Thursday, August 31, 2006

Experience Peru

I arrived in cusco peru on sabado the 26 of Agosto after 24 hours of travel. I was extremely tired and was immediatley greeted by johnny one of the coordinators of pro world, the service corps that is essentially hosting me in peru. The organization ProWorld is extremely cool. From all the people I have ever talked to about studying abroad I would say that this is by far the most intensive hands on program out there. Within this first week I have felt every kind of emotion. I am living with a Peruano Familia and they are awesome. I really enjoy living with them, mostly it is great fun, there are times when I don´t really want to speak becasue to really communicate with them I use the spanish dict frequently. My spanish has already vastly improved and I want more. My classes are extremely intensive and probably the most intensive classes I have ever taken in my life. The other volunteers(that´s what us students are called) seem to be all pretty cool, right now we have alternating class schedules but soon we will have classes togethor and I am sure I will get to know them a little better. Usually I don´t consider myself a city person but cusco is amazing and very cheap. I can take a combi(a van packed with people) for approximatley .15 cents any where in the city. The second day I was here we did a little site seeing to very cool incan agricultural site, called Moray. I don´t know exactly how old this place was but pretty darn old. Moray consists of natural sink holes that the incans dicovered, were talking a couple hundred feet deep. SOme how they figured out that there were different temperatures in the seink holes depending on how high or low you were in them. Then they proceeded to build terraces at about 6´ increments all the way up the sink holes. After that they decided they would genetically engineer some corn. The elevation of these sink holes is approximatley 10,000 feet which is to high for corn but because of the extreme temp. change in the sink holes they could start the corn in the bottom where it is hotest and slowly move it up the terraces where it would have time to adjust to the new climate. It has been found that between the bottom and top of the sink holes there is about a 20 degree temp fidderence, crazy stuff. Anyways I will start doing some service work this weekend and I look forward to that. I have made contact with a raft company that says I can basicaaly paddle with them for free if my skills are good, I look forward to doing that my first weekend free of activities. All for now
Talk to you soon.