School Teaching

Today was our first day of teaching in the schools. My group teaches one class each of students in first through sixth grade. Our topic was nutrition, and our main goal was to help the students understand that it is really important to have a balanced diet that contains all of the food groups. The Peruvian diet, from what I have experienced so far, is really heavy in starches and proteins. However, a lot of the time there aren’t enough fruits or vegetables. We prepared a set of foods on note cards and had the students come up to the board and place the foods in the correct groups. Something I found interesting was that a lot of the students viewed rice and potatoes as proteins. To combat this, we decided to define grains and carbohydrates as foods that provided the body with energy. I really felt that cleared a lot of stuff up, as the students better understood the impact of the different foods on the body.

The younger kids had a lot of trouble focusing, and I felt that a lot of the time went towards telling them to listen rather than teaching them about nutrition. However, when we got the upper grades, I noticed that the kids were much better behaved. Additionally, many of the students were really into learning the English words for the foods they were placing into categories. It was really rewarding to see the students frantically copying down all of the English words into their notebooks, even if they weren’t really paying attention for the rest of the presentation.

After our time in the schools, we came back to the office for lunch. Every Monday, we have a required reflection session with some of the staff from ProWorld. There, we talked about our experiences over the past week and about our personal highs and lows. From the office, I went directly to El Molino, the black market in Cuzco.

I have got to say that El Molino is really amazing. They have literally everything that you could ever want, form clothes to food to electronics. Since I am going on the Chicon hike in 5 days (yikes!), I decided that I would look for a hiking backpack and some cheap hiking shoes. While hiking backpacks cost about $200 in the United States, I was able to get a great one in El Molino for only about $50. The hiking shoes were also really cheap, about $20. From these purchases, I realized that El Molino was going to be my best friend for the next six weeks in Cuzco. Perhaps I will look for other useful items while I am here…

Spanish class today was much better than last week, since I didn’t have to do a ton of grammar exercises and instead got to work with the preterit tense and had more oral conversations. In the next couple of days, I will be working with some of the more advanced tenses in the Spanish language.

Tonight was really relaxed again, since I came back and then played UNO for a while with Jordan and Luis. We then watched the Thunder-Mavericks game together. Luis is really interested in how basketball works, since he is much more familiar with soccer. Being able to explain the rules to him and how everything worked was really cool for me, as I felt that I was helping him to become a basketball fan. During the game, I also felt like seeing how much stuff I could fit In my new hiking backpack. I was amazed by its seemingly endless capacity, as it is almost three times bigger than my normal backpack.

I also had another interesting discovery today. I was packing the backpack when Luis saw my powdered Gatorade. He was really curious as to how that worked, since Gatorade is somewhat of a specialty item in Peru. Furthermore, he told me that he had never seen powdered Gatorade before. I guess that I had thought something like that would be available everywhere, even if it is more expensive and harder to find in some countries. It was really funny to watch his, Violeta’s, and Margarita’s reactions when I told them that you could make a glass of Gatorade with only two spoonful’s of the powder and a glass of water. They were truly amazed, and asked me if I could send some of the powder to them overseas (sounds like a plan!). After a long and hard day, I realized that it was really late, so I just went to bed.

Pisac and Ollantaytambo

Today was a really awesome day. In the morning, we took a group trip to the ruins of Pisac and Ollantaytambo. Ollantaytambo used to be an Incan fortress, and the architecture is just amazing. There are a ton of rock terraces as well as really interesting blocks cut out as doors and walls. Something I found really cool was that it took up to 50 years for the Incas to move one of the larger blocks to the top of Ollantaytambo. I can’t even imagine what it would be like to be one of those people, knowing that your work for your entire life was based on moving a single rock. Something else I noticed at Ollantaytambo was that it was a lot easier to climb up and down. While I would like to think that this was because I was in a lot better shape and was completely ready for the Chicon hike next week, I realize that it is probably a mixture of that and the fact that Ollantaytambo is at a lot lower elevation than Cuzco.

After Ollantaytambo, we visited the Pisac ruins. Pisac, unlike Ollantaytambo and some of the other ruins I have visited, was constructed for living (some of the others were for battle and agriculture). The Pisac ruins reminded me a bit of Moray, as there were a series of grass terraces. However, the terraces were not circular. Additionally, the view was amazing, as the Pisac ruins are at a much higher altitude, around 12,500 feet.

From the Pisac ruins we went to lunch, after which we visited the famous Pisac Market. This market has a ton of different handicrafts. While I had heard that it had great selection, I did not know that the prices were going to be so high. I was really interested in getting an alpaca sweater, but I soon realized that it was going to be out of my price range. I did see a couple of hats and scarves, but thought that I could get these things at El Molino for comparable or lower prices.

From the Pisac market, we returned back to Cuzco, saying goodbye to the Urubamba kids until the Chicon hike. When we got back to our house, I realized that I was really tired, so I just went to bed.

