update 8 i think

hey guys,

schools out, i can see the lake off in the horizon!

on monday i had cuy, it was a very unique unique flavor. picture below. the girls all went horseback riding and it hailed and just dumped on them so i felt extra smart for not going.

today, diego left for the manageareal school in lima to train to be a mcdonalds manager. they´re opening one in the main square in cusco. o boy right?


so school finals turned out not that bad. i studied plenty for the spanish one and just a bit for the culture one. however, the culture one was conveintly easy and i prolly did absurdly well based on how much i studied. grades are posted tomorrow.

the collage is done now i have to find somewhere to print the sucker. thanks a million to sñr shaffer. thanks for your effort too dad, you come in second place.

i have 6 bug bites that don´t feel like going away any time soon. that sucks. and i´m still on the brink of being sick. which sucks.

on good news, i´m not too far away from coming home. the first person left this morning. and i´m on the same flight to miami as 2 girls. not that it matters since its a red-eye flight

cya guys later. sorry theres not too much to report

Darren

photo collage (a direct note to my dad, so sorry if you don´t follow what i´m talking about)

hey, sorry again about the mix up.

so put the family photo in the middle so that it takes up the entire frame (paper sidways i think, don´t rememberç). i´m not looking to put anything except pictures in it. so no note, though it was nice. i´ll sign it when i print it here.

please cover up the dog.

then put the photo of me and the dad in the corner where he is in the main photo, then the picture of me and the mom in her corner. i´m (hopefully) sending high res versions so zoom way way in on them so its very clear the faces and such. put the one of me, the bro and the sister near the sister. try to zoom/crop the bro out of it so its just me and her. put the picture of me and the bro at the soccer game in his area/corner. for the little brother, put the one of he and i. then in my corner, put the pulled tooth picture and then this picture of me and cuy.

i´m looking at the photo again and thinking its going to be hard to fit in pictures above all our heads, so maybe put the one of me and the sister there or maybe the picture of distant machu pichu. then, just put the pictures on the sides of the main photo. be consistant in how you allign them.
in genereal, i don´t know if its going to look beter if the pictures are faded in along the edge or not transparent at all. use your best judgement.

thanks sooooooooo much dad! i love you
Darren


also, dad, do you think i can put off dealing with the vassar academic interest thing till i get back¿ i sent it already, but i can´t resend it from here.

update 7

hey guys, update 7 here. one week left!

first off, happy birthday nolan (and also happy peru independance day), don´t get quite as drunk as last year okay? you won´t have me there the next morning to be extra loud for you.

second of all, don´t forget to be checking my blog theres pictures and a couple of extra secret mini updates on there for you to check out.

third of all, if you happen not to get one of the updates - meaning you suddenly are reading #5 and never got 4, let me know or just go to the blog.

k, on to the good stuff.
so i went to machu pichu yesterday ad the day beforE! it was awesome! we got up early to see the sunrise on top or MP, but of course it was cloudy again. that turned out to be ok because there weren´t as many people there at that early hour. as such, we got to take a group picture in the spot where the super famous photo is taken from heres ours. when i get home i´ll show you the famous version of it cause i can´t find it right now.



anyways we did the tour, lots of awesome stuff i can only tell you about in person. after the tour, we had free time to do some different hikes or just chill. o, background, i had to check my backpack at the gate because it was too large (jerks, didn´t make any of the girls´equally large backpacks hget checked!). i carried 2 waters with me and left a third i my pack. so i drank one on the tour and then had one for the hikes and one for the way home. k, back to the main story. we hiked to the sun gate- not cool structure, incredible view though. on the way, boy scouts may have saved my life. from the years of hiking and such, my ´look at your feet the whole way´policy helped my notice a snake. we thyought it was just a little guy, but later the guide told us that traingle headed snakes are the most dangerous at MP. whoops... no one got hurt though. anyways, we got back down to mp and still had enough time to hike the inca bridge. this was quite plain and boring. but by this time, i had gone through my second water. when i got my backpak back, it turned out i was out of water. since everyone is at varying levels of sick, i decided itd be better not to ask for some from others. that meant i was out in the hot hot heat hiking and without water for more than 3 hours. thus i had a bad bad headache. at lunch i went and bought and drank almost all of a 2.5 Litre water bottle. you can guess where this is going. but actually you can´t. i took a pit stop before boarding the train (right after lunch) and then fig8ured i´d be fine cause theres a bathroom on the train. well, there was, but not exactly for use.


