Birthday Weekend!

What an amazing, wonderful, unforgettable birthday I had. I couldn't have asked for a better day. My sweet and thoughtful students bought my 5 cakes! I got a cake in 5 of my 6 classes which is apparently a Maximo record. It was so nice of them. I got my face pushed into every one of them. It's a Peruvian tradition that the birthday girl or guy takes a bite out of the cake before anyone else gets some. While he or she is taking a bite, someone comes from behind and pushes the birthdayer's face into the cake. It's quite fun and it means you get a nice big honkin slice of cake. I have pictures of the entire day and all the different cakes up on facebook. Check out the link on the side bar.

After a wonderful day of watching episodes of Modern Family and not teaching, I had my first gig with The Guardians at a bar called Kilometro 0. It's a tiny little bar in the San Blas neighborhood and we packed the place! At one point, people couldn't get in because there were so many people. What a great feeling! I had such a blast performing for everyone. I couldn't have asked for a better night. To top it off, the owner asked us if we could play every Friday for the next month. Not bad huh? I am going to see if we can get a slight pay raise since the next time there will be three of us instead of just two. Getting paid anything is better than nothing though. I am so used to performing and not getting paid so this is super fun and an extra bonus!

Now for even better news, I got a job at a hostel called Yamanya Backpackers. (http://www.yamanya.com) I will be working in their tour agency during the week from 12-4pm. I am super excited because this is a way for me to stay in Cusco longer and get my foot in the travel/tourism industry in South America. I really want to travel more and this is a great way to get to know Cusco and the surrounding area better from the inside. What's exciting is that the agency is very new so I get to start and grow with them. The atmosphere is great at the hostel and I am excited to meet new people. My boss, Camden, is a super cool chick from Australia and I will be meeting Carlos who is the brains behind the agency. So what all this means is that I am going to be working a lot and I am going to be even more tired at the end of the day. It's only temporary though for the next three months. I think I will be able to handle it and fortunately, I still have my weekends to myself to sleep all day if I want to.

Finally, I am going to take a certification course this week at Maximo. It is an International English test prep certification course. I am looking forward to it and I am looking forward to the opportunities it will open up to me. I can teach test prep courses here and back in the states. It is always important to think about what I might be able to do when I do get back to the States. I am not sure exactly when it will be and I am completely OK with that right now. But, when I do get back, it will be nice to have a certification that will allow me to teach test prep courses. It is a good part time gig. Who knows, it might help me pay for grad school when I eventually go back and do that. I am not exactly sure what I want to study so I have a little while before I have to really think about all of that and how I am going to find the money for school. If I go to school for teaching, I could teach my way through a masters maybe.

Shout out to Susan, who's b-day it is today. There are 4 teachers at Maximo who have November birthdays. Next Saturday is Jake's turn. The fun part is that it means we get to eat lots of torta in the teacher's lounge. :)