¿Que?

So according to my sitemeter I now have 46 unique readers, which officially leaves XM Radio in the dust. Take THAT Clear Channel! I guess being free helps.

I'm staying with a new host family now, which is the total opposite of my old family. Whereas my last family had a really nice house and I never saw them, I interacted more with my new host mother on the first day than I did my old host mother the whole week. She's obviously excited to teach Spanish and will gently correct your mistakes. The downside is that there is running water only in the mornings and the evenings, that the meals feature prominently fried eggs and bright-pink hot dogs, and that the TV is on a lot. Oh well. I'm here to learn Spanish, not eat gourmet, right?

I've been going dancing with the folks in my Spanish class, because after learning the language, learning to salsa is priority number 2 if you're going to be in South America for 10 months and want to have any friends. So there's a club in town that advertises free lessons, which is true if you're a girl. It's pretty much four or five Peruvian guys who can salsa really well who dance with gringo girls, which I'm convinced is due to a conspiracy to keep white guys awkward and rhythm-less on the dance floor. In my case it's working well. It's really a shame, too, because salsa is such a fun, beautiful, sexy dance - nothing like the pent-up lockstep of most European dances, and not fascist like square dancing. Watching a couple who can really salsa gives the impression that they've been choreographing together for weeks, but if you watch you'll notice that people continually switch partners and one will occasionally stop in the middle of the dance to walk the other through something new. I might break down and ask a girl to teach me although my problem with this plan is that I'm shy plus I'm expected to lead. Can a dancer who follows teach someone to lead? I danced with one girl who was immediately annoyed that I didn't know how to salsa, despite my having told her it was my first time, which tempers my appetite to try again.

So a few days ago I started sneezing a lot, and since it's spring here I went to the pharmacy to get some antihistamines. Pharmacy systems seem to supplant prescription systems in a lot of places, so you go into the pharmacy, describe your symptoms, and they give you drugs (I have experienced this in Peru and Thailand). The problem with this system is that the pharmacists aren't particularly clever at their jobs. In Thailand, I went to the pharmacy after coughing for several weeks, and they gave me antibiotics. This didn't clear up the cough, so I bought some Benadryl, which did the job - after I'd taken a round of antibiotics for no reason. In Peru, they gave me antihistamines, and a few days later I figured out I was developing a cold, not allergy symptoms. So I had to go back to the pharmacy and tell them what was wrong with me, and then they gave me some packets of drugs with no labels or information and told me to take one every six hours. I had a sore throat, so I asked about a pack of Halls (throat lozenges - I dunno, the Dutch and the Australians don't know what they are) behind the counter and the pharmacist looked at me and said 'you don't need those.' And I asked 'not for my sore throat?' and he replied 'no, those are Halls,' and gave me a funny little smile. That seemed to be the end of the discussion, and as I had a couple of Halls left, I didn't push it any further. But I wish I would have asked him what he thought Halls were for, since I can't think of anything they might be used for besides sore throat.

I noticed today that the folks who hand out flyers use a primitive mind-control technique to get you to come into the bar/restaurant/massage parlor they're hawking: they hand you the flyer and say something like 'you'll come back later. You won't forget.' One guy even slowly passed his hand in front of my face as he said it.

I don't know if I've mentioned it, but people in Cusco are just as into 80's music as the people in Arequipa, which I love because you can wander into a little general store and find a 50 year old woman listening to Devo or INXS.

I noticed today that I still get pretty winded going up all the hills in Cusco (altitude 10,000 ft.), but I go up them a lot faster. And my calves are getting really big.

Hey, speaking of random things I've thought of, did you ever notice that none of the characters in Seinfeld have any siblings? Isn't that weird?