Senior Year. Say what?

The most dreaded semester ever is finally here. It's my last first week of school in SJU. Went out with the folks to the Yunk and we had a blast! 

 Congratulations Sean for getting into Notre Dame! 

 Lucky boy got a kiss from our Carmen chica :) 

 These are the things boys do when they get a little tipsy.

And the last first weekend of the school semester is finally here! Eddie and I had dinner with the SGI folks at a really nice Korean Tofu Restaurant. My god, I've never had so much tofu in one night in my entire life :) 

Hopefully there will be more exciting weekends to come! 

One more week...

One more week left before school starts again. My parents and sister came to town and we had a feast! 

Family meals are the best :) 

Ronnie came to town :)

My "brother", aka classmate from Junior College came to Philly a few days ago to visit me! Hip hip hooray. After being in the states for 3.5 years, I can legitimately say that someone from Singapore lived and ate and showered in my apartment. Hehehe. He arrived on the 845pm bus on Tuesday so we couldn't really do much but on the next morning, I woke up early and cooked all three of us breakfast :)

 Then, we went to town. My lovely boyfriend drove us around and bombarded us with information that I didn't even know about Philadelphia. Shame on me =p 

We took Ronnie to try out his first ever Philly Cheesesteak at Pat's. Sometimes I just don't get it. Why can't they just build walls and doors around the sitting area because people have to sit in the cold to enjoy their cheesesteak with freezing numb fingers..

 Paparazzi shot of Eddie and I by Ronnie.

 And now it's the three of us! 

 Ronnie actually took some really cool pictures that I've never taken in Philadelphia even though I've seen them a thousand over times. Here's a picture of ears made out of chocolate at the Reading Terminal Market. The last time I was here, they even had kidneys and lungs on display! God knows who would buy them?

 This, ladies and gentleman, is the Wachovia bank in downtown Philadelphia. Looks so elaborate right. It speaks volume about the wealth in this bank. Unfortunately, this is not my bank =(

 There are so many murals around the city but this one is the most beautiful I've seen so far! 

 And finally, I took a picture with Rocky outside the Art Museum. Why is it that a fictional character from a movie gets so much attention from the city? 

 The boathouses in the evening along Schuylkill River. 

 When we got back, Eddie and I began to cook dinner. Ronnie helped out with the vegetables of course :) 

 I was in charged of the curry chicken whereas Eddie was responsible for the vegetable.

 My curry chicken! 

Yum yum :) Pardon the newspapers on the table because I was simply too lazy to clean up after dinner, plus I just washed the tablecloth ok? I don't want to dirty my stuff unnecessarily =p

Peru - Arequipa

Have I told you that my favorite city in Peru is Arequipa? 

 That's because we had a great accommodation and a great experience there. 

 Eddie and I at the main plaza at Arequipa.

 At Arequipa we signed up for a 2 day 1 night tour to the Colca Canyon, the canyon more than twice as deep as the Grand Canyon in the United States at 4,160 m. We signed up for the trip, not knowing that it would be a hard hike, even more difficult than our Machu Picchu hike. 

 This is us before the hike down the canyon.

Apparently, we were supposed to hike down to the base and reach the first village for lunch, but we were so unfit that we took twice as long and arrived at the first village at 4pm. I would say that was more like linner (lunch and dinner) instead of lunch eh? My parents couldn't take it anymore, so they stayed at the first village and took donkeys up the canyon the next day. On the other hand, the three of us opted to continue our hike to the next village called the "Oasis". Now, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the word "oasis" implies a place like paradise, but this paradise was a joke! Granted, the second village had a swimming pool with water fall and everything, but there was no hot water and no electricity at all! We had to rely on our cellphones for light supply. Hahaha. Now that I think of it, it was quite an experience staying overnight in this village. In fact it was smart of them to arrange for us to sleep there because there is simply nothing for you to do but sleep and gain back all the energy you can so that you can hike back up the canyon again the next day.

 So the next morning, knowing that we would take longer than the estimated 3 hours to reach back up the top of the canyon, we woke up early and started our hike at 430am. Geez I look so pale in this picture because I honestly felt like I was not gonna make it back up. Oxygen was scarce and we had to carry our backpacks while hiking up the canyon. I think the canyon was about 1200 metres high! Boy, I wish I can show you a picture of the canyon and of its depth, but my camera was simply not powerful enough to capture the entire thing.  

 After 4.5 hours, we finally made it back to the top! This is us as we took our last step up :) 

 Breakfast was super satisfying because we were hungry and tired. Those leaves are colca leaves btw. Apparently, by chewing on them or drinking them as tea leaves, they will help with the altitude problem. It's not drugs though! Peru doesn't sell it to foreigners because you're not allowed to take them out of the country.

While waiting for our van back to Arequipa, we sat and waited. My sister "borrowed" a local baby and tried to carry him on her back. Such a cute baby! 

