Quechua Week

Hey all,

Been awhile. There hasn´t been much to report in site- just counting down the days until vacation. Nobody did show up to the English classes, which is pretty consistent for rainy season. Pretty much everything but the occasional party is suspended. But I did have an interesting week this past one with quechua classes.
Quechua is the indigenous language here, as well as the language of the Incan empire. Although it´s more like quechpañol now, with all of the spanish influence. It´s a different languge, with Germanic grammar- all the suffixes as well as sentence order, etc, and several sounds we don´t have in English, some of them arabic sounding or like an african language with bit-off consonants producing clicking noises.
We had class twice a day for about 5 hours total. Our teacher, Dario, came to Chivay to teach and brought his guitar, which was cool. It was kind of like primary school in some ways- learn by singing, but it did the trick. I need to sit down and study some to firm it all up in my head, but I think I can get along a bit now. We´ll have another week of classes to polish up our knowledge the last week of February, or right when I return from my big trip.
As for the big trip I´m leaving the 5th, so not too much more time to waste and the Superbowl tonight, if we find a place it´s on, will help with that. I unfortunately missed a town party due to class, but caught the end of it yesterday. I was just stopping in to grab something I forgot, but still ran the drink gauntlet to get to my house. Transportation was out of commision due to excess partying as well so I ended up going back on the back of a beer truck, which was cold but an interesting experience.
Outside of that, nothing else to report. Keep tuned for travel blogs, as I may do it during or a big one after...