for some reason, we were on the uber-tourist train on the way back. we got a snack, and there was a clothing shop in each car. well, from having talked to some of the workers of this train line, we knew they get an atrocius 1% commision of whatever they sell. (one sweater was 510 soles or roughly 170 dollars which is insane but thats what it was. however, this translates to the worker getting a whopping 5 soles per sweater. disgusting right!?) anyways, they were reallllllly trying to sell all this stuff and to push it even further, we radomly had a FASHION SHOW on the train. now, not only did this urk us since we wanted to sleep so we could go out that night since we have no school today or tyomorrow, meaning the clapping and awkward techno music kept us awake, it also meant something extra special to me. a man and a woman were in the show, so each needed a place to change. one got the shop, the other took the bathroom. and this went on in each and every car. now, remember i just had 2/3 of a gallon of water. and i my timing luck followed suit with our sunrise luck. i had to go. bad. i asked if i could use the bathroom RIGHT before the show started and got an ¨someones in there¨ response. then, i had to wait for the 20 to 30 minute fashion show to finish. i don´t know if i have been that close to peeing my pants since diapers. it got so bad, i started timing the catwalks to see if i could slip in between the girl changing. 28, 26, 34, 31 seconds. there was no way i could make it. and the entire car was filled with old people clapping and laughing and generally enjoying the fashion show. all the while i was cursing the fashion industry, properu for selecting this train. at random moments the train stopped to let another traimn use the switch part of the track and i would´ve jumped off the train if i had known i had time. alll the while, the girl sitting next to me was going between almost crying of laughter, and geniunely worrying i wasn´t going to make it.
FINALLLY it ended and i raced to the bathroom and everything worked out. and in hindsight, i guess its pretty funny even to me, and i´m sure i wouldve been dying of laughter if it WASN´t me at the time, but it was me.

right, so that was a long story about a nonmachu-pichu topic. pretty much nothing else exciting happening. or well, nothing THAT exciting.

today the family is taking me to a side of cusco that i haven´t been yet. and tonight we´re showing the urubamba kids how we party in cusco. some time today or tomorrow i guess i should study for the finals on wednesday... i did at least make notecards from which to study. we´ll see if i get to them.

i´m about5 out of time, so i´ll leave it at that.

i love you guys, a´nd i´ll see some of you in a week
Darren


o, mom, don´t forget to pack my sandals, and a bunch of clothing cause i´m tired of looking at what i´ve been wearing in peru.

and dad, what would you think of as my parting gift making a photo collage of pictures of me and different members of the family. i don´t know if i will be able to find photoshop here, or have the time, so i might have to ask you or mom to make a crude collage at home and post it online somewhere, but i´m thinking i can´t buy them anything from cusco cause they could just buy it themself. is that an unfair request? shaffer, if you don´t have a job and are just sitting at home, maybe i could ask you to do it... i´ll bring you lots of eruvian chocolates...? let me know

update 6

hey guys,

hope you been checking out the blog cause theres some exclusive content there!

i did quite well on the test by the way!


this morning i presented for the spanish class and turned in my 2 page single spaced hand written SPANISH essay of death! it was moderately coherent. that concluded the spanish class except for our final next wednesday... we´ll see how that goes.

when the girls finally get here i´m going out to lunch for the first time since we arrived, so i´m excited for that adventure. then this afternoon i do my presentation again in the culture class but this one should be easier cause i´ll have my powerpoint presentation with me to use. and in all seriousness, the project turned out kinda respectable. ICK

tomorrow we do another stove building project in another tiny town somewhere outside of cusco. thats gonna be fun again. in hindsight, the program really wasn´t at all as focused on helping people as i had thought. the ngo part of the program is, they go to school in the evening and do community service type work during the day. o well.

