Choco Museum [BY JENNA]

We went to a chocolate factory and we got to make our very own chocolate.  We started off making yummy drinks.  the first drink we made was a choco tea, don't worry the tea was ok to drink. The second drink we made was another choco drink but better than the first one we made.  Also, we made one more, it was really really yummy.  It tasted like a chocolate smoothie with milk, cinnamon sugar, cloves and chocolate paste. We made chocolate paste.  We had this bowl type thing and a really heavy stick.  We got choco beans and put them in the bowl type thing and mashed it up with the heavy stick.  We had to mash for 5 minutes or so.

My Español Skills

I got to try and talk with these kids for a while, it didn't work out too well.

I've been taking Spanish class for about 3/4 of a year and I was excited to come to Peru and actually use it. I can usually pick up on a word or two of what someone is saying and get the general idea of a sentence, but I can't really talk to them because I don't know all of the secrets about Spanish. My dad speaks a good amount of Spanish so usually I only have to translate to my family when he's not there. There have been a few...uh... minor translation errors. For example, when Joe was buying a souvenir I asked how many soles it was and I thought that the vendor said 15. Turns out that the shop keeper actually said 50, I still don't really understand how I confused those because they don't really sound that much alike. Anyway, that was kind of embarrassing and I'm sure that my family will never let me forget it.  Its been fun trying to speak Spanish, but also kind of annoying because whenever I say something in English, even to my family, my mind automatically tries to come up with how to say it in Spanish.
Even though my Spanish is not that good, sometimes I get the feeling that it is sometimes better than Google translate (see below).

I think they are trying to say that they aren't responsible for lost things, but I'm not sure.

Money Woes in Peru

We have had a bit of money woes here in Peru.  First day in Cusco, at the airport, the ATM took my debit card.  After a moment of panic on my part, Rich, with his limited Spanish, made a few calls to the local bank. But it was Sunday and the bank was closed.  We had transportation arranged to take us to a city about 1 1/2 hours away so we left without our debit card.  When we arrived, I called the emergency number on the debit card (after getting it from my brother) and cancelled the card.  Good thing we always travel with more than one card.

No problems for several days. . . until today.

Machu Picchu, A WOW kind of day!

We had a great day at Machu Picchu. 

We arrived in Aguas Calientes, the town closest to Machu Picchu, the night before in the rain. We promptly got lost looking for our hotel, but it wasn't all bad because we ended up right where we needed to be to buy tickets to MP.  We then found someone to help us find the hotel, which was on the other side of town where we had gotten off the train.  We had planned on hiking up to MP since we abandoned our original plan to hike the Inca Trail, but the rain changed my mind and we bought bus tickets for $90.  The rain stopped and we went to bed early so we could get up early the next day.  Only problem is kids started playing soccer at 10:00 in the alley/sidewalk right outside our window.  We could feel and hear the ball against the wall and they were having a great time laughing and cheering.  This went on for about two hours! So much for getting to bed early.

On the Road Again

For many months I have been meaning to update our blog, and now seems like a good time. We have been home for several months from our trip around the world. In some ways it has been so nice to be home but in other ways we have truly missed traveling. When we left, we planned to be gone for one school year and then return to our normal life.  But somehow we caught the travel bug and we have longed to travel more.  I don't know how  many conversations at our house have involved traveling.  We talk about it all the time.  We have many of our travel photos on our walls and a large map of the world in our entry way.

We have been limited in our ability to travel because our children wanted to return to traditional school after being away.  There just are not enough vacation days in a school year to satisfy us!  We decided we better take advantage of spring break.  We tried so many plans and nothing really was coming together for us.  Then just two weeks before the break we were able to get a good price on airline tickets (with the help of some frequent flyer miles) to Peru.  So our travel adventure will continue with our first trip to South America.