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Published: June 25th 2005
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Plaza de Armas
Full view of the fountain located in the center, with the Andes in the background. ¡Hola, mis amigos! In case I haven´t told you as of yet, I am currently in Cuzco, Peru, where I will be spending the entire summer. As with my last trip, I will be sending out periodic updates with pictures and a story or two. Unlike last time, however, I will try to use this free travelblog site to do the dirty work, instead of emailing everyone directly. If it works pretty well, I will continue using this... if there are problems, I will either find another travelblog site or go back to the individual emails.
Anyway, for those of you whom I have not spoken with recently, here is the brief account of why I am now in South America: over the past 9 months or so, I have been looking into full-time business schools. After being accepted to the University of Maryland, I started thinking about leaving my job early and doing something unusual over the summer. Remembering how much I wanted to learn Spanish after visiting Barcelona several years ago, I decided to look into a Spanish immersion school somewhere in Central or South America. I was able to narrow the location down to Cuzco fairly easily
Viva el Peru
View of the mountains from Amauta. after watching an episode of "GlobeTrekker" on Peru. Cuzco seemed to have the perfect mix of historical/cultural interests and nearby outdoor activities. After searching the internet, I found a school called Amauta (I still have no idea how the name is correctly pronounced) which teaches groups classes 4 hours per day, 5 days a week, and arranges for me to stay with a host family. I signed up immediately for 4 weeks of lessons, but decided to leave the remaining 6 weeks open. This way, I won´t be locked into anything in case I want to travel, study elsewhere, or do something else. In the months preceding my trip, I bought a few spanish grammar books at the local Barns & Noble to refresh myself on the 4 years of Spanish I took in high school. The days dragged on, as I was very anxious to go. Eventually, June 4th arrived and I was on my way to Peru.
The trip itself was fairly uneventful. I left from Reagan Int´l in DC, and had a 2 hour layover in Atlanta. From there, I was on my way to Lima, about a 7 hour flight. In Lima, I had arranged
Other students from Amauta
Taken by a historic fountain in the city center of a pueblo nearby the Urubamba river with the school for transportation to a local hotel, an overnight stay, and a ride back to the airport for my 9:30am flight to Cuzco the next morning. This was my first chance to practice spoken spanish, and the driver and I spoke at length about music and sports. At one point during the ride, a Phil Collins song came on the radio, and he asked me if he was popular in the US. Using my broken Spanish, I managed to explain to him that he was popular on easy listening stations and his audience was largely over the age of 40. In hindsight, I think I should have addressed the matter a bit more delicately, because the likes of Phil Collins, Journey, and Toto are very popular here in Peru, with people of all ages.
After staying at a decent place that night (my own tv and bathroom - a pleasant surprise!) I was back at the airport the next day. The flight to Cuzco was very short, maybe a little over an hour. The first thing that hits you when you arrive is the high altitude - the town is over 11,000 ft above sea level, and
they recommend you take it easy for the first day or two so your body can adjust to the lack of oxygen. Additionally, the sun is quite intense, and you can literally feel your skin frying beneath the rays. Right after I applied a healthy dose of sunscreen, the school´s driver found me at the airport and I was on my way to see the school and meet my family. The school is in a great location - a block away from Plaza de Armas, which is essentially the historical center of town, and epicenter of shops, clubs, and restaurants. It is situated atop a hill, and provides an excellent view of the mountains. After getting to know some of my classmates, my host family arrived to pick me up.
My family consists of a couple in their 50s... their children are grown up and have moved out of the house, and they enjoy the company of foreigners living in their extra rooms. The husband, Hugo, is an architect and his wife, Elcira, is an accountant at a local bank. They also have a large german shepherd, Puski (pronounced 'poo-skee') who suffers from severe short-term memory loss. It's been 3 weeks and he still doesn't recognize me; he's still barking and trying to bite me when I come in. I actually tried to bite him back one day, but that didn't help my situation much.
There are two other students who live with me. Alexander is a 20-year old student from Germany who is next door to my room. Downstairs is Amanda, who is from Texas and like me, is spending the entire summer in Cuzco. The school boasts a pretty diverse mix of students... I'd say about 1/3 are from the US, and the rest are from Europe, with a heavy concentration of Dutch and German. The makeup of tourists in general, however, is probably over 50% Israeli. There are tons of people here from Israel; in fact, there are several Israeli restaurants in town, and most restaurants, Israeli or not, have their menu in Spanish, English, and Hebrew. It's somewhat of an odd surprise... at times this place feels like a mini-Tel Aviv.
Speaking of restaurants, the food is quite good and very cheap. Most places offer a traditional a la carte menu and another economy menu (also known as a tourist menu). The tourist menu consists of a soup, a main course, and a drink, and generally costs around 10 soles (about $3). And that is for the more expensive places... going outside the city center, it is quite feasible to get a full meal for under $1. Considering I have a prodigious appetite, I have found a good match in Cuzco. Their signature dish is Cuy, which we know as guinea pig. Though I have not tried it yet , I hear it comes on your plate with claws, teeth, fur, and everything else. I plan to have my camera ready as soon as I order one.
I could go on and on, but I will cover more in my next post. So much has happened since I arrived - tons of festivals and parades in the Plaza, a weekend of rafting, and a gringo who went from speaking marginal Spanglish to marginal Spanish.
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