studies to steps

I believe my last report was when my stomach was woozy and my homestay was unsteady. Both are done now...my stomach is back to normal and my homestay has concluded.

I spent the majority of the past to weeks working away at my project on food culture...tilling a field, cooking in an adobe oven, reading about sustainable agriculture, talking to a local shaman about rituals and traditions and getting a good sense of the nutritional value of the ingredients I can use. I am finally pretty well prepared to make my sustainable, nutritious and spiritual bolivian meal...all that is left is choosing what to cook which is always fun.

I´m writing from the ¨belly button¨ of the incan empire, Cusco which is unnervingly european in feel due to the aggressive spanish conquest. I´m definately enjoying the new setting and new foods but for this trip Cusco is just a throughway. We are taking tomorrow to buy food and explore the city and then my half of the group is off on a 9 day trek to Machu Pichu that crosses climates, other equally fantastic ruins and many mountains. We end in a town with hot springs and then continue on for the next day´s sunrise at the infamous ruin. Our guide has warned us that this will be a trying trek but we all reinforce eachother´s excitement and reafirm eachother´s determination...we all like the idea of finishing our time here with a truly rugged and physically exhausting itinerary. I´ll tell you if I still feel the same way on the 30th when we will once again be in Cusco.

It feels strange to have so little travel left. It is really begining to seem possible that this time should come to a close, that I should return to my routines on well paved streets surrounded by wood frame colonial houses and trees that change with the seasons. I have definately had my moments of homesickness and while I do not long to bypass or cut short any part of the trip that remains, I´m ready to come home and let these months become stories and images...to let them drop to a less prominent place in my mind such that they color my thoughts but don´t dominate them. I feel saturated...not in a bad way, but in a way that makes me ready to gain distance on these experiences and allow my life at home to come close again. It is harder than I thought to be without roots, to travel in a country that is not your own for even this comparatively short time. I like having a home base and a friend base, having liberty to wander where I will and not feel out of place or guilty for what my purpose or privaledge may be. Perhaps I´ve mentioned this already but I have found it strange to realize I am not swept away and enamored of the lifestyles I´ve encountered and have had to conciously sustain my interest and engagement through perhaps overly intelectualized justifications for my time here. I have spent almost 3 months living out of my mind and it is wearing. I am ready to disengage my brain.

more to come when I return...