Machu Picchu!!

2-2-11

Machu Picchu today! Today was amazing! We got up at 4:30 and took a car to the train station, the train to Aguascalientes, and a bus to the bottom of Machu Picchu. Then we proceeded to walk along with a guide for an hour and a half (or so) and learn some of the history of Machu Picchu. First of all, Machu (in Quechua) means old and Picchu means mountain. Therefore we don’t know the name of the settlement, rather the name of the mountain itself. The mountain next door is called Huana Picchu, which means Young Mountain. We arrived at around 8:30 in the morning when the surrounding mountains were still hidden by clouds. February is the rainy season, so it was cold and wet, but as the sun rose it got super hot! I’m glad that we started early. (Sidenote- there were baby llamas! Only three weeks old!) We walked all around, and after the tour ended we climbed up to the house on the very top! However, apparently Donaldo took a group up (running!) even higher to go meditate and go where very few go. I was jealous! We kept trying to find Donaldo but he was always too far ahead of us, waving from afar. Mostly we just looked around at the majesty around us! The river that runs below Machu Picchu is one of the sources of the Amazon. Our guide told us that Machu Picchu is unaffected by earthquakes because the whole mountain underneath has to move, not just the settlement. Ummm Hiram Bingham did not in fact “discover” it because there were two families that lived up there at the time that showed him around! I took about 150 photos! I will certainly put some up when I have better internet access able to handle that.

In short, Machu Picchu was incredible and my favorite part of being there was watching the clouds move and change around us. I also loved thinking about how the place came to be built! Incan building, especially for temples, was sooo precise! There are exact levels and degrees to each wall and one temple had an amazing amplification effect. Ask me about it!

However, there was so much else that happened today! The train in the morning only played three songs on repeat. Panpipe versions of Love Hurts, Killing Me Softly, and some other song. Horrible! They’re still stuck in my head. The train back was much better! I sat with Maggie (S) and Alma and we probably laughed for two hours straight! We told embarrassing stories, like I told them about the Thanksgiving Elevator Catastrophe, and Maggie told us about an horrific sunburn and the hilarious story that accompanied it. THEN the people working on the train began to put on quite the show! One guy dressed up in a scary jester-y outfit and danced around making others join him. Kia and Alma were forced into it! Then the other two people put on a fashion show down the aisles of the train of various alpaca sweaters. We were so puzzled and then we all just found it spectacularly funny. Then at dinner I had a wonderful conversation with Olivia, who I hadn’t really talked to yet, and we related really well. Overall a great day! Then after dinner we played a fun game of Charades around the fire and the two little girls joined in (they are so cute!) I feel like I’ve rushed through the summary of the day, but it was amazing. I really enjoyed myself and I hope that I continue to have a great time!

Ps- I have to switch host families apparently cause my first one had cats! And I’m allergic! Shoot!

xo Claire

Ayahuasca & Coca

2-1-11

Today we did a bunch more stuff for orientation. We talked about social norms and behavior, host families, and other pertinent but not necessarily interesting information. We found out who our host families are! Finally! I have a four-person family with two girls (Donaldo said that they’re about thirteen years old). I figured that they were pretty young because they listed dancing and reading as their hobbies. To my dismay no one else from the group lives in my neighborhood so I won’t have a buddy to walk to school with, but evidently I only live two blocks away from school. I guess I can handle being alone for two blocks! We live pretty far outside of the town center actually, which I was surprised by. However, I don’t think I would want the constant nighttime noise of discotecas etc.. when I’m trying to sleep or get work done.

We had an assignment to go to a market, find as many varieties of a certain edible as we could, find out how they prepare it and where it’s grown, then return and report back. That wasn’t a very good sentence. But anyway, my group was assigned potatoes and we were to go to a market in a town nearby called Yucay. Donaldo told us that it was like a twenty minute walk. He didn’t tell us which direction to go in, didn’t tell us when to get back…. Oh man. So we set off, in what turned out to be the wrong direction, had to take a mototaxi (which is essentially the front half of a motorcycle and a rickshaw added on back) for what would have been more like a 40 minute walk to Yucay. Once we got there it turned out that there actually was no market to attend. We decided that since we were there we might as well stay and went from tiny shop to tiny shop collecting potato varieties.

