* Mum's Virtual Visit To Peru

Living ten thousand miles away from my parents, I call them on Skype every weekend, and we have lovely conversations.  Mostly I do the talking, telling them about my adventures of the week about my work, my travels, my life in the city of angels, spiced up with a little humor, and sweet exaggeration.

This morning we took our places in front of our respective laptops once again, and as soon as I greeted them, my mum said "I went to Peru!".  Now, I will be going to Peru at the end of December to do the Inca Trail, and that has been a major topic for the past few weeks, and knowing my mum's worrying nature, I thought she had a dream about my impending adventure.  Anyway, I asked "How so?"

It turns out she watched a documentary about Peru on one of their local channels, and being the very intelligent and perceptive woman that she is, she recited some information about Peru that I did not know.  Here are just a few of what I learned from my mum today:

• Peru is the motherland of potatoes with close to 3000 varieties
• A government school in Lima is teaching Turkish as second language
• The original Peruvian language, Quechua does not have an alphabet and is mostly a spoken language

Thank you, mum!