So here are some pictures from the past week or so...

The ladies at my going-away party! All quite beautiful I might add ;)

In front of the San Francisco church in Lima. Yana (from Czech Republic), Ulises (my wonderful host) and myself. This church has lots of catacombs underneath with lots of bones... ew.

Yana, on our bike ride through Lima. Some parts were more scenic than others...

A boat in Callao harbor... for ¨tourist¨ trips:

Ulises and Mariella (from France) at Mochileros Bar in Barranco, getting ready to see a concert:

Me and my good friend Dante. He plays percussion and blows on a whistle...

A blurry photo of the Plaza de Armas (main square) in Cusco on my arrival night. Big time partying. Part of the parade went around the square. There were HUNDREDS of groups in the parade and A LOT of people there to celebrate:

One of the groups in the parade. The photos didn´t turn out great because I couldn´t get very close, but the videos are awesome!

Some of the floats from the parade, the day after.

Well, everything continues to go well. Yesterday afternoon I went with a good friend Rodrigo, way up a mountain that overlooks all of Cusco, to the best chicheria in town, and hidden if I might add. In case you don´t know, chicha was the beer that the Incans brewed from corn, and today the peasants continue to brew it, and serve it up warm in huge glasses. It´s pretty weak, but a beautiful tradition, plus it´s tasty and fills you up! After that, I ran into almost all of my musician friends, which was a very happy reunion. They were pretty anxious for the cellist to come back :) It looks now like I will be playing with one Ecuadorian folklore group, one bluesy/funky/Afro-Peruvian group, one papacho-metal-fusion group, and a guitarist... It`s cool with me, I`m a fan of diversity. But I did buy myself a cellphone... too many people and too many rehearsals to organize. I went to the black market and for $15 I got a a cellphone that was stolen, plus a chip and 30 minutes. Hey, some times technology is a necessary evil. It´s good to have for emergencies too I suppose. Well, off I go for another night of adventures!

Back in my Cusco home

Lima was great. While there, I had a a good time with my new friends, Yana from Czech Republic, Mariella from France and Ulises, my host. Ulises has traveled a lot on bike and enjoys fixing them up, so he has quite a few around the house. One day, Yana, Ulises and I took a bike ride around town, to Old Callao, Chucuito (the original fishing village before Lima-city existed), La Punta (an upscale waterfront neighborhood). The smell of the salt water was nice, and I stuck my hands in, to make this an official Pacific to Atlantic trip! We then ate lunch at the Central Market in Callao.

Also while in Lima, I met up with a good friend of mine, Dante. He is one of the best percussionists in all of Peru. We met three years ago when both of our bands played back to back on a music festival called Quechuanol, in Cusco. Ever since, we have written letters from time to time. One night, I went with Ulises and Mariella to see him play with a rock band in Barranco. The next night, I saw him play with a flamenco group in a fancy bar-restaurant in Miraflores (probably the nicest neighborhood in Lima, looks like upscale first-world). The concert also had interludes with Arabian dances! My last night in Cusco we met up with three of his older friends (they are all probably in their 60´s and he considers them to be his musical ¨family.¨ They pulled out photo albums from when he was a little kid playing percussion with them, it was pretty funny. It was one of the guys birthday´s, so we hung out at the house and played Cuban music all night long. It was a great time, just guitar, bass, cello, percussion and the three guys singing.

One day in Lima, Ulises, Yana and I set out on a mission. First we had to find the International Geographic Institute so that I could buy some topographical maps that I need to plan my trek around the Ticlla mountains in the Central Andes. After that, we went to the Agrarian University to try to find a scientist. Yana is studying tropical and sub-tropical agriculture and needed some more information from this man before she heads to the Amazon to study and write a thesis about a fast-growing tree. It was quite the adventure trying to find this man, but he was very interesting to talk to, and to hear about the process of investigating these trees. When I go to the Amazon, I will stay at the house where Yana and several other students and their professors are staying.

Tuesday night I took a bus to Cusco. It was the peasant bus, which means that my knees hit the seat in front of me the whole time, the bus droped off and picked up people whole way, it went th ecrazy route through the mountains, a million switchbacks and lots of people puking! It was also much cheaper than the tourist bus and they let me take my cello up top with me. I sat next to a very very nice deaf man, and we conversed the whole way, him talking and me writing. The altitude was rough, a lot of the time we were above the tree line. When the bus stopped for lunch though, I ate a delicious plate of fresh trout from the river and instantly felt much better.

I arrived in Cusco just in time for the most important party of the year called Inti Raymi. Yesterday there were parades from 8 am to midnight, which meant that I had to walk a long way with my backpack and cello to my hotel. It´s nice though. I am staying in the same place that I have stayed at since 2001, the family is like my Peruvian family and it is vrey close to everything. Unfortunately, my favorite rooms are under construction because they are adding a third floor, so I will probably stay in a room which has an Incan wall, but is a bit colder.

I will try to post some pictures tomorrow. I just downloaded them to a DVD and this computer can´t read DVDs-. Plus I don´t want to miss any of the festivities!

Back home in Peru...

Just a super brief rap-up of the last couple days...

My flight from Newark to Lima was overbooked on Tuesday, so I volunteered to stay behind, for $500 Continental credit and a night in a Holiday Inn and food. Lo and behold, it was overbooked on Wednesday as well and they offered me the same deal, plus a bump up to first class if I waited until Thursday. Of course, I did. I saw this as a sign that I must continue traveling, hee heee.