The title of the post is about something Sonia mentioned in our orientation today. She was talking about drugs and how they are absolutely not allowed on SIT etc.. but then she began to expand on an Amazonian psychotropic called Ayahuasca that she does not personally consider a drug, nor do many Peruvians. Ayahuasca is a vine that many people in the Amazon start taking from infancy. The way she described it made sacred plants, like Coca in the Andes and Ayahuasca in the Amazon, make a lot of sense. Psychotropic drugs like Ayahuasca make you very alert and give you precision- what you would need on a daily basis if you need to hunt and fish in the Amazon. In contrast, Coca gives you endurance and resistance to the effects of altitude- both things that an Andean farmer would need and value. I’d never had that sort of explanation given to me about drugs before, coming from the sort of community from which they originate.

For lunch we had a delicious Pollada a la Braza, which was like a big chicken bbq with wonderful corn! (which they call choclo. Also the word for pig is chancho.) The little girls here gave us a tiny party in which we played freeze tag in the dark, which they called Agua y Concreta. After dinner most everyone turned in early since we have to wake up at 4:30 to go to Machu Picchu tomorrow.

So, a couple things about Peru. One: They do not have waste disposal systems capable of dealing with paper so you can never put paper in the toilet! Two: It is gorgeous! It is like the Andes spring out of nowhere. I’ve never seen mountains that go up at such a steep incline immediately from the ground before. Three: Everyone is amazingly friendly and kind. Four: It rains fairly often, but the more appropriate term would be sprinkle. Five: They call anyone who is Asian Chinese. There is a Korean girl on my program and several people have explained to her that it’s not meant to offend, it’s just what they do. Six: In many ways Peru is very conservative. It’s considered very American to walk around without a jacket cause it gets cold all the time! Most people are Catholic and likely homophobic. However, at the same time it is often times all that they are familiar with. They don’t mean to offend.

Well, off to Machu Picchu tomorrow!

xo Claire

SIT Day Two: Chichubamba & El Huerto Paraíso

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

Orientation and Day One of SIT

1-30-11

Today, unfortunately, I felt more disconnected from the city and the experiences I’ve had the last few days. The main factor in that is that I met the rest of the Americans from SIT today. Well, all minus the four whose plane from Miami was delayed due to bad weather on the East Coast. They are being picked up tomorrow and bused in to where we are spending our four days of orientation.

Just to review from yesterday after I posted, we met up with Jake and went to a restaurant called Los Perros, which is actually right next to the restaurant that Celia told me about, El Encuentro. I tried my first Pisco Sour, which is the national Peruvian drink. It tastes just like a margarita, only minus the salt and the lime. However, the salt and the lime are my favorite parts of a margarita! The pisco sour also has whipped egg whites on top, which might not be everyone’s cup of tea. A very noisy group of Brits sat next to us and got progressively drunker as the night went on, as well as louder. They loudly sang along to some of their favorite songs, or you’d think they were their favorites based on the gusto with which they sang. Then we came back to the hotel and learned that if we wanted to stay in our room until we had to meet the group at the airport at 11 instead of checking out at 9:30 that we would have to pay an extra 50 $. For Peru that amount of money is obscene. Actually, you know what, 50 dollars for an extra hour or so at a hotel is obscene no matter where you are.

So this morning we got up, showered, had breakfast downstairs (with delicious juice!), and packed up our rooms. We figured that if we couldn’t stay in the room itself, that we could still stay in the lobby. So we sat around and worked until 11 when we tried to hail a taxi for the airport. Many many taxis stopped, but most were far too small for three gringas and the luggage they carry! Finally we got one and made our way over to the airport. I was absolutely right when I guessed I’d been cheated last time I came from the airport. This taxi was a third of the price! And had two more people inside! We met Donaldo, who is a very kind and young Peruvian man from SIT. I don’t know what I expected, but he was not it. Evidently other people had arrived before us because Donaldo guided us to a bus already full of about 6 SIT kids. We made introductions and began to get to know each other as we commenced the two hour wait at the airport before deciding to leave and have Ursula wait in Cusco for the others to arrive tomorrow.

Then we began a very beautiful drive to Chichubamba, a small town next to Urubamba, which is sort of a base for people who want to go to Machu Picchu. We will be going their in a couple days toward the end of orientation. I hope it doesn’t rain! Apparently February is the worst time to go visit because of the rainy season. Last year at this time they had mudslides or something to that effect and people were stranded! I remember Marina said that she was in Cusco at the time and had to schedule another time to go to Machu Picchu since it was closed off. One thing I noticed on the drive was that Peru is extraordinarily green. Fields continue on and on. Then the mountains pierce the sky and the result is just a wonderful contrast.

