Spanish Activities

SECCION "CUENTACUENTOS"

Vamos a escuchar algunos cuentos:

Un cuento sobre un cocodrilo

Un cuento sobre una tortuga

Un cuento de un bebe que no le gusta banarse

Un cuento sobre cinco bebes


SECCION "PONTE EN MOVIMIENTO"

Vamos a practicar con los siguientes juegos:

El bebe necesita ayuda, vamos a ayudarlo

El bebe quiere jugar con nosotros, vamos a jugar con el

Spanish Grammar

Spanish Grammar seems to be easy, but as soon as you start learning more about it, you realize that is difficult. In order to help you with it, here there is a link to go a webpage where you can read about main verbs you will need during the first classes:
Regular Verbs: "... ar", "... er", and "... ir"
All Spanish verbs are either "regular" or "irregular." In this lesson we will look at three completely regular verbs:

hablar (to speak)
comer (to eat)
vivir (to live)

Cusco - Machu Picchu - Peru

Cusco - Machu Picchu - Peru

It's remarkable that Machu Picchu was first brought to the attention of the world in 1911. The Spanish invaders at the time of the Conquest and during certuries of colonial rule, never discovered the city, and nobody ever led them there, suggesting that the site had long since been abondoned and forgotten.

In the nineteenth century explorers like Eugenie de Sartiges, George Ephraim Squire, Antonio Raimondi and Castelnau never reached Machu Picchu, although most of them crossed the Andes to the almost inaccessible ruins of Choquekirau, built high above the Apurimac river. In fact, the outside world simply stumbled upon Machu Picchu, for it had never been lost to those who lived around it. Those same people eventually led the American explorer, Hiram Bingham, and his team to the site in 1911. Hiram Bingham, now world-famous as the discoverer of Machu Picchu, did not initially travel to South America to explore the land of the Incas. In fact, the Hawaiian-born Yale and Harvard educated historian first journeyed south from the United States to complete his study of the great nineteenth century liberator, Simon Bolivar.

In December 1908, Bingham attended the First Panamerican Scientific Congress in Santiago, Chile. It was there that he decided to follow the old Spanish trade route from Buenos Aires to Lima, and it was to that end that he traveled to Lima and hence to Cusco.

In Cusco Bingham made the acquaintance of one J.J. Nunez, then prefect of the Apurimac region, who invited him on the arduous trip to the ruins of Choquekirau, thought at the time to be the site of Vilcabamba, the much sought "last resting place of the Incas."

On his return to the USA, Bingham decided to organize another expedition to Peru. He arrived in Lima in June 1911 where he began to study the seventeenth-century chronicles of Antonio de la Calancha and Fernando de Montesinos. The writings of these two men first inspired Bingham to seek the last two capitals of the Inca, Vilcabamba and Vitcos. Leaving Lima in July, Bingham returned to Cusco from where he journeyed on foot and by mule through the Urubamba Valley, past Ollantaytambo, and on into the Urubamba gorge.

On July 23, Bingham and his party camped by the river at a place called Mandor Pampa, where they aroused the curiosity of Melchor Arteaga, a local farmer who leased the land there. Through Sergeant Carrasco, the policeman who was his guide and interpreter, Bingham learned from Arteaga that there were extensive ruins on top of the ridge opposite the camp, which Arteaga, in his native Quechua, called Machu Picchu, or "old mountain".

According to Bingham, "The morning of July 24th dawned in a cold drizzle. Arteaga shivered and seemed inclined to stay in his hut. I offered to pay him well if he showed me the ruins. He demurred and said it was too hard a climb for such a wet day. But when he found I was willing to pay him a sol, three or four times the ordinary daily wage, he finally agreed to go. When asked just where the ruins were, he pointed straight up to the top of the mountain. No one supposed that they would be particularly interesting, and no one cared to go with me."

Accompanied only by Seargeant Carrasco and Arteaga, Bingham left the camp around 10 am. After a short while the party crossed a bridge so unnerving that the intrepid explorer was reduced to crawling across it on his hands and knees. From the river they climbed a precipitous slope until they reached the ridge at around midday.

Here Bingham rested at a small hut where they enjoyed the hospitality of a group of campesinos. They told him that they had been living there for about four years and explained that they had found an extensive system of terraces on whose fertile soil they had decided to grow their crops. Bingham was then told that the ruins he sought were close by and he was given a guide, the 11-year old Pablito Alvarez, to lead him there.