First class was nice, especially the scotch. They also treated me like some important cellist, funny as that was with my plaid shirt and boots. So the cello survived another couple flights as a carry on, which is always great.

I got to Lima, went through immigration and the immigration officer pointed out that I come to Peru a lot. He said ¨Welcome home! How long do you want to stay?¨It´s important to note that all countries in South America give you 90 days, sometimes only 60, but never more. So I told him that I would stay about 3 months, and he said, ¨Oh, well, I´ll give you four. Are you sure you don´t want five or six?¨ Nice, huh? And I really do feel like I´m coming home, as strange as that might seem. As different as things might be. Except for the pollution here in Lima, I´ll never like that.

So I sent out a message to a guy named Ulises on couchsurfing.com (If you don´t know what that is, I suggest you do a little browsing over the page, as it seems to me to be one of the neatest new social experiments going on. And if you´re really brave, sign up and host some travelers who might be just like me, or maybe totally different). Ulises picked me up from the airport and now I´m staying at his family´s house, with his mom, sisters, nephews and another couch surfer from the Czech Republic. It´s all good, except for the speed of this internet. Taking that into consideration, I´m off for the night... just wanted everyone to know that everything is great!

Does the person create the journey or does the journey create the person?

My passport finally arrived in the mail today, complete with a visa from Brazil. I am leaving in five days and only now does it seem real. For anyone who does not know, the fact that Brazil granted me a visa is somewhat of a miracle. In 2002, I was given 90 days in Brazil, which I renewed for another 90 days, which went all too quickly. Soon I was racking up a fine, somewhere around $3 a day, until I hit the max around $220. I left the country via a very small town on the Paraguayan border, called Ponta Pora, after almost a year in Brazil. The man who stamped my passport asked me to pay the fine and fill out some paperwork. I explained that I was a poor artist and of course, did not have the money, so the man had me fill out the paperwork anyways and told me I would need to pay the fine if I wanted to return. Well, I did return, but I never stopped in immigration, and I stayed almost another year before returning to the Paraguayan border. One unseasonably cold morning, I walked to Brazilian immigration on the Ponte da Amizade (ironically enough, the Friendship Bridge) with a "floating" passport (I hadn't technically been anywhere for a year). The officer fumbled with the computer, which apparently refused to turn on, then looked around for other officials, opened my passport and gave me 90 days in Brazil. I walked away as quickly as possible. Low and behold, the 90 days were soon up and the immigration officials in the north of Brazil refused to renew my stay for another 90 days, so I was soon racking up a second fine. When I did leave the country, on an airplane to the United States, I was greeted by a border agent who quickly noticed my situation. I begged for him to please just let me go home, that I had no money. The man looked at me, standing there with my cello in a state of disarray, and shuffled me through, explaining that I would need to pay the fine before I returned. So when I sent in my passport for a new visa, I wasn't sure what I would get back, but I figured it might be somewhere along the lines of a bill and a giant red REJECTION stamp in my passport. And yesterday, six days before I leave, my passport arrives in the mail with a brand new visa, valid for five years. Sometimes, you just don't know what might happen. Just goes to show that you can't assume anything.

And now... I pack. Packing is a strange task. It takes me through a process where my life becomes organized into a small bag; all the fluff gets left behind and everything that comes along means something. Four months, one bag, one cello, and who knows where I might end up. And I stopped to think about the question: Does the person create the journey or does the journey create the person? I've been imagining this great, yet somewhat vague, itinerary in my mind of the places that I would like to go on this trip, and in the past days I've been watching a story unfold about conflict in the Peruvian Amazon, one place I had hoped to visit. The government is selling sacred land, the Indians protest, the government kills the Indians, and transportation across this part of the country is cut off. A tragic story, really, but a very real daily struggle for people who live off the land in Latin America. And I realize that I am but a speck, and I have very little control over what happens on a daily basis, much less what will happen on this journey. My left brain says that neither the journey nor the person or created, because nothing is ever created or destroyed. Things are shaped, they evolve and as a human, we react, change our perspective, adapt our actions. And that is the beauty in the journey... the unknown, the mystery that greets every day, a person who crosses your path just because you forgot something and had to turn around, a smell that your nose chases across town, a hummingbird outside the window. Sometimes, when life starts to get monotonous, easy and predictable, that beauty goes unnoticed or unappreciated. Strangely enough, that is also when it is hardest to leave, but when the rewards are greatest.

It has been a crazy year in the States... I finally graduated from college after a challenging semester of little sleep and student teaching and then I got to spend some much needed time with my sister and brother who live on the other side of the country. I guess I just want everyone to know that I leave here all the time because the challenge of being somewhere foreign, on my own, allows me to learn new things about myself and life that I couldn't necessarily learn here at home. I do love you all though, and all the people that I spend time with have an important role in making me who I am. So, if you think I'm totally crazy for leaving all the time, or even if you are just curious, I recommend that you come visit, see a different world firsthand, put yourself in someone else's shoes, dance to a different tune, breath different air, and just notice how grand the beauty of the human spirit truly is. And if you can't visit, I hope that you'll at least keep up with my posts, which I will try my best to keep up to date, and send me a note from time to time. Just remember, a lot happens in a day, often so many things, or such indescribable things, that this is only a feeble attempt to leave you all with a small glance...

And on that note, here are some beautiful moments from the U. S. of A.