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million who will not survive this week.
If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the
agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation, you are ahead of 500 million people in the
world.
If you can attend a church meeting, without fear of harassment, arrest, torture, or death,
you are more blessed than 3 billion people in the world.
If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a place to
sleep, you are richer than 75% of this world.
If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish someplace, you
are among the top 8% of the worlds wealthy.
If your parents are still alive and still married, you are very rare, even in the United
States.
If you hold your head with a smile on your face and are truly thankful, you are blessed
because the majority can, but most do not.
If you can hold someone's hand, hug them or even touch them on the shoulder, you are
blessed because you can offer God's healing touch.
If you can read this message, you just received a double blessing in that someone was
thinking of you, and furthermore, you are more blessed than over 2 billion people in the
world that cannot read at all.
Have a good day, count your blessings, and pass this along to remind everyone else how
blessed we all are.
- Music:Enigma
В 1 классе меня забыли внести в список учащихся и как бы я даже не проходила собеседование в школу. Из-за этого меня посадили в фиговый класс Г, а в класс для нормальных детей не взяли, ибо переполнен. Когда мы летели в самолете в Перу, в системе что-то глюкануло и у них не отобразилось, чтомне нужно специальное вегетарианское меню. Причем на завтрак отобразилось, а на обед нет. Пришлось делать скандал и жевать фруктовые салаты. В классах по теннису и йоге (еще в далеком прошлом) учителя все никак не могли запомнить как меня зовут. И это после 6 месяцев хождения к ним. Все норовились Леной назвать.Теперь вот учительница забыла/не увидела, что я достаточно оставила комментариев другим студентам и оценку нечаянно снизила.
Короче пора мне делать медитации на radiance :)
- Music:Dredg
Today we finally got our tickets to Machu Picchu for tomorrow. We were lucky enough to read on the internet that there are actually 3 train companies that can take you there, not only 1 PeruRail that all Tourist Agencies advertise. We then took a walk around the city and stumbled upon the Vegetarian Place Dharma. Unlike other places where we've been, this restaurant served not tourists, but peruvian public which reflected on the prices: 3.5 sols per person instead of 35sols. The food was ok, but the place was very poor and dirty. It was filled with peruvian families, some with little babies :)
After lunch, we took a taxi up to the ruins just outside of Cusco-Saychanuman which was also very beautiful, yet crowded. The ruins were on the hill and you could see the city like on the palm of your hand, a gorgeous view. We took some time to enjoy it, meditated, took pictures and took a road down from the city. I finally saw the houses where the peruvian population resided, there were lots of dogs, but not too many cats.They were all very calm (I guess, animals experience altitude sickness as much as humans do) and I petted and played with a couple. We have to wake up early tomorrow for the trip to Machu Picchu (3:30 am), so we decided to went to bed earlier than usual.
We were so tired from last night's trip that we decided to stay in the city and browse through city's museums. The art in the museums from local artists was absolutely magnificent, I wish that I could paint like that. We talked to a friend of one of the artists - Garcia and decided to visit his gallery later in the day. Most of the sculptures were about the theme of christian spaniards conquering the incas and forcing them to adopt their religion. There was a lot of paint and suffering in this kind of art. The paintings just displayed peruvian life: lots of families with kids, peruvian merchants, amazon jungles. I really enjoyed the fact that in the paintings, there was a very respectful portrayal of Motherhood, love between a man and a woman, peace, children, etc. Unlike in U.S., where family became the second thing that people care about, with career and self-development being the first, where when one wishes to have kids, people look at you like you're stupid and there's something wrong with you...just a thought..
For lunch, we went to a place called Yajoo (the name was written in the same font as Yahoo). It was a peruvian version of Jamba juice with such tasty juices and fruit salads made from fresh exotic fruits (i.e. granaidinios and tangerines). For dinner, we went to Granja Heidi, where we got into a long conversation with the owner of the place, who was of German decent. We talked about history, people, culture, why vegetables taste so much better in Peru and other miscelaneous topics. It was truly amazing. The owner was then kind enough to give us a gift of not paying for the dinner, which was very surprising.
Today we went on a guided tour around the Sacred Valley: Pisaq, Urumabma, Ollayantambo, Chincerro. We first stopped at the market. I got myself some souvenirs for very cheap and petted the lamas (I have a special relationship with lamas and feel very sympathetic toward them).The trail to the Pisaq ruins was very difficult...it was only about 2 km roundtrip, but it was mostly up the hill. There were huge steps coming down from the ruins (about 2 meters wide). The guide explained that the Incas used it for agriculture, since different steps had different microclimates, people grew different crops on different steps. We did not spend a lot of time in the ruins themselves, yet we could notice an evident difference in the architecture: some buildings were made of huge blocks of stone (much older) and some were made of smaller once, probably built on later on.
We had lunch in Urubamba in a buffet that was very expensive and not very good. We also got a little bit sunburned and could not find a sunscreen near by so our noses looked like tomatoes by the end of the day. We then drove to Ollaytantambo, the huge and most interesting ruins. The same story with different styles of architecture prevailed. There were smaller blocks sicking our of huge stones. The guide told us that the official version was that the indigenous people used those as handles to lift the rocks, but if you take into account that every stone weighed at least 100 tons, the version seemed hardly believable.
