Google Maps on Cusco, Peru

I was told that I would find out who my host family is about 2 weeks out from my trip. I will arrive in Cusco 8 days from today. After a couple days of waiting I emailed my school coordinator asking about my home stay family on Friday. She responded happily that I would be learning that day who my family would be. The excitement and anticipation were killing me. I was working when I got her email. I moved away from what I was doing and opened the file with my families information in it. It felt like it took 185 minutes instead of kilobytes to download. I was so ecstatic to find a picture of my family in this one page document. I didn't have a clue what kind of information they would send me about them. As I was reading the bullet points about each member of my family my excitement was hardly containable.


When I got to Catalina- the three year old little girl in the family my eyes welled up with excited tears. If you don't know me very well- know this- children are my absolute love and passion. I was hoping, wishing and praying that I would have a family with children. And- my wish came true! By the end of reading about my family I was practically dancing around and feeling like I was about to burst. In writing this I still feel that way. After some help from google translate I learned a few more things about my family- including that they enjoy traveling to their "cottage" on the weekends. The Papa is an insurance broker and mama es un abogada. They are a younger couple. I CANNOT WAIT to meet them!


Its getting hard to focus on the day to day things going on here because I keep thinking and wondering what Cusco is going to be like. I have a week and 2 days until I board the plane but next week feels like a lifetime away. Anticipation is one of my favorite things about life. The excitement boiling up from the pit of your stomach that is hardly containable. The more I talk about my travels the more excited I get. While away I'll be missing a lot of things- birthdays, graduations, anniversaries, weddings and bathing suit season. But, I feel like this trip is super important to me and it may be one of the only opportunities like this that I have.


Now- as for the title of this blog. My biggest frustration since finding out my family has been figuring out where they live in relation to school. I have been virtually touring the city of Cusco for about an hour now and by some random act of the Google gods I spotted a park that is near by USIL, (Universidad de San Ignacio de Loyola) my school.  The space where my school is is not marked by any name or building, so I'm guessing that it is a new addition to the city. I did, however, spot the "bars nicely located through a beautiful Incan corridor" as my orientation manual states. Maybe Cusco should update Google on their city, just saying. After locating USIL I was able to find Av. Panama. Where my familia lives! Google says its 7 minutes away or 4.0 km, in miles (for us stubborn Americans) that is 2.5 miles. Looks like I'll be taking a cab to class every day, but no worries its $1 or 2.72 Nuevo Sol's.


As for now- still lots of packing and unpacking, learning conversions (fahrenheit to celcius, dollars to nuevo sols and miles to km), buying gifts for while I'm gone and catching up with friends. The good news is that Cusco is only 1 hour behind our time, so talking with people from the US won't be too hard to coordinate.
Adios for now!

La Plaza de Armas- Right behind USIL