then, early saturday morning we leave for machu pichu. don´t get me wrong, i´m super excited for that, but its bad timing. we heard abuot this peruvian rave/trance party on saturday night thats taking place IN THE RUINS at Saqsaywaman. how cool would that be. "ya, this place is cool, good atmosphere, but this one time, i went to a party inside the ruins of a civilization from 500 years ago!" so i´m kinda bummed to be missing that. but machu pichu is gong to be sweet. since its SO much lower in altitude, we´re going to be able to BREATH, which is possibly what i miss the most from home (sorry jack, its not you). the altitude here means i have`nt gotten to play any football. which has been an astronomical disapointment. one time i tried but i was dead in a matter of minutes. o well again.´

suddenly it sounds like i`m complaining, which isnt my intent, so here are some more cool things.
last night, at the dinner table crystal, my sister, was asking to go to some party and the parents were worried about her being around people who were drinking. they even said the famous dad sort of line, "im not worried about you, i÷m worried about who youre with and whos going to be driving." the whole while i was sitting in my seat trying not to laugh out loud.
this coming monday and tuesday are the peruvian independance days so theres going to be lots of festivities going on, and parades. there was even a parade today in preparation for parades to come.
o, i think i forgot to tell you about last saturday night. diego, the brother, held a party for his freind having a birthday. there were 20 people coming and they were an entier 1.45 hours late. when they finally got there, they ran the doorbell and then all 20 people walking in. i was standing at the door as the stampede walked by and i was just a greeter. anyways. this was 1000% different than any us house party. noone was trying to drunk. we just sat around in a 20+ person circle talking to the people in your area. we drank some, but just causally. then the birthday girl decided to stay at the house rather than go to a discoteca (which disapointed me, but i went alnng). so they turned on the music and we danced and chilled till 3 in morning. i was exhausted but i had such a blast. i`m sad i can`t hang out with them again this saturday night.

ok, i think the girls arent coming or somehow i missed them, they`re 40 minutes late. jerks!

i miss and love you guys, talk to you soon
Darren

ps dad, send emails to me, no need to bother rebecca.

mini update 5.2

i´m almost done with the project, rehearsing the presentation now and then i have to go home and write 2 pages of it for the spanish class, BLUCK!

mini update 5.1

this is to reward you for coming to the blog instead of just waiting for my big fat updates. its good to see you :)

yesterday in spanish class we took a test and i think i did pretty well i guess. today she said we generally did well, but need to work on our writing. duh! in the culture class of the afternoon we went to the big cathedral and walked around and learned about it. interesting for a while, then tiring.
and last night we went to a bar run by a guy from the town next to colby, the shirt i happened to be wearng. we went there because we heard they had board games - which they did, but it was an extra bonus that we met this dude

today we learned about prepositions and such in spanish, something i certainly have forgotten. i don´t have time but i really need to make and study flashcards. stupid project. thats what i´m working on now.

cya later,
Darren

update 5: halfway

hey guys,

pisaq, saqsaywaman, boys

i´m at the halfway point! now school gets tough. lame. í have an 8 page paper due the 30th (or a 15 minute presentation alternative due thursday). its a big big big pain in the butt cause i´d much rather be just learning about stuff than researching and WRITING IN SPANISH. plus the library here is a terrible system. you have to give the book numbers to the lady and she brings you back the book. and if its wrong, you have to do it again. and shes mean, so you try as hard as you possibly can to make the first one work. ick!

on friday we had a free day and i was planning to go shopping but for the life of me i couldn´t convince a group of girls to go! unbelievable but true. its pretty much exactly how the group works. i follow the group as best i can and as soon as i open my mouth to complain or suggest i get a ¨jeez darren, why don´t you ever just go with the flow¨ if we were boys, i´ll bite somebody´s head off, or hit somebody´s head off. but these are my only friends (cept diego who i feel i can´t just invade his lifce all the time) so i have to suck it up. i dream of ONE day before i leave of getting to make all the groups decisions and not hearing a word of complaint from any of them. but they´re girls and i´m the minority so i fear thats never going to be.

