weddings and alpaca

hola chicos... ahhhh shit. ok so im in peru which is a trip following attending nate and jenny´s wedding in chicago. the wedding was great. an incredibly beautiful ceremony followed by a dance party and cuban food celebration. in true ayni style however, i got confused and was late and ended up having to get ready, dirty and hungover from the night before (i got to hang with adam!), in the bathroom of the church, only to realize i had forgotten my makeup, jewelry and the part of my dress that covers my boobs in chicago. great. but it worked itself out, and besides a brief moment when i was intentionally socked in the left eye by an elbow thrown out in chicken wing style things were bangin.

so i arrived in lima a few days ago... met my sister at her hostel and then bounced around for the next two days. hung out with some surfers from mancorra she knew as well as a writer for a sitcom she worked on a movie with. ate ceviche, drank pisco sours, and generally realized how little spanish i know. lima is interesting but nothing too special, however when we arrived in cusco i fell in love with peru. cusco is at about 10,000 ft, a city built with stones. you can wander up and down hills through small passage ways coming across women in traditional dress, small children selling stones, and alpaca everything. the air is cold, dry, and the sun feels damn good. ive taken to wearing leg warmers with my hiking boots and im sortof loving the winter style after 6 months of hot sunshine. from cusco we took a bus higher to some small villages and did some ass kicking hikes to see cave paintings 1500 years old. along the way we stopped at an artists cooperative high in the mountains. this was actually the place ive enjoyed the most since i arrived. they have a fenced in yard where men and women spin alpaca wool into yarn, weave scarves, bags and ponchos, and small children run around with baby goats. the president of the coop showed us theyre dying techniques and katie and i picked some of the local plants they use for color. i sortof wanted to stay and weave for the next few months but then i remembered i have to hike machu piccu :)

im currently in ollambyantumba (that is not actually the name just sort of close), which is at about 12000 ft. and literally nestled into the andes. i mean seriously. there´s my room and then there´s giant fucking mountains. its a small village based mostly around a little square with stone streets and even colder air. most people dont speak english, so im really appreciating my sisters fluent spanish. its also a major stopping zone for tourists on their way to MP so we´ve been meeting people from all over. last night was spent drinking beers in a little hut-bar with some locals, our guide (who showed some very different personality traits when wasted) and some chilean boys my sister and i may or may not have been on a double date with.
either way, im loving it. the cold however refreshing is definetly hurrying my ass back to bali though :) im a spoiled girl. katie left today to hike the lares trail and we meet in 2 days to trek to MP and then hang out in aguas calientes and then back to cusco and from there who knows.
im currently wearing a lot of alpaca and think i may need to go home and take it off. i feel a bit like an alpaca myself.

holler to me. a small boy is looking over my shoulder. scandalous. i dont think he has any idea what im typing. ha ha. ok he understood that. :)
ciao.