And finally, here's the animal that I was talking about - the Alpaka. I ate its meat for lunch =p

Lake Titicaca

Lake Titicaca sits 3,811m above sea level, making it the highest commercially navigable lake in the world. It is also by far the largest lake in South America. So you may be wondering, what is so unique about this lake that attracts visitors from all around the world? Lake Titicaca is definitely famous for its man-made floating islands.   There are more than 50 of these islands but we only visited 2 of them. Till today, people still live on these islands. In fact, you can do an overnight stay on the islands if you want to :)

 The floating islands

 These boats are made out of reeds, the very same plant that they used in making the floating islands. 

 The tour guide gave a short demonstration on how the islands were formed by blocks of the plant and soil found on mainland but I cannot remember the exact explanation anymore. Hehehe. 

 They gave us fresh reeds to try out. You can eat them! But they are pretty tasteless..

 Eddie made a hole in the island! My oh my, he destroyed their land. Hahaha. I bet you that they were not too happy about it eh? 

Sis and I with a native in her home.

With the local kids... They were smart because they asked us for money after taking the picture.

Ok so I think I didn't mention anything about the town of Puno where Lake Titicaca is situated. This town was built amongst the mountains and hills. Eddie and I actually walked around the entire city and hiked back up to our hostel. The walk down to the town took only 6 minutes, but it took us an entire hour to hike back up because we stopped after a few steps. Air was thin in this region and we could barely breathe. This is the joyous me after we reached the top! 

Peru - Machu Picchu

Hi folks! As per promised, here's a short post about my trip to Peru for 2 weeks. The main highlight of Peru was Machu Picchu, located 2,430 metres above sea level.  Machu Picchu is often referred to as "The Lost City of the Incas" and was declared a Peruvian Historical Sanctuary in 1981 and a UNESCO world heritage site in 1983. In fact, it was voted as one of the new seven wonders of the world :) 

Town of Cusco. Most of the tourists would make this town the base for a Machu Picchu day trip/overnight trip.

With this brief introduction, I shall proceed on with stories of my adventure to the Lost City of the Incas. As you can tell, it was situated in the mountainous region. To make a journey to this site, it requires an entire day of travelling time from the city of Cusco. When we were picked up from Cusco at 4am, little did we know that it was the beginning of an exhausting journey.

We made a pit stop at a small town for a bathroom break. 

The driver also made us stop for an extremely long lunch break, and made us miss our train to the town of Agues Calientas at the base of Machu Picchu. Now you see, this train that we were scheduled to take only departed one time per day, so there was no other way to reach Agues Calientas except to hike along the railway tracks for a whopping 2 hours. With my parents and luggage with us, we ended up hiking for 6 hours in the dark and rain. We could have slipped and died, OK? If you were me, would you be fuming mad at the travel agency, especially after paying over USD700 for this 2 day 1 night trip to Machu Picchu? This is definitely no exaggeration on my part because the other tourists on the same trip can testify to this very same story. 

Me at the beginning of the hike.... I still had a smiley face on at that point, but after an hour, I was dying already. Granted, Peru is a third world country and I should have seen this coming. Not gonna lie, I did had a ball of a time during my trip, but this fun came with a high price. Ahhh, what can I say? We were bitten once, and were careful for the rest of the trip from thereon...

View of Machu Picchu... So gorgeous! I guess the hike was worth it after all?

My family and I  at Machu Picchu.

Another view of Machu Picchu. Based on the study of bones, archaeologists deduced that Machu Picchu was a town for mostly virgins. Only a few bone structures indicated the presence of males in the town. They also argued that it is where the privileged and the learned resided in the past. Oh and one more fun fact of the day: the Incan messenger who transmitted messages on foot in the past took only 7 hours to walk from Machu Picchu to Cusco. Even the fastest mode of transportation available now, aka train, took 4 hours. I think they walked faster than the buses that we took! 

We spotted Llamas at Machu Picchu. Llamas are considered their national treasure and no one is allowed to kill or eat them. There is, however, a kind of furry animal called the Alpaka. Commoners had them all over the cities and we even ate their meat for lunch and dinner =p

Eddie and I at Agues Calientas. This town is overrated. Can't blame the locals for jacking up the prices of everything there since everyone who comes to Peru wants to see Machu Picchu eh?

And this would be the route that we took to hike back to the bus from our train station after visiting Machu Picchu :) We were burned after this trip and it was only the first leg of our trip! 

Happy new year!

Hi Folks!

I'm back from Peru, alive and kicking. For the past 3 days, I've been telling myself to update my blog about the trip, but I've been busy cleaning and dusting off the dirt from my apartment. The stench given off by my clothes from my Peru trip is enough to kill me, and I spent the whole day just doing laundry!

Now that I can slow down and take a breather from everything, I still can't write about my trip because Ronnie is visiting from Singapore! Well, he's not exactly here for me, but he's stopping by on his way to North Carolina for his exchange program. I am so excited to see him because I haven't seen my brother, Ronnie, for 1.5 years =)

Folks, I promise you I will eventually force myself to sit down and write about my adventures. Okay? Ok deal. Kthanxbye. I'm off to get Ronnie from the bus station now :)

Happy new year everyone!