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Hola todos! Hello everyone!!!!
Here's to the end of a long week! I finished my Quechua classes this week, and took my exam yesterday... for the exam we went to rural community and had to communicate with different families in Quechua. I felt very good about the exam and enjoyed getting to meet a mainly Quechua-speaking family and get to see all their animals, their farm, etc. It was a very interesting experience. I especially liked seeing all their qowe (cuy in Spanish) which are guinea pigs... they farm them here because people eat them!!!! The family I visited with had more than one hundred qowe, something like forty sheep, a horse, 2 or 3 cows, looots of sheep, pigs, 13 hens, a baby goat that was very cute, two very sweet dogs (Rambo and Oso), and probably more animals on top of that.
Since we have finished the Quechua class and did the exam yesterday, we get to keep practicing our Quechua on this first long excursion that we go on as a group to Colca Canyon... On Monday, I leave for two weeks and two days for Puno (Lake Titicaca), Colca Canyon, Arequipa (pictured), and Lima. It should be an interesting experience to put things simply. I will be staying with alpaqueros (people who keep alpacas) in Canyon de Colca, and will get to see where they stay when they take care of alpacas... I think we might have to ride horses to get to their alpaca farm or something along those lines. I guess it's very cold and rainy right now there, and o that shouldn't be super fun but it should definitely be an experience that I'll never forget!!!!
I am excited to get to have an experience outside of the group besides here in Cusco. I really love my host family and I think I will actually miss them while I'm gone. My host mom, Renee is very sweet and caring, very funny, and great company at meals. I love talking to her about pretty much anything... we have talked everything from presidential candidates to how much tourists get ripped off to my accent and much more... My host dad Ruben is VERY funny and he makes corny jokes at pretty much every meal. Sometimes he's not in the house since he drives anthropologists, doctors, and tourists to a number of places throughout Peru. My host sister Carmen works at a bar called La Musa/The Muse owned by a British woman which has live music every night and is a really interesting environment. I suppose it's more like a lounge with comfy couches and coffee tables rather than booths for eating dinner, etc. It's also the only place in town I have been able to find Argentinian Fernet con Coca yummy!!! Even though it's not something I particularly like to drink, it's nice to find it here and it's something that I can go get when I'm missing Argentina.
Today I finished negotiations with a leather-worker who does beautiful, colorful, artistic work with leather to make me an equipo de mate for my mate stuff... I was afraid he'd want a lot for the job but I'm paying about the same or a little less than I would be paying in Argentina... which is pretty exciting and I'll have an equipo de mate that no one else in Argentina has since I designed it myself along with the leather worker... When I get back from this trip I'll get to see it, as it should only take him about a week :)
My independent study project doesn't start until early April, but I've already started working on defining my question with the assistant director of the program so that I can take advantage of our visits to certain places and get some interviews out of the way while we're there. I have decided that I will be doing something about Educación Intercultural Bilingue (Intercultural Bilingual Education) or Educacion Bilingue Intercultural as it is called here in Peru (a seemingly small difference but quite a big difference actually... and the social processes that have brought one community to accept/use/allow this kind of education in their communities and has brought other communities to completely reject this type of education for many (very good, I think) reasons.
I will be comparing Amazonian communities' use/acceptance of this type of education in comparison to communities of the Andean sierra. I am excited to learn more about this process and learn more about the actors present in this process and am working on defining exactly what my investigation question is at the moment. That's my homework assignment for the next little while (and the only homework I've really had since being here...)
In any case, there are some bad things about being in Cusco, especially as a white girl. Taxi drivers tend to assume at all times that I want to take a taxi, everyone wants me to buy whatever they are selling, etc... However, I have found that it's not really that bad... some of my classmates have gotten angry when continually bothered by vendors, etc. but I have found that being really super incredibly nice actually goes a long way with vendors, and so on. While it is annoying and frustrating at many moments to be constantly asked to buy hats, gloves, bracelets, earrings, and much more, I realize that not only is this their livelihood, they also probably get treated very poorly by most tourists and we are here with money to spend... so I can't blame them for bothering me, nor can I blame them for when they get angry when treated poorly by yet another tourist... So I've just tried being really super nice and people tend to respect that a lot more...
I have had a bit of a hard time adjusting to the difference in culture between Peru and Argentina and Peru and the U.S... but especially coming straight from Argentina has made things a bit harder, I think... There is definitely a difference culturally between the two countries and it was a bit shocking to me at first. Peru is quite different even than Nicaragua to me in a number of ways... In the last few days though, I have been starting to figure out exactly how to better interact with people to find the kindness I am used to receiving... It's also easy to forget that people especially in Cusco interact with tourists day in and and day out and so it's understandable that they maybe aren't always the nicest but being a little extra nice DEFINITELY goes a long way!!!!
On a completely unrelated note, I have been following what has been going on in West Asia (Middle East) the past few weeks and am quite interested in what the outcome of all of this will be... I find it surprising but also inspiring and compelling that so many people are standing for what they believe in and can't imagine what it's like right now there... very interesting, I'm sure. I'd love to have more access to information to what's going on over there, but it's hard with limited internet access to know what's going on...
I guess I'll end here for today... I will probably write again either from Lima or after I get back from the whole trip in a couple of weeks... and I'll try to put some pictures either on here or on facebook for people to see but it takes SOOOO long to upload any pictures with the connections here... In any case, I love you all and thought I should write before leaving on Monday. I hope everything is good in the states and I will write again soon!
Besos
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