Our last stop was at Chincerro where they taught us how to make handicraft goods from Alpacca (Lama) from the beginning, to an end. They used natural soap and dyes to wash and color the fur and the alpacca thread was much softer than that of the sheep.
By the end of our trip we were super hungry and tired. Our favorite restaurant Granja Heidi (with Nelson Mandela cake) was closed, so we had to look around to find a place to eat. We first went to Incanto, close to our hotel, but once I saw that they cooked Alpacca cotlets, I refused to eat there. %) We had a pizza at a place near by and went to sleep.
We woke up very early (7 am) to have breakfast with everyone in the hotel. The room that we stayed in last night was very small and did not have any windows so we asked to be transferred to another room. We now have a huge suite and a balcony that overlooks the city. :)
Today we visited the Temple of the Sun that was built by Incas. There was not much left of the temple and it became a more of the tourist destination where tours were given. One of the walls was adjacent to the Cathedral so we could hear the singing from the inside. The Christians put a lot of Christian paintings throughout the temple and it no longer felt like a building that once belonged to Incas. There was also restoration of the site in 2005 with building stones that look much clumsy that the original foundation put in by Incas. It was kind of ironic that today we cannot create such a good-quality architecture with so little space between the stones that the needle can't pass through...but the ancient civilizations could (take Pyramids as well). Actually, modern Peruvians are not even sure that the building was a Temple of the Sun but they have guessed that it was due to the way rooms were structured and a mural on the wall that could be interpreted many different ways. It did not really have an altar room, so to us it looked more like an Ashram or a house where somebody lived. Outside, there was a gorgeous rose garden and we could see the whole panorama of Cusco from above.
We had a lunch at a wonderful french place that had a french owner and a menu in 3 different languages : German, French, English with a spanish original on the side. The owner was a fun guy who joked a lot but would not figure out till the last moment what our nationality was. The food was amazing, especially the cake called Nelson Mandela with chocolate and rhum from Brazil. In fact, it was so great that we returned to have dinner there as well. It's kind of funny that the food in Peru was much more delicious than in America...even the Bread tasted better. We then took a walk around San Blas, petted hungry Lamas that were standing in the streets and bought the tickets for the Sacred Valley tour for tomorrow. The Peruvian government had the different prices for tourists and natives which surprised me in a good way and showed me that the government cared about its people. Native Cusconians could go to Machu Pichu on Sundays for free and had a separate train that costed barely anything.
I feel like I'm getting addicted to Coco tea which tasted a bit like Senna tea but helps against altitude sickness..I had around 6 cups today. The rhythm in the city is very slow and mellow...very different from US where everybody just runs/works/works some more. We took some pictures of a dad with his son just feeding the pigeons on the main square...for an 1. It seems like all the families are much closer together and people have more time to socialize, watch soccer, go to festivities.
We arrived to Cusco at 6 in the morning. After almost 20 spent on the plane we were very exhausted and hungry. It was pretty difficult to breathe when we just arrived but we followed the advice of the kind Peruvian man that was sitting next to us on the planes from SF to LA and from LA to Lima. He advised us to move slowly, drink lots of coco tea and take a nap the first thing when we arrived. We slept until 4 pm to replenish the energy. We then woke up and decided to take a walk around the city. The architecture just amazed us with lots of squares and Cathedrals spread out the city. It seemed like there were more churches in Peru than there were in US but all of them were old and decorated nicely with icons from the inside. We entered the San Francisco Cathedral and it was almost full with Peruvians singing Christian songs that sounded a bit Rock-n-Rolish. The city was filled with short Peruvian people in traditional clothes that tried to sell the tourists their services (a shoe shine costing 1 sol, photograph with a baby lama) and cultural crafts (paintings, ponchos, traditional dolls). There was an amazing number of little kids on the streets. The pharmacies looked very much like those russian pharmacies selling nivea products and off protif komarov ( the whole city actually reminded me of Russia...just an even more poor version of it) and since Cusco is a tourist destination, there were tons of tourist information places and most people spoke English.
We then went to the big market that looked very much like Russian Baraholka, fillled with foods, spices and crafts. We tried the traditional Peruvian smothie from mango/sguschennoe moloko and papaya. De Leche (sguschennoe moloko) smelled funky and after those smothies our breaths were stinking like puke for some reason. But there was a good part too. We tried a truly delicious fruit for the first time called granandinio.
In the evening, there was a Peruvian festival on the main square with girls and boys dancing traditional dance in costumes. There was also a big statue of Garuda (half-eagle, half-human) that people carried on the streets. To dine we went to an amazing restaurant just off the main plaza. It served traditional Peruvian dishes as well as a Peruvian delicatessen-grilled guinea pig. I did not dare to try it (the cooked it with a head and feet in plate, so you could see what it was), but the German man that was sitting next to us ordered it and said that it tasted like rabbit.
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K-for Cow. Так и хотелось снизу подписать "Save Kows Of The Planet", но для выполнения задания это бы мешало.
- Music:yello-desire
