Quechua is the Native American language spoken mostly in the Andes mountain range of South America. It was also the language of the Inca people, and therefore many of the names of places in Cusco are actually in Quechua, not Spanish. There is still a large population that speaks Quechua today, especially in los campos. Many of the people who speak Quechua never learn to write it, because before the Spanish conquistadores arrived in Peru, there was no written alphabet. But in my class, I'm learning to speak quechua, as well as read and write it.
Our professor for our quechua class is Dany Vargas, the tallest Peruvian of all time. His height doesn't affect his ability to speak quechua, but it makes things more interesting for the people looking at him five hours a day.
Tuesday (07.27.10) was a typical day, which means we had class from 8:00 AM to 1:00 PM, volunteered from 2:00 PM to 6:00 PM, and then worked or relaxed and did it all over the next day.
Wednesday (07.28.10) was Peruvian Independence Day, or Fiestas Patrias. Peruvian independence from Spain was won on July 28, 1821 by General Jose de San Martin. Peruvians celebrate independence day with two days of vacation, one in honor of independence and the other in honor of the armed forces.
On Wednesday, we had class in the morning. Our quechua class had to sing a song during a presentation in front of the whole school, so that was kind of lame. The song was called Valicha. It is a song that everyone in Cusco knows, so there's that. It's a very pretty song; I would have just preferred not to shout it to the Andes from the courtyard of our school.
On the brightside, I got a 95% on my quechua exam, so that was worth it.
Thursday (07.29.10) and Friday (07.30.10) we had vacation for the holiday, so I basically volunteered a lot of hours and did some shopping.
In the beginning of the week, I also started volunteering at the girls' orphanage next to our hostal rather than the clinic. We basically brought tons of crayons, paper, markers, sidewalk chalk, and coloring books for them. It was our jobs to occupy them during the afternoon.
A lot of the girls have families that don't visit, and some don't have any family at all. In some cases, the government mandates that the girls be placed in the home, because the conditions at home aren't fit for them to live there. It's really sad, because it's easy to see that the girls miss their families. One girl wrote a letter to her whole family and read it aloud to each of the volunteers there. She said she would give the letter to her family when they came on visiting day (which is every Thursday), but when I was there on Thursday, her family wasn't there. I was hoping that they had visited when I was in school before I got there, but the odds of that are probably slim.
In any case, the girls really like when we're there. They like when I sing Justin Bieber songs, and the theme song from Titanic, because apparently they are popular songs in Peru. They can't get enough of it, which is good for me, because that means they can't get tired of me.
I didn't have many things to take pictures of, so here's another llama for your time:
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More blah blah to blah,
Victoria
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