Gotta post this. Eileen got this hilarious email from one of her former students, who is a very nice guy, by the way. We both know we shouldn’t laugh at people who can’t speak English, but it’s just so funny.
Hello Eileen:
How do you doing??
Well, I like that you write me. Please write me to these adress or
[deleted]
Please, Could you send me the last day course photographies
I send you a funny squeleton which likes dance. See attache. I hope that
like you…
Write me soon
bye bye
Yesterday, ten of my students came over to make a parillada (a cook-out). It was a lot of fun, but unfortunately, Eileen was sick so she was in bed all day.
Freddy, the guy you see below, was pretty much the master chef. He claimed he wasn’t a chef, but he was pretty comfortable in the kitchen. He made this amazing orange vinagrette salad dressing, and his aji (hot sauce) was also wonderful. We grilled steak, pork chops, and about four different kinds of sausage.
After we ate, they brought out the cake and had me blow out the question mark candle.
The other day, while leaving SECAP, I walked by a huge pile of poo on the sidewalk. Two steps later, I saw some toilet paper. The above lead me to believe the poo was human poo.
I tell that story despite the fact that Eileen’s Uncle Bill will probably read it and make an inappropriate comment.
Two days ago, a nearby volcano coughed up a little vapor and ash. They say it might blow its top within the next two months. How cool would that be? (Don’t worry, worriers. We’d be covered in ash, but far from the lava.)
In Peru, we tried coca leaves. It’s not that great tasting; kinda like chewing on tea leaves, except that in larger quantities, it makes your mouth a little numb. The Peruvians are very proud of it; they are constantly toting its nutritional value and its important cultural role. They are also quick to explain that it’s not cocaine. It doesn’t get you high in the least.
Nonetheless, when we were at Machu Picchu, all of the gringo tourists in our group refused to take any of the coca leaves our guide offered them — except me and Eric, of course. Eileen and Joni had tried it before, but they didn’t like it as much.
One night in Cusco, while I was looking at email on our hostal’s free internet-providing computer, I opened a Google page and began typing something in the search form. When you do that, a list of prior searches comes up. I saw “drug test” and “coca leaf,” in that list and, intrigued, I selected it. Turns out coca leaves would show up on a drug test (just like poppy seeds would) for about a week after chewing them.
This morning, I balled out my students for being consistently late to class. They were like scolded dogs for the rest of class. It was kinda awkward. But at 7:15, when the class actually starts, 2 students were there! By 8:00, I had 11 students. There are 16 students in the class.
I finished the short story which I’m submitting to the Madison Magazine short fiction contest. It’s not perfect, but I’m pretty happy with it.
We’ve been invited to a “pimps and hoes” party tonight, but we don’t have the money to spend on nasty-ass clothes we’ll never wear again. We’ll go as ourselves, Pimp T-Dawg and Skanky E.
On our first day in Peru, we took a tour of the Sacred Valley. One of the stops was at a llama farm. Our guide explained to us that there are alpacas — shorter animal with a shorter neck; vicuñas — typically not domescticated and thus rarer, but with the best quality of fur; and various types of llamas. The llama in this photo is between jobs. He applied to a Seven-eleven, but he’s not sure if he wants to work there cuz he thinks his band might take off. They’ve been playing gigs almost every weekend. Problem is, it’s not really making a lot of money, you know what I’m sayin? So in the meantime, he’s been listening to a lot of Zeppelin, working on some new songs, and smoking a lot of dope.
We’re currently posting Peru pics to the coppermine. As long as the internet connection behaves, we should have about 35 pictures up.
Joni and Eric left Ecuador this morning. They were wonderful guests and great travel companions. Here they are at Machu Picchu. Eric and I wanted to hike up that big hill/mountain you see in the background, but we put it off for day 2. Then, after discovering that what it would cost for us to return on the second day, we skipped it.
Instead, we wandered around the town of Aguas Calientes. Eric wanted to try chicha, the famous alcoholic beverage of the incas. It’s basically fermented corn; the indigenous peoples of the sierra and the jungle make it, I believe. Here’s how: people chew corn and spit it into a big cauldron. They add some other things to it and let it sit for a while. The saliva apparently helps it ferment. All over the place, there are big bamboo poles with red bag (it can be a plastic or a cloth bag) at the end of it. This pole/bag combo is displayed wherever chicha is available. It’s placed like a flag on the front of someone’s house, with the pole usually sticking out at a 45-degree angle.
Anyhow, in Aguas Calientes, there was one place that was displaying the chicha pole. It was in front of a dark doorway, next to a t-shirt shop. I asked the woman at the shop if they had chicha, and she pointed into the depths of the dark hallway to the side of her store and said it was in there. Eric and I walked in hesitantly. At the end of the dark hallway, there was a ramp with some traction boards nailed onto it. We ascended and came into what looked like a really impoverished home. There were three women in the kitchen, which contained a half-tiled tub with a steel water pipe and a very industrial-looking spigot at the end of it, a bunch of metal shelving, a stove, a few stools, a big pile of dirt or powder cement, and a huge steel cauldron. The kitchen overlooked a cinder-block building that was under construction. There was another ramp leading up to another room, if it can be called a room, which housed two tables and some benches. On one of the benches, there were a man and a younger woman sitting.
We asked if they had chicha. One of the women said yes, do you want one or two glasses. I translated for Eric, who suggested we get some to go. I inquired about that possibility, and they said sure and proceeded to rinse a big 2.5 liter bottle. I was carrying a smaller water bottle, which I quickly finished off and offered as an alternative receptacle. They filled it, charged us 1 sol (about 30 cents) and we left.
“Do you think they made that by chewing it and spitting it?” Eric asked.
“Um,” I thought about it. “Yeah. Probably.”
