As a part of my language classes I have 2 hours of practical lessons each day, the other 2 hours being grammar, which consists of visiting places in Cusco and talking about what is there, having talked on route - all of which is in Spanish.
On Wednesday, for example, we happened to find a book market, so discussed the books and reading as much I actually can, given my still very basic Spanish. On Tuesday we just talked over coffee, as both of us needed a coffee and as we were there, some carrot cake - which whilst good, isn't a patch on my dad's.
Part of Tuesday's conversation was discussing my previous travels, where I tried to explain how big Mongolia is in comparison to Peru. As a part of this I wanted to show my teacher the world map via Google Maps, but the cafe we were in (yes, Jack's) doesn't have WiFi and I'd not got the data cached.
Today I zoomed-out on the map, so as to cache data, and the map just looked wrong. That little blue dot that says "you are here" and a the land around it just looked wrong. And then it hit me...
I'm not in Central Asia any more.
Whilst that is a really obvious thing, but in the context of having looked at the world map for the previous 4 months, looked at where I am, where I've travelled through and where I'm going to, has all been whilst looking at the map landscape of central Asia; for that to "suddenly" change was a small shock to the system.
I've got 3 months to get use to it, before I head over to Southeast Asia and the (welcome?) return of that shape of land.