We arrived, rested, ate lunch, got orientated and learned about health, money, safety, etc… ate dinner, and then watched this really interesting documentary (I think it was called De Ollas Y Sueños) about Peruvian cuisine. I, food nerd that I am, found it super interesting. I wanted to go check skype etc., but I just had to see it through! As I made my way back to my room, which smells very strongly of varnish and turpentine, it started to rain. Wifi is only in the main house so I don’t think I’ll make it onto the internet today. Sorry Nate, I didn’t feel like getting wet!

As we learned more about our host families and what to expect from this semester I started to get a bit nervous. I hope that I like my family! I feel like there is almost no way to know if it will go well or not. Some people just really don’t get along with host families or vice versa. I hope I do. I hope that I don’t feel overly uncomfortably while living in someone else’s home.

The group is still working itself out, but there are definitely some very nice people. I’m trying not to act on first impressions, but obviously I’m drawn to some people more than others. We’ll see how the dynamic of this lot turns out. I’d say, Spanish-wise, I’m in the middle or upper range. Not fluent like a couple people, but managing. I’m sure I’ll update more in a bit, but I’m on the upper bunk and my roommates are going to sleep and I cannot get up here in the dark!

Good night all.

xo Claire

Day Two

Today I woke up and showered. I’d been worried about it the night before because Maggie mentioned that all people might not have hot water with their host families and so of course I extrapolated that to mean that hot water might not be available in many places. However, I enjoyed a cozy hot shower and small breakfast. I talked to Nate for a bit and then packed up and took a taxi to go meet Lauren and Maggie at our hotel for the night. I was the last to arrive but wow let me tell you, taxis are super cheap! Four soles… which is barely more than a dollar. Lauren went straight to sleep, which is exactly what I did yesterday so I understand the impulse, while Maggie, her mom, and I left to walk around.

First we came upon this fabulous market with sweaters and hats galore, fabric piled eight feet high, grain, bread, coca leaves, fruits, fish, vegetables… almost anything you can imagine needing! I most certainly want to return, maybe later today. I think I need to buy another purse because my flap purse doesn’t seem secure enough to me. I’ve been pick-pocketed before and that experience does not qualify among my favorites, so I’ll do my very best to be careful and avoid a similar experience here. They’ll cook food right in front of you or prepare the most spectacular looking (and smelling) smoothies. Maggie and I kept remarking upon the multitude of smells here. Many are good- like fruit, cooking bread and meat, or flowers. But there’s also the diesel smell from all of the cars roaming around, various sewer smells, room-temperature meat smell, unwashed people smell… Good or bad, it’s interesting. Certainly a more thrilling olfactory experience than I’ve ever had in Connecticut. We stopped and got a snack and ate the most delicious peach, pineapple, and honeydew I think I’ve ever had. The food here, so far, is marvelous! The peach especially… wow!

We roamed some more, said goodbye to Maggie’s mom, then headed out once more. We came upon an older couple’s wedding or vow renewal and they’d begun a party outside the church! They had some mariachis playing the Mariachi classics like Cielito Lindo and Las Mañanitas. We people watched and roamed some more then decided we should head back and wake up Lauren. However, as we passed the market on the way to the hotel we saw that two men had begun to set up a street performance. They danced around and one even swallowed a sword! Maggie and I were mostly enamoured by all of the adorable children. Andean children are the absolute cutest! There was this one little girl in front of me who, when I waved, gave me the biggest smile! I don’t think she was too happy when Maggie took her picture though because the smile turned into a scowl for a split second.

What a cutie!!

I don’t know what we’ll do for the rest of today or tonight, but I’m sure we’ll have a good time!

xo Claire

En Route...And Arrived!

Well so far things have gone pretty smoothly. I’ve had some truly lengthy layovers today. I am now nearing 12 hours of travel and not even halfway there! Oh well, I guess that’s what you get when you buy tickets based on price, not convenience or speed. This situation simply means that I have ample opportunity to sit by myself and think about what I am about to go do. That and sleep. Yesterday I went to go deposit a check and to my dismay the ATM took my credit card. It held my card ransom and refused to return it! The bank, exceedingly unhelpful as they are, did very little to help me out and it took called the 1-800 number about 5 times for me to actually get through to a real live person willing to help me out. Anyway, now I’ve ordered a new ATM card and my parents will mail it to me later. I was annoyed about this mostly because it seems so exceedingly unlucky. My best hope is that my bad luck has run out with this incident and that I will only have good luck from now on!

