1-31-11
Day Two. Well I woke up today and things didn’t go so well! I got sick and though I went to breakfast, I couldn’t bear eating anything. After staying for some of the orientation meeting I couldn’t take it anymore and went back to my room to sleep and attempt to get better. Then I slept for three hours! It just so happened that part of the orientation that I slept through was a presentation by a local doctor. After she was done Sonia, Ursula, and she came to look me over. She determined it was stress? I don’t know, but at that point I think I’d slept it all off.
It rained while I slept and when I finally made it outside the Andes looked amazing, swathed in clouds. The air was refreshed and birds chirped loudly. Absolutely beautiful. We ate lunch then afterwards we played a game of Peru Bingo aka they gave us a bunch of questions which we had to go out into the community in order to answer. We essentially just walked down the road to Urubamba and stopped people as we walked past and asked them, as politely as we could, if they knew the answers to those questions about Peru. It was actually startling to realize how little many people knew about their own countries.
Here’s a list of the questions we had to anwser:
-Una palabra de Inglés que provenga del Quechua = Condor, Alpaca, Yuca
-El año en el que el Perú declara su independencia de España = 1821
-Nombre del imperio Inca = Tahuantinsuyo
-Nombre del ultimo Inca = Atahualpa OR Tupac Amaru
-Nombre del presidente actual del Perú = Alan García
-Dos idiomas hablados en el Perú aparte del Quechua y el Español = Aymara & Machigenga
-¿Cuándo ocurrió la revlución de Tupac Amaru II? = 1780
-Nombre de dos escritores Peruanos = Mario Vargas Llosa, César Vallajo
-Nombre de un actor o un actriz Peruano = Virna Flores? (Who apparently is a telenovela actress)
-El nombre verdadero del líder de Sendero Luminoso = Gúzman
-Nombre del equipo de fútbol más popular en Cusco
-¿Qué significa “Pachacuti” en Quechua? = Un gran transformación o retorno
-¿Que significa el nombre “Cusco”? = El Ombligo del mundo (the center, or literally “bellybutton” of the world)
This is most of them, but not all. It was surprising how little the people we talked to knew about their own country’s history, literature, pop culture, etc.. When we got back from our excursions around town to gather the answers in our small three person groups we checked our answers and so many of them were incorrect! Or blank. I even asked one man what the name of the river in the next town over was and he answered that he didn’t know, that he hadn’t studied. Many of the questions we knew ourselves before asking someone, but I wonder if some of these people would have know the answers. Like I knew the president, Mario Vargas Llosa just won the Nobel Prize so he is pretty well known, and various historical facts from my classes. For example, Graziano drilled Tahuantinsuyo and “el ombligo del mundo” into our heads. I guess it came in handy. It’s just a different sort of world where different things are considered important or pertinent. How can they be involved in or care about politics if they don’t even know their own president?
Tomorrow I think we do more orientation things, then the next day we go to Machu Picchu. The next day we meet our host families. The presentations today made me a bit nervous about host families again. I honestly do not know what to expect, but I hope for the best.
The four people who were delayed yesterday arrived today while I was asleep. They seem nice and Maggie (Maggie H…there are three Maggies!) and I talked about Anna for a bit. It’s strange how many odd connections I have with people in this group. Small world I guess!
Then we had another presentation, this time about safety, and finally ate! I was starving and Donaldo kept teasing me with fake fruit, telling me that they were real. He likes those sorts of practical jokes. Oh, did I talk about Donaldo? He is one of the directors of SIT here and I’m sure that we will see him nearly everyday. He’s quite the jokester.
Panpipes, which I think are called Samponia, are really beautiful. Yesterday BrynErin, who reminds me of Marlena actually, picked them up and was like sorry guys you gotta suffer through me learning to play these! She’s gotten better, learned more of El Condor Pasa. You know that Simon & Garfunkel song? The Samponia part is actually an old Quechua song. Little things like that seem so familiar to me, even though I suppose they should feel foreign. Like, for example, potatoes. Peru is really proud of the potato and the thousands of varieties (although Donaldo said he’s only had about 5 different kinds) but the potato seems like such comfort food to me! So familiar!
Goodnight all.
xo Claire
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