What a Small World

3-21-11

So a couple of days ago I got a FB message from Matt Zientek saying that he’d be in Cusco and would I want to meet up? This is bizarre for several reasons. Let me stop and explain. Matt’s younger brother was in my grade for all of middle school and high school. Then I, unknowingly, followed Matt to the same college. To my knowledge, we are the only two that have gone to Conn in the last six years or more from Academy. What I remembered today that made it even stranger is that I remember Matt being my Ex Ed student leader on my 9^th grade ex ed trip. That’s a long time. So we’ve, over time, created this situation in which we know OF each other and we keep doing the same things, but we don’t actually know each other. So anyways, I met up with him and his two coworkers that he’s travelling with today for dinner. It was bizarre, yes, but nice to see a familiar face. We had a really nice and surprisingly not awkward dinner at Jack's in San Blas, then they went on their way to meet with their group (they’re leaving to hike the Inca Trail tomorrow morning).

I woke up feeling sick this morning and I felt especially bad because I missed half of the birthday song that they sang for Magalis at breakfast. She’s 22! Peruvian birthday traditions appear rather strange to me. First, they sing the birthday song in English…but this is strange since none of them speak English. Then they pick up the tempo and sing it again in Spanish. After all that the birthday girl blows out her candles, then they hold the cake up to her face so that she can bite into the side of the cake. Joanna and Madeleine, you’d be sad to find out that though there is chocolate cake, it’s more like brown cake. There’s a distinct lack of chocolate!

Throughout the day I felt better and better. In the afternoon we had a conference about Ayahuasca, the hallucinogen used in the Amazon. The speaker was really awesome, but the best part was when he told us about the first time that he did Ayahuasca. Apparently he was in Los Angeles at the time with some guy named Blue and he kept seeing Peruvian religious places, Huecas, on television screens. I’m sure there was more to it, but he was so excited telling you about it. He said he’s done it more than 100 times!

My homework tonight was to interview my host mom about a topic of my choice, record it, then tomorrow in class we’ll transcribe our interviews. I asked her about her career and learned some fascinating things about her. I’m feeling more and more at home with this family. She taught Kindergarten for sixteen years, then worked with older children for 13 years. Apparently there is a law in Peru that women cannot have the same job for more than 25 years, men no more than 30. She’s been retired since 1996 and she’s only 62! She retired when she was only 47. I really enjoyed just sitting down and talking to her about her life.

xoxo,

Claire