…

So I left Albuquerque at 9 AM on the 27^th and I finally arrived in Cusco at 10 AM on the 28^th. That’s one long days travel. I don’t think it took that long getting to South America when I went to Argentina and Chile in 2007. I suppose Cusco is a more esoteric destination than say Buenos Aires, but based on the makeup of the city as I’ve observed it so far, perhaps not. There are gringos everywhere! I left my hotel in San Blas earlier to buy some minutes for the cell phone that Celia graciously gave me and there was an Australian couple trying, with difficulty, to get some stomachache medication. They didn’t seem to know much Spanish so I helped them out a bit. I haven’t come across too many Americans yet, mostly Australians and Brits, but then again I’ve barely begun exploring the city so I’m probably wrong.

It’s nice being on the same time zone as Conn. When I first got to the hotel this morning I got on the wireless and to my surprise had a nice fb chat with Julie! All the way in Spain! It was a lovely surprise especially because I felt a little lonely and perplexed as to what to do with this free time. It’s strange to go from the highly structured time necessary when traveling and catching plane after plane to such unplanned time. I was also able to talk to Nate, Norah, and Celia. I don’t know how often I’ll get to talk to them once the program starts, but hearing from such good friends early on was very encouraging. Celia recommended this restaurant called El Encuentro that I will definitely check out once I have this place figured out a little better, although she gave me some instructions.

All the Peruvians I’ve talked to so far have been very kind and very helpful. Only one so far has addressed me in English and, oddly enough, it’s a relief to not have to reassert the fact that I can speak Spanish. In addition it’s a relief to know that although my higher level Spanish might be a tad rusty, my conversational and simple Spanish is just fine.

So what have I done today? Slept mostly. I set an alarm so I’d only sleep an hour, but I must have shut it off because I woke up four hours later. After that I got out, walked down a block or so on a steep hill with rather slippery cobblestones. The sidewalks have stairs, just like that one street in San Francisco, but these streets are old and narrow. This part of the city is old and colonial and San Blas has buildings with the Incan stonework on the bottom. So old! After helping the Australians and putting minutes on my phone I crossed the street and ate some delicious roasted pumpkin soup and coca tea. My kind and chatty taxi driver from the airport recommended that I eat light things and, in the end, even that soup was too much. I could only eat about half! He also said that cuy, guinea pig, was his favorite food and that I just had to try it. I might leave it for another day. As I walked back to my hotel to check if Maggie had emailed me back about dinner I felt more and more lightheaded, and a little nauseous. I think that perhaps the altitude is getting to me after all, even though I felt fine all the rest of the day…. Granted I spent most of that day sleeping.

A bit later I heard back from Maggie and I met her, her mom, and her aunt for dinner. They were all super nice and it’s wonderful to have found people to talk to already! They’d just returned from the Inca Trail, which was apparently very rainy, but they said it had been a fantastic experience nonetheless. The Plaza de Armas is great! It’s smaller that I thought it would be but it has a totally unique vibe. Very colonial and very beautiful. I wasn’t aware that Cusco had a San Salvador perched on a hillside like they have in Brazil, but when I went to the Plaza at night there it was, all lit up from below.

I think I made a good decision in coming to Peru. I had not idea what to expect coming in, and it didn’t help that SIT was a little sparse with the information giving, but I’m really excited about this semester.

Xo Claire

The Day Before

I leave tomorrow. Tomorrow! I can't believe that the time has come already. In some ways I feel woefully unprepared, for example I have not yet begun packing, but in other ways I think it's time to leave. This has been a very long (and quite enjoyable!) winter break, but January is nearly over, Conn people are back in school, and the time has come to leave for this next big adventure. I sincerely hope that it is an amazing adventure.

So tomorrow I leave from Albuquerque in the morning then have a long series of flights and layovers that take me to Dallas, Miami, Lima, and then finally Cusco. I imagine that when I arrive at 9 AM two days from now I will be exhausted and lonely. But I plan to find my hostel, dump my bags, and go exploring.

Some people have warned me about altitude sickness and I know that I will certainly not be immune. Marina, for example, suffered some pretty awful symptoms when she went to Bolivia. That proves it to me that we Solomons are not immune! However, I live at 6,000 ft. and might take it better than people from sea level. I hope my layover in Lima doesn't ruin it for me by acclimatizing me to sea level! Oh well, only time will tell.

I've been thinking about the people I'm leaving behind this semester and feeling sad, as well as excited. I truly do not know what to expect. However, I'm glad that I have great memories, such as my goodbye to Joanna in which my necklace broke and a deluge of beads cascaded down to the ground as we hugged. I was so surprised! Julie compared it to someone's water breaking. In which case I suppose I gave birth to some beads. It is the most hilarious goodbye that I can remember and I will not forget my friends at Conn and beyond when I'm gone. That's why I have this blog, so that you can know what I'm up to!

Anyway, I've put it off too long and I must go pack.

Until next time!

xo Claire