Tired

It is amazing how much I miss sleeping during the day. I used to take two or three hour naps in between classes but now I work so at most I get about 45 minutes if I am lucky. I am feeling the exhaustion today. It wouldn´t usually be this bad but I have had to get ready to go to Ecuador so I have been planning like a mad woman for Cameron, who is taking over my classes for Thursday and Monday. I feel that it is only courtesy to plan for your sub when you know you are going to be out. Some teachers don´t follow that rule.

I have been super busy at the hostel. My co-worker left unexpectedly. Well, maybe no unexpectedly to the other people at the hostel but I didn´t find out until right before I came in one day and I got a facebook message from Carlos explaining that he had left and that I needed to make all new contacts. Fantastic. I was all alone and without any contacts or any of the itineraries that I had translated or worked on. Fortunately, I had sent many of the to another co-worker who was going to make them really pretty on a new format so I was able to recover a lot from my emails. I have been emailing and calling agencies a lot though to get the updated prices and new itineraries if needed. So here I was thinking that I was going to be heading up the agency as a part time worker but thankfully, Gustavo has come into the picture. He currently works for Condor Travel which is a huge travel agency here. He is ending on the 30th so he´ll be here full time. He has already proven that he is going to be a great co-worker. I love that his favorite word is chevere, which means cool. He has good ideas such as having a small tour for the hostel clients to go around to a couple of Peruvian discos on a Friday night to go dancing and practice the free salsa that they learned here at the hostel. I think it´s a great idea. I personally, get sick of Mythology, Inka Team, and Mama Africa that are teeming with gringos. Sometimes I just want to dance some salsa and merengue.

I head to Ecuador tomorrow at 7:50am from Cusco. I am so excited but at this point I am more tired than I am excited. I am going to be doing a lot of sleeping on the planes. I have three of them to fly in tomorrow. Cusco - Lima, Lima - Guayaquil, and Guayaquil - Quito. Hopefully, I will make it into Quito by 4:30pm but who knows in South America. It´s always a toss up when you fly. I decided to get all my Ecuadorian family members keychains that I think they would like. I also bought my US family present too and will be sending that package to them when I get back. I haven´t seemed to have the time to get to the post office. I barely made it to the centro where I bought the presents. :)

In other news, I had a dream about having 4 really good friends over for a slumber party and I couldn´t tell you who they were but I was really happy and comfortable and laughing my ass off with them. I think it is a sign that I am very happy here and love my co-workers and friends. A lot of people are leaving after this month and I am a bit sad about it. I guess I have to get used to the transient friend. I am one myself so I shouldn´t get too upset by it. Of course, we will be able to stay in touch but with teaching English abroad there will always be people going in and out.

Finally, I have had an awesome Echo reunion week here in Cusco. I met up with Lauren Magrisso last Thursday and caught up for about half an hour before she was wisked away by her group. It was really good to see her though and know she is doing well. The other lovely camp Echo friend was Andi Hagan and her mother. I saw her two nights ago and took her to a cute little bakery down the street from where I live. We had milkshakes and caught up on the last year. I showed her my place and the Camp Echo DVD that Alyssa Goodman and Nardo made from this past summer. It made us both nostalgic but happy. She has been studying abroad in Santiago this past semester and she told me that at time it could´ve been any city anywhere in the world. I am not surprised. It is a big city and swallows people up I am sure. The more I think about it, the more I want to go to Valparaiso to work instead of Santiago. My brother´s best friend has a lot of contacts there and I would love to get to know the city of Pablo Neruda. It´s also on the beach. I have been having a little difficulty finding English schools online but that doésn´t mean they aren´t there. I definitely have to get a work visa if I want to work in Chile though. They aren´t as willing to let companies ¨hire¨ ¨volunteers¨ like Peru is. That´s OK. I will have a bit of money saved up before I go so I will be able to take some time looking for work and getting the visa issue figured out.

I have decided to apply for a company called the Experiment in International Living Abroad (www.experimentinternational.org) which would take me back to the Brattleboro Vermont for training at the end of May and then send me off to South America again but with a group of high schoolers and co guide. We would have a 4-6 week immersion experience with homestays and volunteering. It would be perfect for me. If I get that job I will get a nice little stipend and have that to live off of when I get back to South America and go to Chile. If I don´t get the job, I will just head straight to Chile at the end of April.

Overall, while I am extremely tired a lot of the time, I am very happy and living it up. I hope all of you reading are living it up too!!

P.S. I will put in some pictures when I have some time on my laptop. I also have some new photos to put up on facebook.