on saturday we went to this place i can´t spell or say and also to saqsaywaman (often pronounced even by the locals as sexywoman!) both were cool, big ruins and such. this is the veiw of cusco from saqsaywaman. they also had slides, smoothed rocks by the years when all of the cusco valley was a big lake way way back when.


on sunday we went to pisaq, another big ruins. we went with the group of NGO´s from Urubamba meaning i got to see my friend from the airport. this also meant that there were boys. o my gosh how i missed boys. imeasurably! they´re not overreactive, they don´t care about every little thing. oh, and this is a photo on the way to pisaq. anyways, at pisaq we went for an hour or two hike at pisaq which i expected would kill us since the´res something like 30% less oxygen which i don´t fully believe, but its CERTAINLY lots less than at home, but somehow we made it pretty ok.


today in class we had a test, and i guess i did pretty well. second semester senior year should be effecting me here too since none of this counts toward a grade, but for some stupid reason i´m working hard. dangit parents, i blame you for my work ethic. for example, this big paper\presentation thing, i´m staying through lunch tomorrow to work my butt off on it.

anyways, i guess life is good, i´m at that lull inbetween the super excited begining and not wanting to leave. i´ll keep you updated.

Love you, Darren

update four

(this keyboard doesnt have the apostrophe, so please forgive me and pretend every { is an apostrophe)

to talk about = sunrise, fiesta, sick, learnig about inca,

so i went to the soccer game, that was cool, for time sake ill summarize - the home team looked horrible but won in very exciting fashion. megan, i{ll tell you about it when i get home.

i got really sick on monday and tuesday i got better enough i convinced myself i should go on the "best sunrise of your life" trip. i learned that it was one of 2 places in the world where the sun rises red. (i don{t r4emember how much of each story i{ve told you and i{m on a time crunch like always so forgive the backtracking).

so ya, i went. 4 hours in the car with the girls and my bro and sis and one of theirs bro who is reallllllllly a creeper (mom, that means hes the sort of boy you wouldn{t want your daughter to even know). not fun stuff for the most part. so, we got there and they have fiesta until 4 in the morning while you wait for the sun. so, i could talk for hours about the fiesta but i have 20 min left before the cafe closes, so i{ll be kinda breif. when i get back i{ll show you photos. no time to upload them. so we weent to a plaza type thing and they had lots of dancing and live bands playing. they were all dressed up in very intri}cate indiginous outfits (later explained) paying tribute to the virgen of puacartambo (same one as virgen of carmen, etc. just diff name). then later they set up structures with really primative and therefore extra cool fire works(fuega artificial). then we went to two local partys, one a weddding which we just walked in, danced with people for 15 or 20 minutes and then left and the other i don{t know what it was about. eventually it was time to go up to the mountain. 2 more hours in the car. at this point we convinced the other brother (not mine) to be somewhat quite. when we got to the top the star gazing was breathtaking. not a cloud in the sky. nor a single polluting light except wehn another headlight ar4rived and then shot off. but i was soo tired i went to sleep for an hour maybe before the sun. when our alarms went off we put on every bit of clothing we brought - and yes that means me too!- and went out to wait for the sun. well, we got up about an hour early. and it was unbelievably cold, even FOR ME!!! so we waited and waited and waited. it was at this point i realized i was still sick, and the baggage that comes along with that surfaced as well. so we waited forever. and finally we reailized it was daylight and theere had been no sun. at this pont it dawned on us that what we were looking at - the brightness on the horizon - was not the sun under the horizon or mountain or whatever, i the was sun behind clouds. the only possible thing that could block the amazingest sunrise of my life, pícked today to ruin. i was so angry, but i was so cold i didn{t even get to trhow a proper fit. heres a picture of the sunset we saw, and if you{re a cheater and want to see what the sun would have and should have looked like, check it out here: http://www.biosci.missouri.edu/avianecology/merkord/images/chris_at_tres_cruces.jpg


sucks doesn{t it! on the way down, all 8 hours (cause we got stuck on the road for an extra 2), and all of yesterday and the morning today i felt really misrable - diarea, vomit, your basic not so good time. so essentially, i can summarize the trip as this: an adventure of misery, sickness, an absent sun and 100% the right decision to have gone!

don{t have time to tell you much of what i learned about inca and the culture, only that its cool stuff.

um, sorry i have to cut short,

love you guys,
Darren

update tres

This is the second time i´ve lost a huge email. Just spent 25 minutes on it! SAO ANGRY So i´m starting it over again. plus, it won´t let me send pictures this time, so imagine.



