There are so many names for different kinds of corn in Quechua, but in general, its called sara. Dried white corn like this is paraqay. If you take the kernels off the cob and boil them until the outside skin starts to split, thats mote. (See the blog from week 17).
Today I really gave in to taking a day off. I sat in the sun on the roof, read Amy Schumers book The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo and ate popcorn and two packages of cookies. If Im going to be unemployed, I might as well do nothing on Sunday. Theres no reason to try to get things done around the house. Im not working all week and now I certainly have plenty of time to do things like laundry Monday through Friday.
Happily, this week I will be a little less unemployed than last week. Since I got laid off, Ive been working two hours per week, one hour teaching Spanish to a woman from England and the other teaching English to a Cusqueian guy. This week I will get to add two more hours of Spanish to another woman from England and two hours of teaching French to a guy from Mexico. That means that this week I will have triple the of last week! Also, on Tuesday I now get to teach one hour of Spanish, one of French and one of English. My brain definitely needs something like this
This is one wall of what used to be Inca Huayna Capacs palace. It was a very which now is partly taken over by houses, partly turned into farming land and partly made into a cemetery.
This morning I listened to yesterdays episode of This American Life How to Be Alone with Bim Adewunmi sitting in for Ira Glass. One of the people she interviewed was Leroy Chao, an astronaut who has spent 192 days on the international space station with only one other person: an astronaut from Kyrgyzstan.
Being in quarantine for 15 weeks with Kerry and Andrea wasnt really like being in space, because we each usually left the house once or twice a week to buy food. Still, I wonder how similar quarantine feels to people who have been isolated by working in space or at lighthouses. Adewunmi said that at the time of recording, she has been in quarantine, isolated at home for about 130 days. Im at 131 today, but things have loosened up so much in the past two weeks that it doesnt really feel like isolation anymore.
Still, there are several things that Adewunmi said that I identify with. I think that we all feel like part of the terror of being alone right now is that this pandemic feels
The Qhapaq an is the system of roads built during the Inca Empire. It stretched from Ecuador halfway down Chile and from the Pacific coast inland to the Amazon rainforest. This part of the road system leads from Urubamba, in the Sacred Valley, up into the mountains.
endless. I keep telling myself that Cusco is a pretty good place to ride out a global pandemic. Even though I really do believe that, I still have to remind myself of that often, to reassure myself that Im making a good choice. Whether or not Cusco really is a good place to be during a global pandemic, I am very aware that traveling to Lima and then through several airports to go back to Seattle or Boise would be more dangerous than just staying put. Wherever any of us are now, were safer staying home, staying inside, than traveling, even to a place that currently has fewer cases of Covid.
Of course, the other scary, or at least difficult, part of this situation is that there is still no cure, no vaccine, and a steady increase in new cases. This increase in new cases is happening in Cusco, in Boise and in probably the majority of cities around the world. Even the places that have it under control, for how long will it be under control? Can every country be as good as New Zealand? I have a hard time imagining places like Spain or Kenya or Brazil
The first part of the trail, leading out of Urubamba, goes past several farms. One of them had several turkeys that were very talkative.
Tonight Chilly played one of his usual Peruvian songs, Bronto by Kill Amigo.
