Spanish Scrabble, more ancient ruins and Interview with a Peruvian Coffee Grower

relaxing & enjoyable weekend.. Thursday night I met some friends at La Maquina, our favorite bar/café for some hot wine and hours of scrabble :) fun times. Friday we all met at the IFSA office to discuss the trip to Cuzco, which is coming up in less than 2 weeks and I am thrilled!!! I've heard nothing but the best about this city.. and I cannot wait to witness Machu Picchu. I need to go shop for my girls in Cuzco, this is a day trip I'm really looking forward to, too.

Saturday we went to Pachacamac, ruins about an hour from where I live. It was neat to see, but I thought Huaca Pucllana was a bit more interesting.. maybe just because I was exhausted. Aside from Machu Picchu, I think by the end of my stay here I'll be done with ruins. They're amazing, yeah, but it's just like Catholic Churches in Europe, once you've seen one, you've seen them all. At least that's my feelings about them so far.

Today I had my first interview for my independent study with fair trade coffee in Perú. The farmer that I interviewed this morning is named Wilson Sucaticona and this year he won "People's Choice Award" for his coffee in the United States.. He's also veryyy well known in Perú for his coffee and was just at the biggest gastronomical fair in Peru yesterday promoting his coffee, doing interviews with newspapers and magazines here in Peru and he even got to meet Gastón Acurio (famous peruvian chef) and this morning he sat down to talk to me! It was really interesting.. last night I bought a voice recorder and I was glad about that today because it was a bit difficult to understand everything in spanish and take interview notes at the same time, especially because Spanish is the 2nd language for both of us.

Here is a picture of me with Wilson and his family:



todayyy for the rest of the day I'm going for another long run along the coast and hopefully getting a lot of letter writing and homework done.

besitos.