Saludos desde Urubamba! (Hello from Urubamba!)
Today marks our final full day in Urubamba. Tonight, students and their homestay families along with a few ISP mentors will gather at our program house to celebrate our weeks together with an evening of delicious food cooked by our homestay families and students, mini-presentations from our dragoncit@s about their ISP experiences (including a dance performance from Ava and Natalie and a charango performance from Zia, Sam, and Katya!), and to share words of gratitude towards families and our Urubamba community. Already, our students are talking about how much they have enjoyed their time here and how hard it will be to leave. Our next stop will be the community of Paru Paru, where we’ll learn about textiles, native potato varieties, and earthen buildings with adobe. Before that, we wanted to share a few photos with you all!
Some highlights of the last weeks have been the silversmithing crew (Isaac, Talia, and Lauren) making a map of Peru, our weavers (Jakob, Lucia, Gabriela, and Larkin) making multiple bracelets and hair ribbons using traditional backstrap weaving methods and naturally-dyed yarn, Tucker learning how to cook many delicious things (and eating effectively four meals per day), Ava and Natalie practicing salsa and bachata (enough to perform!), Jakob and Larkin making salves, shampoo bars, and tinctures from the natural plants found in the forest through the herbalism ISP, and Lucia learning enough Quechua to sing/say a song and practice her Quechua with her weaving mentors, Mari and Ernestina. This week also comes to a close on Spanish lessons for this group, which has surely been challenged to communicate in new ways.
Last night, our student leaders Talia and Tucker also organized a futbol match within the group that turned into a community affair when Lucia waved a bunch of young local boys onto our field. What ensued was a lot of sweating, panting, sliding on the turf, a few very large blisters, and much ecstatic hooting and hollering whenever our teams would score a goal. Katya held down the fort in true fashion as defense, Lucia maneuvered around with much skill, Talia held her own as a wall, and Jakob apparently adopted a new nationality as a Brazilian as the locals kept calling him Ronaldinho (a Brazilian soccer great). Tucker may have ripped a knee, Isaac took a soccer ball to the face (he’s fine), and Natalie crushed it as goalie. This is all training at 9,419 feet for our future matches we expect to have against new friends in Paru Paru and in the Bolivian Amazon, to start.
This week we also enjoyed a full group outing day hike to Pumahuanca, rain and all. This group is ready for Choquequirao!
Until next time!
the I-team
