Last Days in Peru ☹

Quick! What are the seven wonders of the world!?

Yeah, I don’t know all of them either but guess what?

We visited one of them today! Do you know which one?

Machu Picchu!!Today we visited Machu Picchu and it was beautiful. As I mentioned on my previous blog, we stayed in Aguas Calientes for one night because this is the closest city to Machu Picchu. So, we woke up early to catch a bus that takes us up to the starting point of walking to Machu Picchu. Because of the altitude difference, it was difficult to walk up. It was tiring, but definitelyworth the walk. For those of you who aren’t sure what Machu Picchu is, it’s an ancient Incan town that sits on the Andes Mountains. It was founded in the 15th century, later abandoned and forgotten until the 20th century. At Machu Picchu, there are many hiking trails that take as short as 1 hour or as long as 4 days. After Machu Picchu, we ate lunch and then made our way back to the hotel to grab our stuff and get on the train. The train ride was about an hour and thirty minutes and we stopped at Ollantaytambo. Once we arrived, we got on the bus and made our way to Cusco, which was another hour and a half. We finally arrived at the hotel and had some free time until we went to dinner. After dinner, we called it a night.

June 15th:

Today we visited Saqsaywaman which is known as the temple of the sun. If you hear someone pronounce ‘Saqsaywaman’ it sounds like “Sexy Woman”. After this site, we visited many other temples, such as, temple of water, fertility, thunder, rainbow, etc. It was interesting to visit all these temples. After our temple visits, we headed to lunch. After lunch, we headed back to our hotel and I took a nap. This was so much needed. In the Plaza of Cusco, there is currently a religious procession called Corpus Christi. I don’t think I have seen so many people in my life, the plaza was crowded and we were barely able to get back to our hotel. Not only locals, but also people from around the world come together to celebrate this day.

I feel like the relationship between culture and power is quite strong. I feel like when someone has more power, it means they have more resources to access which means their culture is stronger than other cultures. I almost feel like without power, the culture becomes invisible. I personally don't think that these are talked about as much as they should be. When I think about power I can't help but automatically think about money. It seems like the more money you have, the more of a dominant culture there is and the more power you have. For me, I think it's important to explain both of these to students. For example, usually the teacher can relate to some of the students' culture in the class and tends to ignore the rest of the cultures that are present in the classroom. There are ways to be able to present these terms to students in a way that they understand. As a future educator, I need to keep in mind the relationship between these two and assure that I don't automatically present a dominant culture in my class but rather appreciate the different cultures inside my classroom.

Smiles,

Liz