September 6, 2007
From SATA-Peru-2007
My roommate and I awoke this morning to the usual 7:30 am alarm and the sounds of car horns and noisy taxis already bustling about the city. The air was brisk and the sky mostly cloudy, as we headed off to breakfast, which consisted of local Cusco bread and tea.
After breakfast, it was off to another early-morning spanish class, which I am enjoying very much. We get plenty of opportunities to speak the language and converse with one another on a daily basis, which is something that I have been largely unable to do in previous spanish classes. Our instructer is very creative and class is borderline fun, if I dare say so.
Our next class was with professor Lizarralde, and we discussed the syllabus for our "Ethnoecology of Peru" class along with our plans for our future excursion to Manu Biosphere Reserve, which promises to be quite the adventure.
After class had ended, we returned back to our hostel, where some of us did some reading, and others just relaxed before lunch.
When lunch was over, a number of us went to the top of a nearby mountain and played with some children on the way, while others took hour long bike rides through the Andes mountains. Still others decided to take it easy and hang out around home base. The afternoon turned out to be successful on all fronts and stories of fun and adventure were shared around the dinner table.
A speaker was in town for a presentation related to the indigenous Andean populations, and a good number of us attended after dinner. There was also a nice reception afterwards in a building adjacent to the Plaza de Armas.
Just when it seemed like all the fun and excitement for the day had ended, all the students returned to their rooms to find that an extra dose was in store in the form of unfinished homework assignments.
Homework done...hopefully...alarms set...definitely...cars honking, dogs fighting, and firecrackers popping...loudly...all prepare for sleep in almost pre-Christmas morning anticipation for another day of class and adventure, Peruvian style.
