2-11-11 & 2-12-11
Oy vey Calca. Imagine being trapped among 24 other very grumpy students that are repeatedly forced to do infantile assignments for 48 hours, and that was my weekend at Calca. Once the cranky spell has been cast, especially among that many people, it is very difficult to escape. Calca is a small and beautiful town fairly close to Urubamba that is shaded by enormously tall mountains. It was beautiful and the days were lovely outside and in the town, however we were not allowed to spend our time either outside nor in the town. Calca could have been especially fun because yesterday was Carnaval and instead of masks like in Venice or crazy parades in Brazil, Peru celebrates Carnaval with what are essentially waterballoon fights. Alas, we were stuck with Valerio, perhaps the worst music teacher I have ever encountered. I did Allstate Chorus for seven years, so I definitely know what it’s like to come in on day one not knowing a song and leaving at the end of day two having memorized and perfected that song so such a degree that day three sees a performance in front of hundreds of people. Valerio could maybe use a lesson in that. Basically we had to learn about two songs on the Zamponia, or the panpipes, and a couple that we just sang. They were like 12 measure songs! Alma described him as “dense,” and I cannot disagree. Perhaps this is overly mean seeing as he and his family welcomed us into their home for two days and tried to share this knowledge, he just went about it all the wrong way. First of all, he expected up to learn a song simply by giving us a paper with letter names on the page. He got annoyed with us when we got the melody wrong, but how were we supposed to know note values when there were none on the page? Stupid Llaullina, I hope I never hear that song again.
Then his wife, the swiss lady who gave us a lecture the other day, advised us on pre-colombian art and the three worlds, then had us make our own artwork… This basically meant that we just did watercolors for hours at a time. That was alright, much better than music. In retrospect it doesn’t sound so bad, but we all felt so overwhelmingly frustrated that this was considered an academic class, that we’d be graded on this, and that we had to give up a precious weekend day, one of the only free times we get during the day to explore, to do this meaningless art and music that could have easily only lasted one day. I apologize for my complaining.
If I had to guess, I would just say that this Calca trip brought to a head all of the frustrations we feel with this program. Our Academic Director even prefers to speak to us in English! Aren’t we supposed to be exercising our Spanish? And isn’t the Academic Director the primary person who should enforce that? Many of us feel trapped and frustrated and this trip made everyone face it. Poor Donaldo- he was very patient to deal with all of us. Ursula and Sonia we supposed to come too, but for some reason they didn’ come and Donaldo had to deal with all of us on his own. I think he totally understood our boredom and annoyance. I was annoyed that Sonia didn’t come because I need to talk to her! I have yet to go to a bank here, I still have enough left from what I withdrew in the Miami Airport. However, when we were in Aguascalientes I asked Sonia if she had change for my large bill (100 soles) since most small little shops would not be able to change that. So here some my problem. The other day at karaoke I handed the bartended my 50 soles note and she refused it, saying it was a fake. Another guy looked at it, then later on I had my host mom look at it and she confirmed that it was a fake. 50 soles is only about 20 dollars, but for here that is a lot of money that would last you a long time. The fact that I have yet to go to a bank pinpoints the fact that the only way I got this fake money was through Sonia. That seems unacceptable to me that an Academic Director gives her students false currency. I know it was not intentional, but she is Peruvian, I’m not. I’ve been here two weeks, there’s no way I can recognize fake currency. She, however, should be able to, especially since my host mom looked at it for about 20 seconds and could tell it was fake. So all weekend I wanted to talk to Sonia about this, but she never showed up.
Oh god I’m sorry that I’m making all of you guys listen to me complain. Parts of the weekend were pretty good. For instance, Kia, Matt (Mateocha), and I did some serious bonding. Kia, Allina, and I roomed together at our hostal and we discussed for a really long time the things that we like, dislike, about ourselves, our stories… I really enjoyed getting to know them better. Matt’s pretty hilarious! I figured out how to play Seven Nation Army on the zamponia during one of our breaks and Matt got a drum, so we broke it down! Ha. Oh! We tried alpaca! I’ve heard it’s delicious, even if this particular one was not, so I think I need to give it another try.
We got home around 9:30, I had tea with my host mom and had a nice talk with her, then I met up with some girls to go out. By the end of the night I had about 60 cent to my name since I used to think I had 56 soles but then suddenly it was only 6 soles. That’s not much. Anyway, it was fun and I came home and read the book Olivia lent me then went to sleep. Oh! Every morning when I make my bed I laugh about my blanket. I’ll include a picture so you can see. It’s pretty crazy.
Anyways, today will be better, we’re going to a big market called El Molino, and I’m sure that on Monday all of us will express our thoughts about the trip to Sonia, Ursula, and Donaldo. Hopefully our next trip will be better.
xo Claire
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