I'm a soon to be college graduate spending a semester in Cuzco, Peru studying Spanish, politics, history and international development as well as doing volunteer projects through ProWorld, Peru.
It's been a long time since I last wrote but I'm glad you're still around to read all about my adventures! There seems to be a bit of an issue with blogging. When I'm off doing lots of stuff that you might want to hear about, I don't have time to write about it but then when I'm just hanging around at home I have all the time in the world to tell you about all of the nothing that I'm up to. Well, as you might have guessed it have been an eventful last month so lets get started. Three or four weeks ago a bunch of the people on the program decided to take a trip to Santa Teresa. Santa Teresa is a small town just outside of Machu Picchu where there are natural ... read more
I know this probably isn't what you want to hear but things here have been pretty quiet. Classes have continued on with my feelings about them remaining aprox the same. The family I'm living with has continued to be wonderful to me. One of the only things that I can think to say has changed has been by relationship with the other students. As will always happen in the group of 12 people, I have begun to find that there are certain people I'm much more compatible with than others. Lucky for me there are a couple people on the trip that I already feel like I have started to bond with. The first, and so far my closest friend here in Cusco is Caitlyn. She had a bit of a bumpy start to her time ... read more
This is just a quick post so that I can put up some pictures of Moray. It's a really cool Incan ruin in the Sacred Valley. Just a little info on it. There are three circle different sites at Moray. Only one of them is fully reconstructed. For a long time people didn't know what they were used for and speculated that they were containing or channeling energies. The thinking being that you would sit at the bottom and you could "go to other dimensions." Later they notices that they were only finding different seed types on each level with different types of soil. There were also irrigation systems that prevented water from pooling at the bottom. Now it's believed that Moray was an ancient agricultural lab. We also went to salt mines that have been ... read more
I have to keep reminding myself that I've only been here a week. It's odd because there are times when I feel like I've been here forever and other times when I'm still overwhelmed by the newness of this whole experience. Classes started this week. I'm taking 6 credits of Spanish, then 3 credits of Community Development, 3 of Latin American Politics and 3 of Art and Art History of Peru. All of them are being taught in Spanish so I'm a little bit nervous about that but so far they seem good. The professors have been going slow because there are a bunch of people in the group that speak very little Spanish. I can't imagine the kind of guts it take to come here and take your classes in Spanish without having a fairly ... read more
Today is only my second day in Cuzco and I already love it! The city has about half a million people, from what I heard from my taxi driver in Lima. Seems like a good size and it feels that way. From what I can tell so far there is lots to do here but nothing is too far away. I spent yesterday hanging out with the three other student who arrived early. There was Kelly from the Oregon, Kyle from Cali and Lynsey, also from Cali. Spanish was of course our first topic of conversation. Who had taken what classes, traveled where and was comfortable with what in Spanish. I must say that right off the bat I was relieved to hear that they were all nervous about taking their classes in Spanish and that ... read more