Beloved readers, WHAT a long day this has been! Long, but pretty excelente!
It all began at 7:50 AM, when Lauren and I headed to the airport to meet our first summer group, 10 students and 2 professors from the University of Pittsburgh's School of Engineering. This is the second year that the program has run, so the professors, both originally from Colombia, kind of know the drill. For many students, though, this was their first time in a developing country, and for a few it was even their first time out of the US!
I have decided that one of my best skills is making people feel warmly welcomed when they come to a new place. Not to brag, :-) but I think I have a knack for noticing when someone needs a friendly smile or a conversation partner or some encouraging words, and I try and provide them. I felt particularly well-equipped to do this with the Pittsburgh students because I'm practically in their shoes, having just arrived five days ago myself. Therefore, I was able to answer a lot of their questions because they were things very familiar to me--things that I had often just learned or mastered myself (food fears, altitude sickness, the dangers of people selling fake alpaca at super-low prices...you know, the usual...). Anyway, the students arrived right on time, and we all hopped into a big ol' van with ProWorld's driver, a very nice gent named David. Lauren and the students were first brought to the hostel where the students would be spending their first night, and I continued with the professors to their more extravagant lodgings. :-) They were staying at the Hotel Garcilosa, and it was pretty classy, with a nice plaza inside the entrance and a little room with a buffet and lots of mate de coca. I sat and chatted with them briefly while they filled out their reservation information, and then left them to rest.
I have to admit that I was sort of secretly hoping that I would get to "go home and rest" like the PITT students for the next few hours, but sadly 'twas not in the cards. Lauren needed me to compile orientation folders for the students, and once I finished that task and responded to some e-mails from US university contacts, it was time to meet the students and professors for lunch. I somehow became the professors' personal tour guide, which was a little intimidating because they've both been to Cusco before and both speak much better Spanish than me. But I managed to collect them and hold up a decent conversation as we walked to Los Toldos, a restaurant selling primarily rotisserie chicken and french fries. One of the semester students, Barb, pretty well freaked me out about the chicken in Peru, telling me that she had had three separate episodes of food poisoning, all chicken-related. That said, this chicken was pretty tasty, and I removed the skin, which made it feel somehow a little bit safer.
Lunch with the students was fun. I really liked talking to them and finding out where they came from and what they were thinking about Cusco and the whole experience so far. I was especially excited to meet a student named Kyle. Kyle's last name is Freehart, and somehow on his original ProWorld application, his name came up as Freehart Freehart, which we in the office just found hysterical. At least in my case, the amusement came from my association between Freehart and "Braveheart," and my subsequent image of this kid named Freehart riding into Cusco shirtless on horseback with a bow and arrow. Luckily, Kyle was quite good-natured about our amusement, and agreed to let us call him Freehart. (And thank goodness, because I don't think I'm going to be able to keep from saying it!)
After lunch came orientation, which was mostly led by Lauren. While orientation was going on, I had two Spanish-intensive tasks to complete. First, I had to call our dinner restaurant and tell the lady over the phone how many of each menu item we wanted. I was pretty afraid of messing this up, but it went off without a hitch, and the woman was very easy to understand. Task numero dos was to go to this office (in the most random location above a massage parlor and a restaurant) and get all of the PITT students International Student Identification Cards (ISIC cards). This required bringing the office a copy of each student's passport, as well as a miniature photo, ten dollars, and a student ID with a date on it. The students were rather unprepared to provide most of these items despite our request for it a few weeks ago, so we went on a fun little journey to the photocopy shop and the ATM and the money exchange counter, and finally I had everything I needed from every student...except Freehart, who forgot his student ID. After spending quite a bit of time in the office (the ISIC card woman and I became pretty serious BFFs), I emerged with 9 cards and a sense of empowerment for having successfully completed my task! While perhaps not particularly difficult, it was very new, and it was, of course, all in Spanish!
By the time I finished these lovely jobs, it was just about time to meet the students and professors for dinner at a placed called El Dorado, a few blocks from the plaza. For my first course, I ordered "sopa criolla," which had an English translation below it that said "noodle soup." This seemed fairly safe, but, as I should know by now, things are not always as they seem! I was pretty much given a bowl of sea water. Salty, fishy...might as well go to the Jersey shore and take a slurp or two. The upside to this is that I provided some serious amusement for the two PITT students on either side of me, who first just watched as I repeatedly attempted to eat tiny spoonfuls of the soup, and later became comfortable enough to tell me that it looked like "a bowl of Ramen noodles made by a five-year old and gone terribly wrong." No more sopa criolla for me! The main course, at least in my case, was much more appetizing. I had grilled trout served with cooked vegetables, rice, and--of course--french fries. A number of students went for the alpaca entree, and a few others had the lomo saltado. Cuy (guinea pig) wasn't a menu choice for this meal, but apparently one of the professors is a serious fan, so I'm sure that one of their meals will involve the delicacy. As we were finishing dinner, a group of four Peruvian men came in and performed for us, singing and playing reed flutes, guitars, and other small string instruments. They sang some traditional Andean music, most of which was about "Pachamama," the Quechua for "Mother Earth," and also some more American songs, like "Hey Jude," which sounded pretty funny when played on a reed flute!
After dinner, we headed home, but on the way about half the group was distracted by a very good-looking pastry shop. Lauren went on to the hotel with group one, while I stayed with the pastry party. The lady in the shop was really sweet, and did her best to explain each dessert in Spanish as well as English as her abilities permitted. I haven't actually experimented much with Peruvian desserts myself, so I decided to try a piece of pound cake, which turned out to be lemony and a bit dry, probably due to the altitude. Most of the students decided to try the specialty of Cusco, which was called the "empanada de Semana Santa," or the "empanada of Holy Week." It pretty much looked like a poptart, and was a flaky, sugary bar of yumminess. I don't know that I would buy it with any regularity, but definitely worth tasting.
Once we made it back to the hotel, it was finally time to say goodbye to the PITTers and head home. I believe it was probably 9:30 PM by this point, which means that I "worked"/"played" (it's all about perspective!) for nearly 14 hours! I am tired and ready for bed, but glad that the first day was generally a success. I really like these students, and I think they're in for a pretty jam-packed but awesome 10 days!
Tomorrow will be a little quieter, as the group will be visiting a number of sites in areas surrounding Cusco. I think it will be nice to have a day at the office after so much running around today!
I'm still missing home quite a lot, but I think that having the distraction of group program coordination is going to be a very good thing, and I'm legitimately excited about building reservoirs starting on Thursday!
Hasta pronto!
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