I´ve only been here a few days and I have done SO much its unbelievable! I am staying in a hostal right in the middle of town with three other girls who are doing the same project I am doing for the first 6 weeks and they´re all great. We are literally next door to everything and straight outside are 2 restaurants and lots of shops and only down the street are loads more. Its like a really concentrated shopping maze. We have been visiting possible placements for the past couple of days to decide where we want to volunteer and we are going to visit more next week so we will be starting our volunteering the monday after the one coming. (I hope that makes sense :S) We also started having our week of Spanish lessons today which are great; we all have 2 teachers to ourselves and spend an hour with one learning in the classroom and then two hours with the other just going around Cuzco and chatting in Spanish. I had a great time with my walking around lady today - we went to a market and walked all around talking about how we cook. She got some of these brown sweets from a stall which were nice. They are brown and wrapped in leaves and at first I was a bit worried coz the stall holder who unwrapped and gave them to us had just had her hands in a mountain of prawns but I decided I didn´t care. We also got the bus to go and wander somewhere else and have a look around a little church. The buses are SO small and I nearly crushed a man when it lurched before I sat down but he took it very well. I don´t think the buses are scary but they are VERY mad. I have no idea how you are supposed to know where to get on or off and there is a little man by the door shouting stuff all the time.After my lesson the teacher left me somewhere and told me how to get back (which was quite exciting because I had absolutely no clue where I was and she spoke no English) but it was fine and I discovered a whole new market on the way which is really close to where our hostel is. Me and the other girls also visited a massive indoor market the other day where I was - not surprisingly - completely overexcited. Sinse coming here I just want to buy everything in sight because it is so lovely. its really really cheap (you can go out for dinner for a quid or buy a really nice jumper for less than ten) but there are people selling absolutely everywhere and the other girls normally have to drag me away. I have surprised myself by being reasonably good at haggling and shopkeepers are the perfect people to practise my spanish on. There are tons of people selling stuff on the street as well - jewellery, massage (?), paintings, postcards, clothes or photos of themselves in national dress with llamas and baby lambs. Its mentally hilly here and all cobbled streets with pavements about a foot wide, usually less, and about a trillion taxis everywhere and suddenly you are confronted with a tiny old lady with a llama in the middle of the road! I tell you I was quite surprised at first. To get a taxi you basically wave at any car you see (because they ALL taxis!). Because the pavements are so small and the roads are really narrow there are constant car horns meaning one of several things:

1- I am about to run you over
2 - hello
3 - do you want a lift?
4 - move your llama out of the road

I am totally loving how busy and noisy it is though. People call out CONSTANTLY for you to buy things which I was a bit uncomfortable with at first but after only about a day my spanish improved loads and I learnt to say ´qizas vuelvo´(´maybe I come back´) which are like magic words. Also now I am just used to it and everyone is so friendly if you just smile and stop for a little chat. Obviously this cannot be done all day or nothing would get done so sometimes they must just be ignored.

Anyway this is massive so I´m going to shut up now. I had a fiasco trying to upload photos yesterday so I have temporarily given up but I will try again when I can deal with it. Lots of love xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx