Daylight savings has brought us closer

Wow what a great blog entry title. I'm so glad I chose that. Anyway, it has been almost a week since March 4th and apparently I have been keeping busy. The end of last week was pretty standard, played some soccer in the morning, did some drawing (now in colouring books because two of the other volunteer's parents sent them colourig books not suitable for their project so they gave them to us!) and some english. It's really good, the english. They are so keen and really want to learn. Yesterday Fiona and I had a verb race against our studnets Yaneth, Evelin and Jhon (yes its spelt like that with the j and h together...) we had to translate english verbs to spanish as they had to transfer spanish verbs to english. It was hilarious. We tied. 

This weekend was pretty intense, did A LOT of walking around ruins and such. Saturday Fiona, Allie and I went to Tambomachay, Puka Pukara, Q'enqo and Sacsayhuaman, the four ruins super within 8 km of Cusco. We took the bus to Tambomachay, the furthest one out there, and made our way back along the highway. It was THE perfect weekend for doing stuff like that it was so so so nice out. Tambomachay was not as big as I thought it would be, but was still very cool, featuring water drainage and irrigation systems that were used, and had fantastic views!!! Puka Pukara was super cool, it was easy to see how it was used as a place of residence. There were different rooms visible and places that they used to store food during times of drought (hard to believe there was drought...) Plus a little cave we found where they stored food throughout the year. We then walked about 8 km to the next site; Sacsayhuaman was HUGE well like relatively huge compared to the other ones we saw that day. There were three parts: the labyrinth, the cemetery and the temples. The labyrinth was sweet we actually walked through pitch black tunnels that people used to believe led all over the world. AKA you would enter one and end up like China. We didn't end up anywhere cool, just the cemetery part which was this open space surrounded by circular wall and structure where all of the tombs faced the middle. We then got to slide down the rainbow rocks, ridiculous, we actually climbed to the top and slid down like on those crazy carpet things at the stampede. So funny. The landing wasn't all that soft though. After the slides we walked over to the big rock step things that are probably associated with sacsayhuaman by most. The rocks were gigantic! We walked to the top and had a fantastic view of Cusco and saw the three sites of the former temples: Temple of the Sun, Temple of the Moon and Temple of the Stars. We had a short visit to Q'enqo because by this time it was like 5:30. Basically Q'enqo was a mummy-making site. We saw the tables on which the procedures were carried out, knida creepy. We definitely went home and devoured dinner, then attempted to watch 'The Kingdom' during which I fell asleep. THAT NEVER HAPPENS. And there was like bombs going off in the movie and everything!!! I can't believe I slept through it. Jees. 

Sunday I woke up at about 8 because I had a nice long sleep including my doze during the movie. At about 10 seven of us headed out to Moray, another pretty well known ruin about an hour from Cusco by bus. It's the one that kinda looks like crop circles. We caught the bus no problem and got seats thank goodness. After an hour of bussing we got off at a stop that had an arrow and 'Visit Moray! 14km this way' WOOOOOOO 14km. We began walking along the road and cut off a few hundred metre by clmbing pretty much vertically between the switchbacks the highway made. Very efficient! We arrived at Maras, the town close to Moray, after about 3 km of walking. We stopped here to have lunch and as soon as we took our brown paper bags out (yes grade 2) there was like 4 dogs at our feet, begging. I felt so bad. One was so so skinny you could see every rib and it was just awful. We planned to catch a taxi the rest of the 9 km (I know distances change apparently) to Moray, but found out the walking path was onlt 6 km so we decided to tackle that. That was quite the ordeal. We went through I think three valleys where the path led down down down and then had to climb up up up again. Training for the Inca Trail! We got to Moray at about 3pm after almost 2 hours of hiking, so not that bad. It was super cool. Apparently it was used for agricultral experiments, to see at which altitude crops would grow best at. Very interesting. And also it was just like this giant hole in the ground where all of the water would've ended up if it rained. Those stairs were killer cause they were made for like 7 foot tall people. We the took a 25 minute cab from Moray to Salineras, the salt plains. Those were super cool!! The water that flowed through was very warm and extremely salty. We took a cab back to Cusco after busses just kept driving past us and honking like HEY GUYS WHAT'S UP SEE YA! Got home just in time for dinner and then we watched HOME ALONE hhahahaha it was great. 

Today at the project not many kids were there cause of the start of school. For real this time. We went around the community and took pictures to promote their problems and needs; there is some sort of conference in Lima at the end of March so we're making a presentation for it. I am meeting tonight with my guides for the Inca Trail which I start on Thursday so that is very exciting!!! Hopefully I have everything I need...