Cosas Feas y Bonitas (Beautiful and Ugly Things)

Today Dawn and I went to have lunch with Marga in her house with her family. She lives more in the outskirts of Cusco where it's much more country than city. I felt a little spoiled when I arrived at her house which is made from the adobe bricks (mud & straw) and the ground floor is made of ground! Well, I felt pretty spoiled because last night I just got hooked up to have internet in my room here in Cusco (a blessing because the internet is a world of ideas for lesson plans and crafts and etc.). Marga and her family have a nice yard with a bathroom and sink outside, chickens, guinea pigs, dogs and cat. Their second floor is finished wood and they even have traga luces (skylights). We had a yummy lunch of chicken (a couple of their own who were killed), potato salad & cochlo (corn on the cob). Afterwards Cesar (Marga's husband) took Dawn, Raquel (Marga's daughter), Alison (Marga's neice who will be in one of my classes - what a sweetie!) and I on a walk up the mountain. (oh and Taffy the dog went with us as well!)

Wow! The view from Marga's house is fantastic with green rolling hills! We walked past the sheep, turkey, chickens, cows, goats, dogs & cats on our way up the mountain. At first we walked past the Wanatay River which smells pretty bad because there is trash in it. In fact, there is trash pretty much everywhere you go. People just drop stuff on the ground. I remember how much that bothered me in Venezuela. Because no matter how beautiful your surroundings may be, trash just destroys them. Ugh! What a sad and ugly thing to see!

Still we continued up, up and up the mountain. When Dawn and I had arrived at Marga's, I pointed out the mountain and said that it looked like there were blue spruce growing up there. As we climbed the mountain, I found out that they were eucylyptis trees! The smell of the eucylyptis was so wonderful! What a wonderful walk up the mountains! We passed some people harvesting potatoes on the side of the mountain but for the most part we were alone.

What a beautiful thing is God's creation and what an ugly thing when man destroys it!