Speaking Spanglish

I had two funny miscommunication problems in the last 24 hours. In the first, I was in a store pointing to some cookies that I wanted to buy (naturally). The cookies I wanted were with chocolate and a fruit called lucuma, which tastes like caramel, but instead I said that I wanted the cookies with chocolate and vicuña, which is an animal related to the llama. Luckily the woman got what I meant by what I was pointing to, but I didn't realize my mistake until minutes later, when I felt like an idiot. However, I felt more stupid when I zoned out while walking to school and fell into a hole in the sidewalk. Ah the dangers of daily life in Peru.

This morning, I thought that Martha asked me if I wanted to go with her to walk around a nice plaza nearby, which I agreed to. But then we got in a cab and ended up going to Plaza Vea, which is the Peruvian equivalent of a Wal-mart. Not exactly the nice Saturday morning walk I was expecting, but whatever. Apparently Martha meets up with two of her sisters there on Saturdays, and they sit in the bakery and catch up.

Some of the funniest miscommunications that I have had so far have actually been with other English speaking volunteers. It's the Americans and Canadians vs. the Australians and the British on a lot of words. I couldn't stop laughing when I heard someone call a popsicle an "iced lolly." Jenna, the other American and I, tried to convince the group that "Shiver me timbers" was the American way to say "oh my gosh," and we convinced a few people until I was laughing so hard I could barely breathe, at which point they got rather skeptical.

Today I went to see Juanita, the mummy of a 12 year old girl sacrificed by the Incans after a volcano erupted and destroyed much of Peru. The Incans didn't make a whole lot of human sacrifices, but when they did, it was adolescent children who had known since birth that they would be sacrificed, and it was seen as a huge honor. They walked from Cusco to Arequipa, 160 miles, which took them about 3 months (this was in the 1440s). They walked to the top of a volcano and had very elaborate ceremonies and offerings to the gods. The remains were buried under ice until the 1990s when the volcano erupted and opened the graves for the first time since the sacrifices. In total, there were two burial sites, one with six children and one with three.

It's nice to be able to relax a bit this weekend after the Colca trek and a very hectic week, what with the strike and the earthquake, and all. Tomorrow I have some lesson planning and shopping for supplies for the week. At the moment, this coming week looks less hectic than this one, but you never know...