Chinchero

It has been another great week. Spanish classes were awesome and my teacher Laura definitely deserves a HUGE thank you. I learned so much. Gracias Laura!!! Finally I think I am kind of ready for school, but not ready for the uniforms. Ha ha ha. We are going to meet our teachers next Tuesday and I am really excited. The picture is of Laura and I on my last day.

Sunday we went to Chinchero, a little town right outside of Cusco. We took one of the public buses and they were very crowded, luckily we got there early and got to sit. Most of the people were standing. It was rainy when we got there but we walked up to the Sunday market to look around. The people that didn't arrive early enough had all their stuff spread out on the ground covered by tarps. We were going to eat at the market but the soup was "Sopa de Cabeza" head soup. Basically that means a cows head put in broth and when you order you can get the eyes, ears, nose, or tongue. It was a tough choice but we decided against it.

It started raining really hard so we ran to the nearest textile place. The guy who was working inside had made most of the stuff. He weaved and he painted awesome paintings of himself in crazy places. My favorite textile was one that was half done. All the strings had been rolled into balls of yarn and put in little jars on the floor with the plant that was used to make that color. It was really cool to see all the berries, woods, and leaves that people squeezed juice out of to dye the wool and then spin it. We decided to buy a different unfinished textile to hang in the apartment for a little more color! On our way out he gave us a spinner (for free) that is used to make the yarn out of wool.
We went back to the market and bought another weaving for our table. The lady that sold it to us was really nice and we talked for a while. She showed me how to spin the yarn on our new gift and we took our picture with her before lunch. The picture is of Helen and I with the local lady at the market.

We ate lunch on the main road and then hiked back up the hill to the Chinchero ruins. The ruins were really cool but it was still raining so we didn't look at them as much as we should have. Mom really wanted to see the church so we sat there until one of the park officials came and opened it. The church was gorgeous. All of it was painted and there were no sections of wall that was blank. Nothing on the walls mattered because all you wanted to do was look up up up. The ceiling was amazing and it must have taken forever to paint because the church was pretty big. It was worth waiting for.

We took a taxi home at about 4. The ride was really nice because everything is green. It was a really nice day but I can't wait to come back in the sunny season.