Peru Summer 2018

June 18-22, 2018 Last week (sigh). I spent as much time as possible with my friends and host family during my last week in Peru. Thinking back now, I don't even remember all the of homework assignments and studying I did this week. All I remember is exploring Cusco for the last time with everyone. On Monday night we organized a soccer match for all of the people with CIS. I'm happy to say that playing soccer the last week was much easier than the first week. The whole time I was in Cusco, Joaquin (my host brother) and I tried to plan a day where we could play soccer together, but each time our plans fell through. Finally, on this night, we got to play together. It was all of us students, our host families, and some other people and it was a whole lot of fun. On Wednesday, I had my last field trip with my history class. We visited el Monasterio de Santa Catalina. In it, there was a museum about the lives of the sisters of Saint Catherine. The place was beautiful, but it was...

June 17, 2018 Got up around 3:30 AM this day to hop on a bus to Rainbow Mountain. Rumors going around said that the mountain was covered in snow. I had even heard of people's tours getting cancelled, but my friends and I stuck it out. We rode the bus 2 hours to a small town where we ate breakfast, then another hour to the mountain. This hike was by far the hardest one I did. It was way more difficult for me than Lake Humantay even though the weather was perfect. The problem was with the altitude. Rainbow Mountain is at 17,000 ft, which makes it super hard to catch your breath. I had to stop every 5 minutes or so just to breathe. At the bottom and all along the trail, locals were walking around offering horse rides. I must have been offered a ride at least 50 times, but I stuck out the nausea and head-spinning and eventually made it to the top. I don't think I've ever felt more accomplished about anything. The difficult hike was definitely worth it. The view from u...

Room where we watched the Peru vs Denmark game June 16, 2018 On this Saturday, I went with one of my classes to part of the Inca trail to pick up trash. The funny thing, though, was that I'm pretty sure we went to the part of Cusco with the least amount of trash to, you know, pick up trash. Anyway, we found some little bits and pieces and got to take in a pretty view. After cleaning up the trail, we went to this small village to visit a guinea pig farm and a strawberry farm. Peru was playing Denmark in the World Cup on this day so everyone was eager to get back to the city to watch the game with all the fans. Unfortunately, one of the tires on our van broke so we got stuck in this little place during the whole game. I think it all turned out for the best though. There was one tv in this little house/store/thing. The room was probably 12 ft X 12 ft but we all squeezed in there with a few of the locals. At half time, we got some of the young boys to play soccer with us outside....

June 12-15, 2018 This week I finally got to go inside Qorikancha with one of my classes. I walked by this place every day but never went inside until then. This is one of the biggest and most important landmarks in the city of Cusco. It's really neat because it has so many Catholic characteristics, but so many Incan ones too. When the Spanish came to Cusco, they built on top of this Incan site. Not too many years ago, the Incan ruins were rediscovered but the Cathedral was kept right next to it. Here's some pictures: The Incan stuff is under those arches View from Qorikancha Qorikancha from the outside On Friday, I got to go with my host dad, Sandro, and my host sister, Gabi, to watch a father's day dance her school was having. Of course, Sandro had Jess and I sit in the front row with him so throughout the show, the hosts kept kind of picking on Jess and I since we were the only Americans there (Yes, lady, we could understand you). Anyway, the p...

June 10-11, 2018 For sure, this trip was my favorite of all the ones I did (and each of my trips were super fun). My friend and I hopped on a bus at 10PM on the 9th to go down south to Puno. We arrived around 5 the next morning. The tour company picked us up at 8 and put us on a boat to our first destination: the floating islands of Uros. These islands are really cool. The people there actually made the islands out of some kind of reeds. They continually are making the islands and every 3 months or so they have to add another layer of reeds to keep the island up. If I remember right, the islands stay up for about 50 years. Also, the people on these islands speak Aymara. Until then, I had only heard Quechua and, obviously, Spanish. It was at these islands that I got to ride on a reed boat. We hung out here for a while then got back on our boat for a 3 hour ride to Amantani Island. The boat. Floating Islands of Uros. These reeds grew out on the lake close to the shore. W...