Day 12 en el Imperio Inca

So, it´s the end of week two. As was expected, time is going by pretty quickly. I´m feeling much better this week. Only a small remnant of a cough left over. I can even walk up the stairs in my house without huffing and puffing. Most of the time. I´m currently sitting at the school´s computer watching the rain and listening to the musical stlyings of Andy (some sort of traditional drum) and Cameron (guitar), two guys who go to school in New York. I was supposed to meet some people to go to an art museum, but the rain probably deterred everyone. On Tuesday a group of six of us took a taxi to the ruins of Tipon, about fifteen miles outside of Cusco. It was wonderful. Unlike a lot of tourist spots, there were very few tourists. It was pretty far up in the mountains (there was a lot of huffing and puffing), but the views were great and it was so serene. It´d be a great place to spend a day and picnic (which we probably will one day). The drive up the mountain was memorable as well. The road was very windy and it was slightly scary looking at the drop down the mountain. We drove through a little village on the way up and saw a lot of aloe plants (which are spiky, actually-who knew?) At one point, while exploring, a herd of sheeps, cows, and horses came down the path we were on so we had to move to the side so they could pass. After we left Tipon, we met some other students back in the city and went out for a meal at a vegetarian restaurant. There were probably about 20 of us and we took up the entire restaurant. Later on, we headed to a bar called Kamikase, where the dj played us some good songs to sing along to (Eminem, Dr. Dre, Britney) until a live band came on later. They were really good too. The next day, we had our second salsa class in the evening, which was a lot of fun. I don´t do too badly with it. My partner was an older guy from the Czech Republic, who mostly kept a stern expression, which was kind of amusing. Then we went in search of food and ended up at a Chinese (Chifa) restaurant, which was pretty tasty. Last night, my British friend Nicki had a get together at her host family´s house. They ordered amazing pollo and papas fritas and we played about five games of musical chairs (actually really fun), a strange game introduced by our friends from Holland including yelling out people´s names and being hit with a rolled up newspaper if you´re not fast enough, and a Spanglish version of charades. And now I´m here. I´m looking forward to going out to some clubs tonight since I missed out last weekend when I was sick. Hopefully the rain will stop though. It´s not the best weather to walk around in. I will probably do some more sightseeing this weekend and maybe check out some local markets. Next week my Spanish classes are in the afternoon/evening. I don´t know how I feel about that, but at least I can sleep in. I think that´s all for now.
Adios,
Ashley