Family Ties

We left Cusco a week ago and I am still thinking about the whole Spanish school/living with a family experience. I always enjoy Spanish school (though have discovered that 2 week stints are much easier on the brain than 4 weeks..too much!), but living with a family made this a much richer (and more relevant!) experience. I found myself thinking in Spanish all the time (even in my sleep!) and believe I benefitted from the experience, academically.

Aside from that it was so refreshing to be in a residential neighbourhood, where people were going about their daily lives - moms and dads picking up their little kiddies from school (so adorable all decked out in their school unis!). It was wonderful to live on a street where the neighbours greet you with 'Buenas tardes' and ¿Como estas? instead of being greeted with offers for cheap massages or various animal noises. The offers of massages generally came from women on the street who were employed by Cusco's various spas (we still aren't sure of the credibility), but sometimes they were from creepy men on the street, like one dude who offered us 'free massage, all night long'. No, gracias.

In the neighbourhood I was living, when people stared they were generally just curious about the giant white girl who was bigger (in all ways) than the men - nevermind the women. The closer you got to the plaza de armas things would get a bit creepier, and a whole lot less authentic, mostly because the plaza and the surrounding streets are directed entirely at tourism, which is the lifeblood of this beautiful and magnificent city.
It has been such an incredible opportunity to see how a 'normal' (whatever that means) middle class, Peruvian family lives and interacts with each other. The family I lived with was so wonderful,  and I loved seeing the family together (they would do adorable things like pull a mattress into the living room for family movie night and all snuggle up), which consisted of the parents (who had been together for 11 years), and their two children, Octavio (8 years old) and Aldahana (5 years old). The whole family was very obviously very happy together and the parents' interactions with each other were coloured with love (for each other and their children), and their lives centered around their children, which made me feel all nice and warm on the inside.

It was such a fabulous experience, they were the best. Plus, they kept calling me 'Meli'.

Love them, love Cusco.