Settling In

My first two weeks with the BCEF youth team went well! We spent alot of time in two villages, helping out with a Children´s and Youth Camp in two villages called Capacmarca and Huanoquite.  It was really neat to interact more with the Quechuan people on this trip, compared with my previous trip.  It´s such a great opportunity for our future youth teams to continue working with these camps in the future, although I find it to be a bit draining spending so many days not having normal beds, showers or toilets.  It´s very hot during the day with the high-altitude sun beating down, but very cold in the evenings and mornings (even with frost) which means needing many layers!  The food was good, but often is the same thing: soup with potatoes, rice, more potatoes, white bread.  I know our team was happy to have a variety of more familiar food after coming back... like pizza and burgers!

Yesterday I saw the team off at the airport before noon, and am excited to have this week to settle in and get more aquainted with Cusco.  My schedule this week consists of some sort of tour each day, arranged by a friend of mine from Cusco.  This afternoon I am going horseback riding somewhere outside of the city.  Tomorrow will be a morning excursion of the South Valley.

It´s interesting how different so many things here are.  For instance, I was trying to find some good moisturizing skin cream, but it has been alot more complicated than I´d imagined!  The local stores don´t seem to sell creams on the shelf in general, and there aren´t rows and rows of different products and choices like back home.  In Aguas Caliente, I finally thought I´d found a Nivea moisturizing cream... but discovered an hour later when I was going to moisturize my hands, that it was actually a moisturizing shower cream! 
Trying to buy bandaids and gravol for our team was also not simple.  Again, these items are not found in regular tiendas, but in little farmacias.  It was somewhat amusing trying to explain what I needed, and was then surprised when I was given one bandaid and one gravol pill.  I think the pharmacist was suprised that I wanted the whole box for each.  And, oh my goodness, trying to figure out how to use a cell phone all in Spanish and call Internationally- that took alot of tries.  Bastante cosas to figure out!