Mom, please be sure to bring my comp to tahoe plus all the cords and such.
sorry i haven´t responded to your questions and such, this is the first time i thought to read the responses before writing my email. also, some of you can´t see the photos if i send them. sorry


so i did the health project yesterday. it was todally wrong about what we were doing. we went into a town in the mountains and set up a medical camp. i was on the dental team - me and a dentist. my job consisted of cleaning the bloody tools and hold down the patient´s head when he went to pull teeth. fun right. well because we set up shop next to a window i was watching my friends play duck duck goose, and all sorts of fun games with the town´s children or just sitting in the shade. i was very jealous. then, maybe 30 min before we were going to leave, the dentist asked me if i wanted to pull a tooth. i thought for a second about how i had virtually done the hole process except the pulling, how much worse could it be... well, a bunch is the answer. bluntly, i pulled the bigest tooth í´ve ever seen! the squimish shouldn´t look at the picture. some of you might say, why wuould you ever do that. and the only way i can explain it is, when in your life are you going to get to pull a tooth? it made me sick, i´ll never do it again, i felt like the biggest dick for possibly causing this lady extra unnecessary pain, but i did it!




today we did the stove building project, and that was cool too. we had to get down and really dirty. it was fun though. and we actually built this family a stove that wont put off fumes into their bedroom. it was messy as heck, but we did it. not really much story so much as just we built a stove out of mud, and bricks.


sorry mom, i know how you hate unecused absences, but i´m skipping class (or maybe just being way late) on wednesday morning. i´m going to what has twice been described to be as ¨the most amazing sunrise of your life¨. the city is 3 or 4 hours away but we´re going (well, not yet, i have to figure out how to get there during the night before and then have the bus turn around the moment the sunrise is over so as to miss as little class as possible. needless to say its going to be a miserable trip - the busses aren´t top quality by anymeans. in fact one of the kids thats been here a month said it was the coldest experiance of her life... but hey, i never get cold, so i´ll be fine in shorts ;) kidding mom, i´ll wear pants.) however, it should be worth it. apparently you drive up way higher than the 11,000 ft cusco to a mountain where you´re actually way above the clouds. so the sun is going to rise out of the clouds and other mountains and then bounce off the top of the clouds back up at us. or so they say. hopefully there are clouds that day. anyways, i´m going for sure, i´m trying to convince anyone else to come. but its not vital, cause i´m definately going.

i think i forgot to sign my last email, hoefully you knew who i was. i got to go,
love and miss you,
Darren

introduction

right, i guess i shouldve introduced stuff

im darren, im in cusco peru for a month and this is my adventure

(short and sweet)

hola de peru

Mamà, lo siento, necisto hablar en ingles esta vez. Hablarè en Español en proxima notas.


Hey guys!

After 27 hours of travel (the miami/lima flight was late and therefore i missed my connecting and had to wait 5 hours for an open flight), i´m finally in Cusco! I´m dead tired but i still went out last night. there are 3 groups here and the big one left for another town this morning so i wanted to meet them at least a little bit. although i was the baby of the group (overall the range is something like 18-24 or 25), everyone else was too shy or too embarassed to dance. i did everything i could to get them to salsa but to no avail. LAME! however, i danced for perhaps an hour and was exhausted when i finally went to sleep. the altitude is a big deal. we´re at over 10,000 ft so theres a lot less oxygen. they actually have a bunch of oxygen bars and i´m thinking they´re useful in a place like this. this all meansafter walking up 3 flights of stairs you´re completely out of breath. but i was having too much fun dancing to care. man, these guys are good. i mean of course its their dance and they grow up doing it, but SHEESH! a couple of the girls i danced with were miles ahead of me. i guess i´ll learn.

