I'm now in Arequipa, south of Cusco and Lima with more agreeable weather. Although I can see a snow capped mountain out of my hotel room, it seems to be very warm in the day time, and moderately chilly at night (not excessively like Cusco). But Cusco has so much charm, especially at this time of year, where all the school children and other dance and performance groups are readying for the coming festivities... as such, wandering through the city the last couple of nights I saw lots of children dancing while their teachers played flutes. Fireworks also seemed to be quite popular (not sure why they had to let them off at 6am on Sunday morning though...)
Also I've been reflecting on the language and the different slangs and forms of speech in different areas. Though my ear isn't refined enough in spanish to detect differences in accents, I think Cusquenas speak in such a sweet way. English just doesn't have equivalents for a lot of their language. For instance, an affectionate term for women in Cusco is 'mami' or 'mamita'. For instance I would ask a taxi how much to the city and he would say for instance... '7 soles mami', or buy something in a store and the lady would say 'gracias mamita'. I have a feeling that they don't say that so much in Arequipa, though I've only been here a day. The other thing that I think most south americans do is make just about any word a diminuitive. I love it! For instance, I would ask a child to draw a cow.... a vaca... and they would say... not a vaca, a vacita!! (little cow) or they would describe what they had drawn, and no they hadn't drawn a dog or a house or a tree... it would be a perrito, a casita, an arbolito! English just does not compare, I mean it's just such a cutie way to talk. Even a person would not describe something as being simply 'close' (cerca) to here, instead it's 'cercita'. I just can't describe how much I love this aspect of the language. As well as that I've been having immense fun learning the slangs of Peru and Cusco. At the moment I'm a 'mocosa' (a snotty girl) because I have a cold. Also a little boy or girl is a mocoso or mocosa, and apparently you could insult a prospective boyfriend by saying the equivalent of 'go away mocoso'.
The locals seem to be hugely amused when I throw a slang out there. I took some photos to a shop to get developed the other day, photos which were to give to the children in them. I told the man that the photos were for 'los chibolitos', a local slang for kids. He cracked up and nudged his coworkers to exclaim over what this foreigner said. Probably it was all the more amusing because the rest of my spanish was tested drastically in trying to explain a fairly simple concept - that I wanted photos printed out. And yet somehow I knew this local slang. So when I returned for the photos he handed me the photos and then said, wait a moment I have something else for you, and after a few minutes he delivered a larger photo, a photo of myself with the chibolitos, and he gave me a wink and off I went with my little present.
So here in Arequipa I've got a week of spanish lessons with Juliana, who was also amused by my use of various slangs. For instance she had told me I couldn't really say 'el agua es mala' as this meant that 'water generally is bad'. But to correct myself I said well 'en cusco es agua es mala, franco' (in cusco the water really is bad). Which is true because apparently that's why so many tourists get sick there, and probably is why I also got sick there. But she was quite impressed by my use of 'franco', another slang (jerga). Ha ha!
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