another trip

so. i haven't really had to much time to elaborate on my trip to macchu piccu and the sacred valley but hopefully sometime next week. tonight we are headed on a bus trip up to the northern coast of peru. visit some beaches and more historical stuff. should be fun. i believe i'm going to spend pretty much the whole weekend in a bus. each day we are driving at least 5 hours as we city hop up north and on sunday we return to lima, aka at least a 17hr bus ride. not looking forward to sunday.

well. off to lunch. will update next week when i get back.

photos

http://messiah.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2032874&l=92207&id=55303386

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2032872&l=d77dc&id=55303386

follow these two links to look at some photos i just put on facebook. they are of peru and mexico. for some reason i think some of the coloring is off on some for photos. i'll have to switch computers and try and fix that later.

wow

what up everybody? it's 1:30am here in cuzco, peru. saw macchu piccu (spelling?) yesterday. amazing. i'm heading off to bed just given all y'all an update. will try and post photos tomorrow after i fly back to lima. chau.

more jungle photos

this pic and the one above are shots lookin out over the amazon river. we mainly spent our time on the tributaries of the amazon, but we did manage to get out on the amazon for a little bit. we also had a couple fresh water dolphins swim by.
me holding an oso perezoso, a lazy bear, or a sloth. their claws are real powerful and hurt when they latch on to you.
me and a large anaconda. that giant lump near my right hand is a chicken. a think they said this snake was 5 meters (roughly 15-17ft long). awesome.
my two latin babies. i believe i failed to mention in my last posts that i married a peruvian princess and now have two kids.
me shooting a 5foot blowgun

the two guys up front were our guides for the three days we spent in iquitos and the dude in the back was the owner of the boat. he has four kids, and the oldest, his 18yrs old son, was driving the boat.
i don't know why but i really like this photo.

CHATO!!

me with snakes. cool.
one of the many houses on the river. when the rains come in the winter the house rises with the river.

yeah. so meant to add my photos from the jungle a little sooner, but really haven't had time to sit down and upload photos.

this past weekend was nuts. we left lima around 5am friday morning and arrived in iquitos around 6ish. the weather in iquitos is the complete opposite of lima. it was hot and extremely humid. soon after arriving in the airport we took a bus tour around the city for a few hours. we then took a boat tours on one of the many tributaries of the amazon river. this tour took us to a pretty rundown neighborhood where half of the houses were on the river, somehow anchored down to the ground. and the sanitary conditions were definitely not up there. the bathrooms were out over the river and people were bathing/swimming/washing clothes right next to the outhouses. we then went to a zoo and saw a bunch of crazy animals and i was able to hold two snakes. awesome. after that we took a two hour boat ride up river to our lodge. i ended up sitting up front with our guides and talked to them for most of the time (in spanish). and i also slept on the prow of the boat for awhile. way cool. my nickname here in peru is chato, or short, and everyone i meet gets a kick out of it. especially the workers and guides at our lodge thingy we stayed at. everywhere i went i was bound to hear a "chato" yelled my way, it was cool since i was so easily recognized, everyone knew me, and it gave me opportunities to chill with the peruvian dudes and talk and stuff. if i can remember right we just chilled the rest of friday night. and i ended up being kinda sick the whole weekend (sore throat, achiness, etc), so i slept alot.

saturday we went for 3 hour hike in the jungle, and i when i say hike i mean really slow walk due to two factors. one our group was close to 30 people, so we come in all shapes and sizes and athletic abilities, and two, twenty minutes into the hike it started to pour and didn't stop. the ground turned to mud really quick. after the hike if i can remember right we visited a "native village" aka native people wearing their native dress selling us their native trinkets at a low price. tourist trap. but since it was so much fun we went to another village the next day. anyways, we did and cruised around rivers and all sorts of fun jungle things. sunday we went to some random place were we where able to hold an anaconda and a sloth and monkeys and stuff.

so yeah. that was in short my crazy weekend. i have a test tomorrow in spanish. haha. i can hardly believe it myself. a test?? no way. but i've been studying all day so thats good.

oh yeah. i randomly met up with my junior high/high school youth pastor last night. him and about 10 other people were on their way to iquitos on a missions trip and yesterday morning i got an email from my mom that had his intinerary and he just so happened to be staying in a hotel that night about 25 minutes from my house. i chilled in the hotel lounge for awhile but eventually we met up and went to get something to eat. was pretty cool to meet up with him in lima when i had no idea he was coming the day before. awesome.

well, i've written alot. and i'm tired and still alittle sick. so i'm off and going to macchu piccu on thursday morning. life is good.

umm. i need sleep.

