Week 3 of Spanish school started with some new classes! Trent moved up to join Frank's class and Katreina and Jody are the only two students in their class this week. Everyone is learning bits of past tense which is new and pretty hard!
Our new house has been working out great. With the short walk to classes everyone is a little more relaxed and rested. Our new host family is great and we have dependable, hot showers. So yeah, it's been a pretty good move. With school being so close we all get to sleep a little more and we are able to easily participate in evening activities at the school. This week we took a yoga class (well, everyone but Trent took a yoga class) and a cooking class! We learned how to make Papa a la Huancaina, a dish we had with our host mum just a few days prior, and it was great! We really do enjoy these evenings with our great group of classmates, and chef Marilú is a fabulous teacher! We also got to go to a few museums as part of class on Friday. The guys ended up at the Coca Museum and an art museum, while the girls ended up at a textile museum and an art museum. We are loving school!
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| Papa a la Huancaina with Amauta Spanish School. |
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| Field trip! |
The surprise treat of the week was a birthday! Our host's sister (who also lives at the house) celebrated her birthday this week. The other classmate that lives here bought a cake and we celebrated along with many other members of the family. It was so sweet and I felt honored to be welcomed into part of the celebration. More and more family members came to join the festivities and we were greeted with hugs and kisses. We left to finish school and to give the family space, but that warmth and welcoming caused my eyes to leak a little. We finished school and headed to the San Pedro market for a little shopping and sightseeing.
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| ¡Feliz Cumpleaños, Coca! And a little trip to the market. |
This weekend we took a tour to "7 Lagunas del Ausangate," or the Seven Lagoons of the Ausangate Mountains. It was another early, pre-0500 departure from Cusco for the long drive to the start of the hike. We arrived in the town of Pacchanta where we met our local guide, Cleaver, and had a great breakfast with our group. It was our family, another Amauta classmate, and a group of four local girlfriends which included an American--it was a fun group! Pacchanta is a small town where some people don't even speak Spanish--they only speak Quechua, the native Incan language. They farm, guide visitors to the mountains, and they have an amazing local hot spring. The hike around the lagoons is 11km at 4300-4700m altitude and was a little challenging on the way up, but we felt great compared to the previous weekend. Unfortunately our classmate wasn't doing so hot, but she powered through the lagoons before mounting a horse for the return. The lagoons were different colors, sizes, and depths, and all lie in the shadow of the great Ausangate mountain. Cleaver helped us identify birds, explained the significance of the various lagoons, and told us about the people of his town, and he was just an awesome guy and guide!
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| So much beauty here! And Cleaver was a great guide and photographer! |
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| Family pic! |
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| Such gorgeous views...we took a lot of pics! |
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| We were really hoping the cloud was going to clear off the top of Ausangate, but it was still pretty! |
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| The local, natural hot springs were HOT! It was a joy to share them with the local families of Pacchanta as they enjoyed their Saturday. |
Today is a day of rest, booking some more travel legs (which is NOT always easy!), and rest!
~Jo, Nomadic Momma
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