people use to say hi to an older woman, the tone you use when asking for something, the sound you make when you're cold.  This morning (back in Lima) I was walking back from an unsuccessful meeting at the health center nearby with the social worker (she left as I got there, not sure why), anyway, I walked past an older woman who looked like she was from the sierra, (ie. similar to where I was over the weekend) and I greeted her how I've greeted people in Cusco. Then I came online and was chatting with my friend in Lima, and that's when I was especially aware of the language difference because I started to talk to her in the more mountain way of speaking. Point is, going quickly from Lima to the mountains and back to Lima, it was cool to feel how my language changed.


After I've done more processing I'll probably have some good stories to share, but for now here's a photo of me up with Chicon--the glacier that overlooks Urubamba (where I lived). Glaciers in the Andean faith are referred to as "apus," which is a type of god that protects and oversees what's going on down below. Holly told me that certain apus have different personalities, too, and specialties. Chicon is one of my faves.  (ok, photo is taking too long to load, I'll put it up later).