me with mindy. all of these photos are somewhat explained in the paragraphs below. oh, and i accidently posted the photos in the oppostie order. so the last photos happended first. holla.
me with shannon. she is from the annapolis area.
awesome awesome fountain that you could walk under
me underneath the fountain pictured above.
this is at the park with the sweet fountains. this one would turn on and off at random times, so people would run in and out of it. pretty awesome place.
me and my old roomie jud, or better known as juan pedro.
kayla (in the red), from idaho and studying at seattle pacific university and jenny, from somewhere in the south and studying in texas. these two girls have been my main dance partners during salsa class. good times. oh yeah, this is us on our tour bus. woot woot.
mindy, a fellow student and amiga, who i believe studies at the university of kentucky
me and fellow Californian and roommate, brett. oh yeah, my friends call my gloves hobo gloves. what can i say, peru doesn't make gloves with fingers that fit me, so i have to make due with what i can. besides, i pull them off pretty good.
in callao with my host brother, juan carlos albuquerque.
can't say i'll ever look at chicken the same way again
fresh meat in a market close to home
big 'ol church near my house.
my house here in lima.

wow. this weekend was nuts. the party the school put on was about 45min away by bus, so arrived at the place around 11pm. it was a huge outdoor complex with two dance floors playing a variety of music. ended up getting home around 6am. i know crazy. i then woke up at 8:20ish cause i wanted to do that volunteer deal. caught a bus around 9:15, but since the endeavour point was so far away (aka i was in the bus for an hour) i ended up arriving after rondevou had left. so i caught a taxi and went home and slept all morning/most of the afternoon. at 4pm was salsa class, which was half Peruvian students/half gringos. the style was a lot different that what i had gotten used to in mexico, but it was still alot of fun. i think the class ended around 6. then at 9, us multi-country kids met up with a bunch of the isa peru semester kids, and they had the night all planned out for us. we ended up going to a bunch of different bars to try out some the national drinks (don't worry, i was fine) and then we went to a discoteca. ended up getting home at 4am. slept till 12ish.

seems like a lot. uh no. my family had some plans for this afternoon. for lunch (around 1ish) we went to a local market that was nuts (freshly butchered meat hanging everywhere) and we had a dish called ceviche. its a fish dish with onions and stuff and it is like a national dish. after that we visited a district of lima called callao (45min away by bus, it never ceases to amaze me how stinkin big this city is), which is definitely sketch in some parts, but we visited a pretty nice part of it that is near the ocean and is a big port. my host brother, juan carlos (who is 44), was in the navy for 5 years and studied in callao, so he showed me some of his old hangouts and classrooms.

so yeah. the day isn't over. at 6 we had a city tour on a doubledecker bus. way cool. we drove all around the city for over 2 hrs and ended up at this amazing park which had a ton of nutso fountains.

its past 11 right now and i'm just chillin here at the house trying to recuperate from this crazy weekend. i have class mon-thurs this week then off to iquitos (amazon jungle in northern peru) on this weekend.

well. i'm in need of sleep. later.

lima. so far it has been pretty crazy. my host family is like a sitcom, such a wide variety of personalities it makes life interesting. the food here is way different from mexico. in the last week i've eaten about 10 avocados. our dinner the other night was bread and avocado. with lots of salt. oh my goodness do they love salt here. it goes on everything. but overall I can't complain about the food. the lunches are really good, usually white rice with a meat dish, breakfast is bread with cheese and ham usually, and dinner just depends on the night. last night they made us pizza which was a good break.

the accent here is so different from mexico and i feel like i have to learn a new vocubulary system. in mexico, lunch was comida, but here is it almuerzo. and the word for "here" in mexico was aqui and "there" was alli and "over there" was aca, but here aca is "here". takin some time to get used to.

tonight going out to a party that the university is putting on. supposedly there are going to be a ton of people there and crazy music. then tomorrow morning i'm volunteering at a orphan's home (or something similar) and playing with kids all morning. hopefully i'll have some energy left to do that. then at 3:30 we have a cultural activity with peruvian students and the activity just happens to be dancing salsa. darn. haha. YEAH. saturday is going to be nuts. sunday, i think we have a tour around town on a doubledecker bus, and then who knows from there.

yesterday I decided to go to a musuem across the city. it is called "museo de la nacion". it's a history musuem with a lot of pottery and stuff. it actually didn't have anything that was crazy cool, but i used the opportunity to expand my spanish vocabulary by writing all the words down that i didn't know. the crazy part is the musuem is about 30-40 minutes away from my house by bus, so i had to find my way over there on my own which was pretty tough. and the buses are made for short people, so i had some difficulty fitting. but all in all it was a pretty cool experience.

oh yeah. the house i'm in has a microphone and headset (pretty sure they work) so if you want to talk on skype, just holla. i believe the time zone is an hour behind the east coast, or two ahead of the west coast. my skype account is "samueldorland"

chau.