this morning we got up and said goodbye to the group that was leaving and then we had 2 hours to explore. I haven´t mentioned it, but i´m the ONLY GUY! right now there are 6 girls but they say 3 more are coming. so... our exploring turned into shopping and i can expect more of the same.
we got really lucky this morning. we got outside and heard music and we went to check it out. it turned out to be a huge marching band and trailing behind was various units of i guess the cusco armed forces. we followed them into the central plaza and there were other units from different branches coming from all corners of the square. my best guess, from the bits and peices i could pick out was that it was a memorial service for servicemen from cusco who had died. they had a flag ceremony and all the soldiers were holding bayonettes and some had rpgs (these thankfully were unloaded ). O and there were women units! in both of the 2 branches on our side of the square they had a women unit. one of them was holding purses and guns. crazy!

anyways, i´m off to meet my host family and tomorrow we start school. the word is that we should be checking email every couple of days, so feel free to send me stuff, questions, you know, whatever you would send someone in a southern hemispherical country :)

choa,
Darren

peru update dos

hola,
theres so much to update, i laugh at the idea of doing this in spanish

to talk about: strike, donuts, black market, wallet, convi´s, stove projects, photos,


first i want to include a couple of photos.

excuse my writing cause the keyboard is killing me. also, the window just closed on my so i lost a bunch of the carefully planned email. therefore, just deal with the topic hopping. thanks,
and now, the update :)

k, first off, there was an ALL PERU strike yesterday, they canceled and clopse4d everything! school was canceled so we went and struck?¿ as well. no violence though - lame. o well, you can see it a little bit. there was also a bunch of super anti-us art that kinda made me nervou8s but when i asked my host family, they said it was a uberminority opinion. anyways, the strike was cool
o, my family, i haven´t told you about them yet. they´re AWESOME. the mom is the professor of the advanced spanish class, so shes constantly helping me which is good. the dad is an artist,hes also really funny. the older brother is studying to be a dessert chef, the sister is studying to be a archetect, and the little guy is 6.
school is not worth talking bout cept that i´´m learning a bunch (however i´m learning more just living life in spanish. the only english i speak is with the begining students, and with you guys [and when i write down important information - cuando importante, ingles ;) ]) for those of you that i talk to youa bout the school, i was wrong, instead of doing school in the morning and work in the afternoon, we have class most of the day and we´re going to start work tomorrow and saturday. tomorrow´s project as best i can tlel is to organize the medicine in a clinic. they haven´t said much about it. but saturday´s project is the cooler one. we´re building stoves for the really poor people living outsie the city(which is 400k persons, and at close to 11,000 ft [appreciate your oxygen! i´m jealous]. its big enough that we have to either take a $1 cab to school (the cost based on numkber of stops not distance) or a 20 cents ¨convi¨ride - which is kinda like a bus things. ) so ya.
on sunday we´re going to the big football game of the season (cusco´´s team is secodn best to one of 3 lima teams which they´re playing on sunday) i´m so unbelievably excited. also on sunday we´re going to the black market to see what we can see (something we WILL see and purchase is the dvd to Batman Dark Knight. it comes out on the black market before it hits theatres ;) sorry nolan). i´m excited for that.
yesterday we made donuts, that was fun. which brings me to the food. its all interesting. and i´m not the ´solo pan´boy that i once was, i´ve agreed to eat cuy´´ (and i´ll let you look that one up if you´re brave enough). i´m loving the salads and today i had one made from avocado (sorry dad).
my hour is about to run out so i think thats it for now. oh, to reply to me, i think it might work hitting reply, but it might not. so you might have to creat a new email and type in my email (bigdman1216@gmail.com or darren@familyreis.com) thanks,

oh, and my wallet was stolen. dad, look into getting a new driver´s license ( i skimmed the page cause i don´t know if i need a lost liscense form to get another drivers liscense - the police said i do they also say i have to pay a fair amount for it, so i don´t wanna blindly do that). ya, so look into that process please. and also dad, you were right, i´m prolly going to want the new cards.
adios, hasta ¿domingo?, i think i´ll get back to a net cafe something between now and then.