Stories from Peru

One of the coolest things I saw in Peru happened on a bus. On all of these long distance bus trips that I have been taking, people come on and off the bus all the time to sell the passengers stuff like water, soda, candy, sandwiches, in Chile empanadas. On the way from Cusco to Puno a lady came on the bus with a huge cloth bag on her back. She opened it and inside there was cooked lamb meat. She then took out a huge knife and started hacking at it and selling it to the passengers on the bus along with some cooked potatoes. Keep in mind that the bus was moving at the time and that we were on a Peruvian road with lots of bumps and turns. It was one of those wow I'm definitely not in America moments. I bought a piece and it was pretty good.

In Puno, we ended up spending a night on an island in the middle of Lake Titicaca sleeping in the house of an island family. I learned a new game from the family's kids that involved throwing rocks into holes. If you hit someone else's rock you got another turn making the game a lot like croquet. I lost badly.

Machu Pichu was definitely the highlight of the trip. I wish we could of arranged it to spend more time there; we did it as a day trip meaning we had to wake up early to catch a four hour train ride and then leave early to to catch the train back to Cusco, leaving us with only 4.5 hours on the mountain. We paid for a guide at the mountain to explain everything to us in English which was definitely worth it. He kept making silly jokes like the Egyptians the copied this from us. Afterwards, I was surprised because the other volunteers decided to leave Machu Pichu to try to get lunch in the nearby town before the train ride back. I on the otherhand was determined to spend as much time as possible on the mountain so I stayed and wandered around some. I ended up trying to climb the mountain behind me (see pictures) but ran out of time (and water) before I could reach the top. Part of me wishes I had played it less safe and kept climbing, but I was pretty tired, kind of thirsty, and a little dizzy (from the altitude) when I turned around. (My shirt was completely sweated through) Still I managed to get some pretty cool pictures from way above Machu Pichu. 

Photos

Photos of my winter vacation are now posted here - http://picasaweb.google.com/paulspicturesfromabroad/Wintervaccation

Cathedral in Cusco

One of the cooler things I did on my recent winter vacation was take this audio tour of a huge cathedral in the main square of Cusco. The Spanish of the course decided that the best place to build their cathedral would be right on top of an old Incan Palace (This is a common theme in Cusco, which is why Machu Pichu is unique, because the Spanish never found it and thus never destroyed it. Many of the buildings in Cusco are built with the original Incan foundations beneath them). One of things that made the audio tour unique was that it described the techniques and strategies the Spanish used to make Catholicism more accessible to the local population. Much of the artwork in the church had a dual purpose of both worshiping the religion and explaining the religion to the local population. The most memorable painting in the cathedral is a painting of the last supper where the meal has been replaced with the meat of a Guinea Pig, which apparently was something upper class Incans used to share at feasts. Also in the church were several carvings that could be take to be either as the Incan figure Pachamama or the Virgin Mary.

Also amusing was that the Spanish apparently did not respect or understand the Incan's drainage system and as a result for a hundred years or so the church kept flooding because water naturally pooled there.

Also interesting was the fact the greater emphasis on saints then Catholic traditions that I grew up with. Especially, interesting was different representations for the same figure especially of the Virgin Mary with different names, such as Virgin Del Carmen and Virgin of Belen. I was slightly reminded of the scene in Talladega Nights where Will Ferrell describes what Jesus is his favorite to pray to. They also had a statue for a black Jesus (named El Negro) who was the saint in charge of earthquakes. (the audio tour said he was black because of the smoke of the candles lit to him but I'm do not really believe that because none of the other statures seemed slightly blackened despite even presumably they also would have had candles lit for them.

Another thing the Cathedral had was the large public cross of Fransisco Pizarro.

Peru

I had a really great winter vacation. I went mountain biking in the countryside, explored Cusco, climbed around Machu Pichu, ate Guinea Pig, slept on an island on Lake Titicaca, bought some artesian goods, ate lots of potatoes and pizza, explored Arequipa, checked out a lot of Incan ruins and generally enjoyed myself. The only downside was that at the end I got a little sick and thus returned early skipping out on Colca Canyon. But I do have a week of in September so maybe I can return and do a several day hiking trip. The biggest thing I rerealized on this trip is how much I like the outdoors. When I return to DC I do need do more hiking and biking trips. For the record I think Machu Pichu is more impressive than the Taj Mahal (sorry Prashant). If I could redo anything about the trip it would be to rearrange the itinerary to spend more time on Machu Pichu instead of trying to do it is as a day trip. Also I would do it a little bit later in the trip because afterwards for all of the Incan ruins I saw I was like yeah they are nice but Machu Pichu is more impressive.

I have a couple of stories and pictures about my trip, that I´ll try to post over the next couple of days, but I could be busy trying to readjust to life in Antofagasta.

Weird eating habits

So today at lunch my host mom´s niece put butter on her graham cracker!

Winter Break Plans

So tomorrow begins the first day of winter break. I'm going to be traveling to Peru for the vaccation with a couple of other volunteers. The current plan is to check out Cusco, Machu Pichu, Lake Titicaca and Arequipa which is apparently near a huge canyone that is twice as deep as the grand canyon! I'm definitely looking forward to the break from classes and the beginning of my vacation.

Because I'll be traveling, I'll be out of contact for the next two weeks. But, I'll definitely take lots of photos of everything.

Payday

Today, our paychecks for June arrived in the region. They were delayed a little over week because a lot of the staff in Santiago were sick from swine flu. Late paychecks are definitely annoying but because I fortunately have savings so it really didn't impact me.

My host mom has been making an authentic chilean food called picarones (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picarones) lately, in part because its cold out and its a traditional winter dish. Picarones are little squashed unqlazed donuts that you dip into some kind of hot sugar. They are pretty tasty and definitely keep your stomach warm.

Photos

Here are some pictures of Antofagasta that I've been meaning to post. I spent some time fiddling picassas cropping tool one these (http://picasaweb.google.com/paulspicturesfromabroad/Antofagastapicturesof#)

In other news, my nose does not like the cold.

Weekend Activities

On Friday, the volunteers got to meet the governor of region 2. It was a quick little event, handshake and photograph but still kind of neat. It was a little awkward because we were expecting to go into his office where just he and an assistant would be but instead we enterred at the end of huge governmental meeting in a decent size room with about 20 people around a huge table.

Afterwards, we went to a bbq at the escondida foundation with typical bbq foods of choripan and steak and zucchini. It was pretty chill except that the food didn't arrive until hour after we did.

Me as a debate judge

So last Friday, I was one of three judges for a small private school debate competition. One of the reasons, I wanted to be debate judge was to get a better handle on what the judges are looking for, so that I will know how to prepare my students for their upcoming debate competitions.

One of the take aways I got is that it is possible for the judges to watch the same debate and come away with fairly divergent reactions. This is a little troubling because in the regional rounds its the two teams with the highest scores that proceed -- meaning that is possible to win both of your regional debates and still not proceed to the next round. However, for my school its not a problem because we will automatically advance to the national round since we were the national champions last year.

My other take away was that the students should be very dramatic when they are speaking perhaps even over acting a little bit. Both in this competition and in the speaking competitions the winners were the team that should the most emotion.

After the competition, I had a respectful talk with one of the teams who disagreed with the judges ruling and wanted to know why we ruled as we did. They had a decent reason to be upset, they had actually made a really good argument that all of the judges missed. But the reason all the judges missed it is that it wasn't well presented, the impacts of the argument weren't mentioned, and they didn't repeat the argument at all in the rest of the speeches. My lesson from this is to be careful, just because you make an argument does not mean that the argument was heard/understood.