peru photos

a skyline shot in late afternoon. the sky here is overcast 24/7.
me and my new roomate, brett (who is from CA and attends UCLA) in the main plaza of lima. this city is huge.
some of the buildings in the main plaza.
my wonderfully small bed. yeah. notice that I'm laying diagonal, and yet my feet still hang off. oh yeah, my favorite part is that foot board. not.

peru

hmmm. no idea where to begin. saturday was spent traveling. all day. left at 6:30am on a 3-4 bus ride to mexico city, then a four hour flight to bogota, colombia, 2hr layover, then a 2-3hr flight to lima. ending up getting to my new house around 2am. long long day. my family is pretty cool and i have a nice house, except my bed is way to small (will post photo later). I live with a mother (i'd say in her 60's), two of her adult children (man and woman) and a 20yr nursing student who works as their housekeeper. cool family but it is really hard getting used to the accent. spanish is way different here, lot of new sayings, new slang, new pronunciation. its tough, but will be an adventure. also, different food. so far i'm still in love with mexican food, but really haven't tried a wide variety of peruvian food yet. classes start tomorrow. yeah! not. oh yeah, i live about 20 minutes from the beach. heard the water is really cold but used to that being from central california. going to try and head over there as soon as i can.

guanajuato was a beautiful city that was pretty small and I was able to find my way around after a day or two. lima is huge. definitely a big city. it seems to be pretty dirty and a lot of pollution, but the people seem pretty nice and open to gringos. yesterday (sunday), my roomate (who is from southern california and goes to UCLA), my family and I had an afternoon tour of the city. we went to the main square where the arquitecture has a strong european influence (again, more photos later). today, the group and I had a pretty long orientation on the school, the city, etc. and we also went to the dance/singing performance which had a lot of tradational peruvian songs and dress. definitely had a good time.

so, i've got classes the rest of this week and a few cultural activities planned. I think this saturday we have a volunteer opportunity to work with kids in the morning, and then a salsa class with peruvian students. yeah. then next week (i think friday-sunday) i'm off to iquitos, which is the jungle in northern peru. a trip í'm really looking forward too.

well, there are two computers in the house with internet, so i should be able to update this pretty regularly and add some photos soon. well, i'm out for now.

cervantino festival

every year in October, the city of Guanajuato hosts a huge music/dance/art festival called cervantino. and last night was the opening night. artists come from all over the world to perform or demonstrate their artistic abilities, and the event program mentioned artists from Senegal, Korea, united states, a bunch of european countries, and a ton of latin american countries. every year the event has a country that is the guest of honor, and this year it just happened to be china (which is so cool, you know, seeing how i lived there for over 3.5 months). so the opening ceremony started last night around 8, but in order to get a seat i arrived around 5pm with a couple of my mexican friends. and it just so happened that some clouds blew in about 6. and then it rained for a half hour. and the stopped. and rained again. it was nuts. but once the ceremony got underway the rain stopped so that was good.

The opening ceremony lasted for about 2 hours and it was awesome. and kinda weird. I was watching and listening to traditional chinese dance, music, and acrobats in mexico, while I was speaking spanish to my friends. and due to this combination of two cultures i have come to enjoy, i had an amazing time.

an interesting experience

me dancing with jenny
so there was this celebration yesterday, i believe it was national elderly day or something, pretty much it was the senior citizens of the community coming together, singing, dancing, having a good time. and my dance teacher and several of my friends/fellow students were going to put on a little dance show, which included merengue, cumbia, bachata, and salsa. and it just so happened that one of the guys didn't show up. awesome. so they had me run home really quick and change, and so i ended up dancing salsa (and mind you, i'm still not that good) in front of a ton of people in this little plaza. awesome. so here are some pics.doing a crazy dip with the other jenny. this dip is nuts. the guy holds the girl by the back of her neck then lowers her down until she is parallel to the ground. then you pick her up and do it again two more times. its awesome.

3 day weekend

so we didn't have school this friday. so friday and sunday were spent catching up on sleep, watching movies, chillin around town, and doin whatever. Saturday me and a couple isa students took a bus to leon (about an hour away) and went to a mall (felt like the U.S.) and then went to a zoo. the zoo was pretty crazy and had a lot of sweet animals. we left the zoo at 6pm and got home around 9. being the cheap americans that we are, we didn't want to pay $6 for a taxi, so we took a $.80 bus all around the city for about an hour, and then finally found a bus back to guanajuato. all in all it was a pretty sweet day. lot of fun.

this is a our last week here in guanajuato. i'm sad to leave but ready to go to lima. ready to try out a new city, meet some new people, and experience a new culture. should be good times.