People keep on asking me how the preparations are going for my next great adventure, so I've decided to use my blog to let people know about my preparations and eventual travel adventures. So background... In June I went on a rather spur-of-the-moment trip back to Peru with my good friend Maddy. Maddy and I actually met on my first trip to Peru in 2005, when I went with my family for my mom's work. My mom was working for Bridges to Understanding teaching one of their international workshops, and Maddy was there with her family as another participant on the workshop. We spent the time working with students from the local colegio teaching them digital photography and creating digital stories as well as making many friends in Peru and learning a small amount of Spanish.
So back to June, we returned to Peru, but stayed in the larger city of Cusco. We spent the first week in language school studying Spanish at a school called Acupari where my spanish skills were honed to barely passable. We went and visited our friends in Ollantaytambo, ran into some of our old students, and generally enjoyed what would turn out to be the vacation portion of our trip. The second week was spent participating in a Bridges workshop with students from Pukllasunchis. It was quite stressful, and at some points we didn't think our movie would even get done, but we took some great photos and had a lot of fun with our awesome students. Sooner than I expected or wanted our two and a half weeks were up and while we sat in a restaurant, eating chifa and bemoaning the shortness of our trip, we decided to return as soon as possible, like instead of school.
Some of the students, Andre (my partner) and Rey.So since then we have been counting down the days (Maddy the hours) until we go back to Peru. Currently we plan to depart on December 27 and stay for about six months. I've been spending my time until then working on websites, hanging out with UW friends and watching a silly amount of travel channel. If you want to check out the movie my team made in Peru with Bridges, click here (http://www.bridgesweb.org/project_videos/Peru/08_peru_familia.mp4), but beware it's all in Spanish. Watch it anyways, it's basically about how Pukllasunchis is a family and solves conflicts with what they call rimancuy (that is probably spelled wrong, but means to come together). And for those of you who missed it, the first movie we made in Peru (http://www.bridgesweb.org/project_videos/Peru/projPeru_soccer.html). It has subtitles and is about a championship futbol game; passion, conflict, battles against the elements, it's pretty much the best missed video of 2005.
See you around,
Mariko
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