Hikes and Reuniting with Good Friends

Today we woke up in the morning and hiked to practice for the upcoming hike to Chicon, one of the glaciers in the area. Since Chicon is at an altiutude of over 18,500 feet, I felt like I would really need some practice hiking to prepare myself both physically and mentally. To do this, our group decided to hike up to Sacsayhuáman, one of the Incan ruins we visited during the first week in Peru. We had the taxi driver drop us off at the base of the mountain, and then we hiked the rest of the way. The trip up took about an hour, but by the top, we were glad we had hiked. The view of Cuzco was amazing, and it felt even better to return to a place we had visited at the beginning of our time here.

After the hike, we went back home for lunch. Originally I was planning on visiting El Molino, the black market in Cuzco, but I felt so tired that I just took a nap for two hours instead. I think I may be getting a slight head cold, so I decided it would be best to rest. When I woke up, I felt a lot better and then packed my backpack for our trip to Urubamba. Later that afternoon, we left as a group from Cuzco and headed out towards Urubamba.

The drive to Urubamba was along the mountains, and was really relaxing. At the same time, the drive was a little bit curvy, and many of us got a little motion sick. Once we got to Urubamba though, it was flat. The first thing I noticed about Urubamba was that it was a much smaller town. While Cuzco has about 400,000 people, Urubamba has only about 40,000. In fact, Urubamba seemed really homey, and I definitely felt like I was in a large village. The town is not really that big, as it takes only about 15-20 minutes to go from one side to another.

Today we got to meet up with the rest of the Peru group, those who are working in Urubamba. We had a group bonfire, roasted marshmallows, and made smores. After this we played a game together. To end the day, I decided that I was really tired, so I turned in early for the night.

Occoruro, Ceviche, and Inka Team

Today was a really amazing day. I first went to Occoruro, where we conducted surveys for ProWorld. While it was a pretty easy job, considering all of the questions were already written down for us, there were definitely some complications. The first person we surveyed was a lady whom Lalo told us was known as the crazy lady. Truth be told, surveying her was really hard. She spoke to us in a mixture of Quechua and Spanish, and also mumbled the same sentence ten times throughout the survey. However, the next couple of people were really easy to talk to. The last person we talked to was Benito, a 75 year old man. While we talked to him, we were a little confused by his responses, since he responded yes to every question we asked, even when two questions were complete opposites. Only after we told us did we realize that he only spoke Quechua. At this point, we talked to Lalo and had him interview Benito, since Lalo is fluent in Quechua as well as Spanish.

After work, we had a group lunch at El Paisa, the best place to get ceviche in Cuzco. For those of you who aren’t familiar with ceviche, it consists of raw seafood marinated in a sauce of lemon juice and spices. This is the way they “cook” the seafood. Before you make a judgment on ceviche, let me tell you that it was amazing. I found the texture of the food to be really pleasing, and the taste of the sauce was really intense and flavorful. I also got the spicy version, which was great. The sauce that the seafood is marinated in is called leche de tigre, literally translated as tiger’s milk (no, there isn’t any tiger’s milk actually present). Thanks to a great experience, I will definitely visit El Paisa at least once more before I leave Cuzco.

After lunch, we relaxed for a while at the office before returning to the house. I then talked with Luis for a while before having dinner and then going out to some of the clubs in Cuzco for a belated birthday celebration. Today, I tried the Macchu Picchu (three layered drink with orange juice, grenadine, and mint tequila), a Maracuya Sour (passion fruit juice and tequila), and a Pisco Sour (the national drink of Peru, described earlier in the blog). I also got to try a flaming shot, which isn’t as crazy as it sounds. From there, we danced and partied at Inka Team, one of the best clubs in Cuzco. I really enjoyed it, as they played great music and had a vibrant and full dance floor. After a long and fun night, we returned to our house.

Good Times in Occoruro

I'm a bit behind on posting, so for reference, this is for May 19th.

Today I got up and went to the community of Occoruro. The job my partner and I had was similar to what we did on Monday. We had to finish lining the insides of an ecological refrigerator and we also had to cover the shelves of the alacena with cloth and make curtains for each individual shelf. Overall, it was a really simple day, as we had already done a lot of this type of work on Tuesday. However, we did do a couple of things differently. On Tuesday, we did every section of the ecological refrigerator separately. However, today we did the entire back wall of the refrigerator in one piece. This allowed us to cover more area as a whole.

With regards to the sewing today, the lady in the house originally told us that she wanted a curtain for each shelf. However, she then changed her mind, and decided on having a single curtain for the entire alacena. Overall, I feel that I have gotten better at sewing over the last couple of days. Now I can make the stitches a little smaller, although I think that I still need improvement in making the stitches straight.

After work, we went back home for lunch, seeing Luis and Lalo for the first time in three days (they were on a biking trip in Calca). We then relaxed for a bit before going to Spanish class. Thankfully, today was the last day of Spanish class for this week. I feel like I am going to have to think about what I actually want to learn, since my teacher keeps trying to teach me grammar.

Overall, today was a pretty relaxed day. At night, I watched a basketball game with the family before going to bed.