September 10, 2007
From SATA-Peru-2007
We started this week by celebrating Ami’s 20th birthday today. The kitchen staff prepared her favorite meal: kiwicha covered and toasted chicken strips with fried plantains. They made us all the traditional Peruvian drink pisco sour. Pisco sour’s main ingredient is the Peruvian liquor called pisco. The other ingredients of the pisco sour include lemon, sugar, ice and egg whites. Some people say it’s good for the altitude, but it’s also pretty good for a birthday party.
Today was the first day of Quechua class with Professor Gina. Although Quechua seems like it will be a very challenging language to learn, she is an extremely talented and engaging teacher and the hour and a half lesson that we will have every day didn’t drag by at all. Although I hesitated to take so much time to learn a language that I may never use again, Gina told us learning Quechua will provide us with a better understanding of the Andean culture that we could not obtain with English or Spanish. Quechua, she said, is a language “con mucho corazón y mucho cariño” (with a lot of heart and affection). For example, suffixes are added to words in certain situations to convey feelings or even pride. Imaynallan kashanki means how are you? Adding “-lla” expresses interest, respect and care for how the other person is doing. On the other hand, Imaynan kashanki is a cold and distant way to say how are you? Another suffix that does not have an exact translation to English but conveys a message is “–n” or “–mi.” When added to a word it serves to convey pride and identity and indicates good self esteem. For example, tullumayupin tiyani means I live on Tullumayu street. You could also say tullumayupi tiyani. The difference is that in the first case with the “n” attached to the end of the first word, you are saying that you are proud to live on Tullumayu and can say many good things about the area. We ended the class with a song in Quechua called Uyuwachakunamanta, which means about the little animals.
