So who knew that a home-stay would be more lonely than hostel-stays?

So I'm into my third day of homestay right now, and it's kind of strange. I didn't see my family really at all the entire weekend - I would either come home or get up to find a meal set for me on the huge, empty table. Being in this second house is unnerving, because It's so quiet in there and I'm all alone, and I almost don't want to make any noise. Upstairs is a hallway with four identical doors, none giving any indication as to what might be behind them, and I'm scared to open them. I know there's a second bathroom up there, because I've heard someone using it, although I've never actually seen anyone up there. There's a lovely new microwave if I need to reheat any of my food, which was the case the first night. I couldn't figure out how to work it, but it did make a lovely fade-in, fade-out dinging when you pressed the buttons. There is one upside to this house: my bed is a dangerously comfortable queen-sized mattress with a heavy down comforter and high-quality pillows. The last time I can remember being in a bed I enjoyed so much was when our flight was delayed leaving Seoul, and we got put up in the shwankiest 5-star hotel I'd ever been in, where I ate a gratis $30 sandwich and fries for lunch and spent the rest of the day absolutely loving the down comforter and pillows in the room. Perhaps both beds have the advantage of coming after a long period of sleeping on straw with pillows stuffed with old socks, but they were two memorable beds nonetheless.

The only interaction I had with my family last weekend was my jamming the lock to the courtyard - turn the key one way and the door opens, turn it the other way and the lock jams. You turn that lock to the left, and the lock on the front of the house to the right, and I got confused. And so later I got a lecture from my host mom about how simple the lock is while she showed me again how to do it and kept saying 'simple, simple', and I got the feeling she thought I was a little slow. I just smiled and said 'entiendo,' but was thinking 'look, I know it's simple, but it was a simple mistake too. It's not my fault you have this jenky lock that can only be opened from the inside with a different key if you twist right instead of left.'

I started Spanish school today, which was pretty fun. There are two other people in my class, an Irish guy named Garrett and a Dutch girl (of course), Lenca. We learned the difference between Ser and Estar, did some vocabulary work, and practiced identifying words listening to some Spanish songs. You know you're speaking at a 1st-grade level when they pull out songs like 'The Sand and the Sun.' But it was good because we're all at the same level, which is nice. When I took Spanish in college, almost all the other kids had taken at least some Spanish in high school; most of them had taken 4 years. The only one who hadn't had any Spanish other than me was a guy who was fluent in French, and pretty much what I remember of him is that he was always saying 'Oh, that's just like French!' So pretty much I hated him and felt like a dunce all the time.

I was walking along the streets of Cusco in an area I hadn't been in before on the edge of town, and I happened by a stream full of garbage. It's a lesson I'm constantly being reminded of when I travel, that the environmental ethic we take for granted in the rich world is non-existent in the other 85% of it. I remember once when I was in Thailand we were being shown a fish-farm; our guide explained that normally the fish only reproduce at certain times of the year, but they inject the fish with a cocktail of hormones to get them to spawn year-round. A girl in my group asked if that was safe for the the environment, for the fish, and for the people who ate the fish and our guide gave her a look that bordered on incomprehension and replied 'of course, because we use the hormone according to the instructions.' Of course. The way we used to use asbestos and DDT according to the instructions.

Of course education isn't the only, nor do I suspect it is the primary culprit for a stream full of trash on the edge of Cusco. I'm definitely not the first one to say it, but poverty is the biggest threat the environment faces. When you're desperately poor, it doesn't matter how much it costs to have garbage service - as long as there is any sort of charge, it will always be cheaper just to dump it in the stream.

I didn't realize how bad they were until now, but below are some picture of my host-family's house. I habitually keep my flash turned off and I forgot to turn it back on. My apologies.