So I guess it’s time for another update! Considering it has been two weeks since I last wrote, I won’t bore all of you, my many faithful readers, with my day-by-day itinerary. In short, I have gone to a lot of classes and seen a lot of Incan ruins. I have also eaten alpaca (although not yet guinea pig), gone to a birthday party, and sang a bit of karaoke.

I will go into detail about a few things that I hope will be interesting. So here goes:

My daily schedule: During the week, I have two sessions of classes every day. In the mornings, I have Spanish class from 9 until 12. I usually get up around 730, and eat breakfast with my host family. Around 8 I leave for class walking with Hannah and Alex, two other SIT students who live in my neighborhood. The walk from our neighborhood, Magisterio, to the center where we have class is about 40 minutes. Considering I STILL haven’t really gotten used to the altitude here, I usually arrive huffing and puffing to class a few minutes before we begin. The fifteen students in the program have been split up into two different levels of Spanish classes, and I am in the upper level, but I have found the class to be very easy for me. I definitely have the most Spanish experience out of the group, and while it is useful to review grammar and conversational skills, I still find myself very bored and frustrated that I am not in a higher level. It is a moot point now, though, because we finish with Spanish on Tuesday (and then more onto Quechua!). After class ends at noon I return home for lunch, sometimes walking or sometimes in combi, which is the name for public buses here. The buses are usually big vans and are ALWAYS too crowded – the people are shoved in like sardines and it is pretty uncomfortable. I really like public transportation, so I don’t mind too much, but I do find myself getting pretty frustrated with being herded around like cattle. So walking is preferable. I usually eat with at least my host mom if not the rest of the family, and I am very very lucky to have been placed in a family that cooks well! My host mom, Maria Elena, is obsessed with food (as am I) so we have been eating very well. I have eaten a huge variety of things – from pesto pasta and sweet potatoes to tamales and stuffed meats. Lunch is a HUGE meal, so I am often stuffed to the brim when it comes time to return to school for our afternoon session.

Every afternoon we have a lecture from a different invited guest about some theme relating to Peru and its indigenous communities. It has been very interesting to hear people speak about their areas of expertise, and I have started to comprehend a little better the diversity of Peru’s indigenous communities and many of the different factors affecting them. Before coming to Peru, I had always thought of the country in terms of the Andean, quechua-speaking indigenous people, so it has been a big reality check to learn that over half of the country is part of the Amazon and that there are many different groups indigenous people residing there. One of the most interesting things that we have learned about so far has been Peru’s efforts at bilingual educations, which have been futile thus far. Considering I am interested in immigration and ESL in the United States, learning about a different country’s attempts to implement bilingual education has been an interesting comparison. I hope to investigate this further during my month-long ISP (Independent Study Project) which I will complete at the end of the semester. We have also learned about traditional medicine in Peru, Incan archaeology, and the history of indigenous rights in the country. It has been great to learn all of this, but it is also making everyone quite antsy to actually get out there and experience the indigenous culture! Luckily, we don’t have long to wait as we leave in three days for Manu, a park in the Amazon, where we will spend a few days each in two different indigenous communities there. I am really excited to get out of Cusco and go somewhere different (and WARM!)

One very interesting experience I had last week was actually something completely unrelated to being in Peru. Last Wednesday, as many of you Jewish folk know, was the beginning of Rosh Hashanah. There are three other Jewish kids on the program, so we decided to seek out any sort of service to see what it was like. The only thing that we were able to find was Chabad, which to my understanding is the closest thing to missionaries that the Jews have. I think that Chabad exists in many cities, and is run by orthodox Jews. Its goal is to find not very devout Jews (read: me) and make them more religious. So I went, accompanied by three friends, to the Chabad house in Cusco. We arrived for the service and were immediately barraged by many people speaking Hebrew – it seemed that everyone there was Israeli. The Chabad was located in a huge old house with courtyard in the middle. After some confusing, multilingual conversations, we found our way upstairs to the service. To my surprise, there was a curtain hanging in the middle of the room, dividing it half. I was confused at first until I realized that the front portion of the room was only for men and the back part, behind the curtain, was for women. I have never been to a religious service that prevented women from seeing the action, and I was quite taken aback and even a bit angry. But I stuck out the service (very short and completely in Hebrew) with my friends so that we could attend the dinner afterwards. For the dinner, there were probably over 200 people, all speaking Hebrew and appearing to know each other, and us. We felt very uncomfortable and a bit unwelcome, but stayed anyway for the food and the experience. We found some space at a table and ended up meeting Zevi, the only other American there. Zevi is an Orthodox Rabbi from Crown Heights, Brooklyn, who had just arrived in Cusco the night before. He was an interesting fellow because he was very young and personable, and seemed very normal, but he was also in his full-on Jewish regalia – suit and top hat and everything – and will not touch women. Honestly, I experienced more culture shock on Rosh Hashanah than I have the rest of my time in Peru!

I have also spent a considerable amount of time visiting different Incan ruins during the past few weeks. Last Saturday we went as a group to visit a bunch of different ruins that are right outside of the city, and yesterday I went with a smaller group to Pisaq, a town that lies about 33 km outside of Cusco. The town has a cute market, and about an hour hike up a mountain are some more beautiful ruins. I am honestly a bit tired of hearing about the function of each ruin and about the incredible architectural feat that allow the rocks to stay so well together, etc., so I might take a break for a while. I did, however, enjoy going to Pisaq because we got to hike up a mountain, which was VERY difficult because of the incline and the altitude, but also very worth it because, hey, I am in the ANDES! Every view in breathtaking and sometimes I need to remind myself to stop taking pictures because they never come out quite as incredible as is the view.

Well this entry has been pretty longwinded and unorganized, but I am exhausted so I will call it a night. I will update again next week after my trip to the Amazon!