ollantaytambo ho!

we´re rapidly approaching the weekend and i´m scurrying to make plans to explore the sacred valley. i have the unfortunate luck of arriving the week that nobody else arrived and now, this week, everyone wants to do what i did last weekend instead of jumping on board my overnight ollantaytambo excursion. i can´t blame them for wanting to go in the same succession i did, but i feel screwed out of the true travel experience when all the lone souls band together and travel places. for about 12 hours i had two people on board with me, but then they decided they wanted to see pisac instead. (damn me for talking up pisac! i should have told then about the pukey bus ride and the dirty river!!!) so, now i go to it by my lonesome...but i found a pretty cool lodge down the valley, which should offer up some amazing views and the potential for some fun excursions. so, i´ll report back on that after the fact. i´m going to mix it up by taking the backpacker train there and then busing back on sunday through the many towns of the sacred valley. the bus is risky business, for sure, judging from the 45-minute nausea fest christine and i suffered on the bus ride to pisac last sunday. but i´m going to pack my own personal barf bag and hope for the best! on the bright side, the train is about $45 american(and that´s the super early, cheaper backpacker train), while the bus is about $3. so i´m going to say that my motion sickness is worth the $42 savings...i say that now...

i forgot to mark the day, but i started dreaming in spanish on jan. 7...three days ago. i think that´s an important step in my journey to becoming a true latin american. i speak really well in my dream, too! aaah to dream...perchance to communicate...

i also completed step two of the process...salsa lessons! last night i accompanied my little chili-pepper of a 19-yr-old-swiss-roommate to her favorite discoteca for free salsa lessons from 9 - 11. we will return tonight and hopefully i will be able to complete chili-pepper 101. right now i´d say i´m a green bell pepper at best. andrea (chili-pepper) leaves saturday to continue on her year-long travels, so i have to bask in her youth for our two remaining evenings together.

much to my tickled-pinkedness, i finally learned a super basic future tense yesterday (i knew it already, but at least we´re on the road to conversational freedom) and today we tackled two of the many past tenses! whoohooo! i have waited two long weeks for these days and now my brain hurts because i can´t absorb all this information, much less have it instantly accessible when i´m talking on the street. (the down side to finally getting to the stuff i don´t remember is that i no longer feel like the smart kid. i feel like the kid who sniffed glue and tried to eat a towel) but, i have hope that one day i will be speaking like a fully functioning spanish human. pray for me. if you need assistance, i captured a good shot of jesus on my flickr page.

oooh, and at 6 on sunday my new family picks me up at the school and they will take me home, swaddled in the traditional peruvian blankets, and feed me and love me forever. or...more likely, place me in the center of the living room, gather round and stare at me, wondering what the hell the strange noises i´m uttering could mean...