Almost immediately, he was greeted by the sight of a broad sweep of ancient terraces. They numbered more than a hundred and had recently been cleared of forest and reactivated. Led by the boy, he re-entered the forest beyond the terraces. Here young Pablito began to reveal to Bingham a series of white granite walls which the historian immediately judged to be the finest examples of masonry that he had ever seen. They were in fact, the remains of what we call today the Royal Tomb, the Main Temple, and the Temple of the Three Windows.

According to Bingham, "I had entered the marvelous canyon of the Urubamba below the Inca fortress. Here the river escapes from the cold plateau by tearing its way through gigantic mountains of granite. The road runs through a land of matchless charm. It has the majestic grandeur of the Canadian Rockies, as well as the startling beauty of the Nuuanu Pali near Honolulu, and the enchanting vistas of the Koolau Ditch Trail on Maui, in my native land. In the variety of its charms the power of its spell, I know of no place in the world which can compare with it. Not only had it great snow peaks looming above the clouds more than two miles overhead; gigantic precipices of many-coloured granite rising sheer for thousands of feet above the foaming, glistening, roaring rapids, it has also, in striking contrast, orchids and tree ferns, the delectable beauty of luxurious vegetation and the mysterious witchery of the jungle. One is drawn irresistibly onwards by ever-recurring surprises through a deep, winding gorge, turing and twisting past overhanging cliffs of incredible height

Above all, there is the fascination of finding here and there under swaying vines, or perched on top of a beetling crag, the rugged masonry of a bygone race; and of trying to understand the bewildering romance of the ancient builders who, ages ago, sought refuge in a region which appears to have been expressly designed by nature as a sanctuary for the oppressed, a place where they might fearlessly and patiently give expression to their passion for walls of enduring beauty."

Other people saw and even lived at Machu Picchu before Hiram Bingham even set foot in Peru, but had neither the means nor the opportunity to bring the "lost city" to the attention of the outside world. Bingham himself found two families living at the ruins and was led to the main plaza by a young boy. As early as 1894, a local farmer called Agustin Lizarraga led one Luis Bejar Ugarte to the ancient city. This same Lizarraga took his friends Gabino Sanchez and Enrique Palma on a treasure-seeking trip to the ruins on July 14, 1901, visiting all the accessible parts of the then uncleared site. When Bingham arrived at the ruins he found the rock that the three friends had signed with their names and the date of their visit. In his later writings, however, he downplayed this discovery.

The three treasure hunters met Anacleto Alvarez (whom Bingham later encountered) who told them that he had been living among the ruins for 8 years, where he grew his crops of corn, yucca, sweet potatos and sugar cane on the fertile soil that the Incas had carried up from the river valley to build Machu Picchu's magnificent 300 meter high series of terraces!

Cusco - Machu Picchu - Peru

This picture was taken after the 'solo', everybody decided to have a memory of the great meeting. Most of the writers are from Lima, and they came to Cusco invited by Carlos Paz and the Centro Cultural Cusco.

Encuentro de escritores peruanos (Cusco - Machu Picchu)

After the first reading of prose and poetry, these Peruvian female writers decided to go apart and get a 'solo' in front of The Lost City. Karen, Roxana Crisologo, Cecilia Podesta and Ericka Ghersi are writers from Lima, and they were invited by the organizers of the Festival of Poetry in Cusco. They stayed in Cusco for a week, and enjoyed the pluricultural city and some ruins and alive towns around it. The weather was wonderful in the mornings (July), but after 5pm a glass of wine or 'calentito' was neccesary.

Encuentro de escritores peruanos (Cusco - Machu Picchu)

Some friends and I decided to climb Huayna Picchu!

This was the capital of the Incan Empire before 1400 (our days). The mountain behind the city is Huayna Picchu, it is one of the higest places in the area.

The silence among us is palpable. It is 6 am and we are perched on a high ledge at Peru's greatest attraction, Machu Picchu. The Lost City of the Incas, located at an altitude of 2,400 metres, has us lost in deep thought. Why was the city built in a remote mountain location? What was its precise function? How did it remain a secret during 300 years of Spanish rule? Dawn dissipates the clouds hovering over the stony ruins and brings the city into grand focus. Cameras click, the spell is broken. Peru draws you within its magnetic field like few places in the world. You can feel the vibes of an ancient land, here at Machu Picchu in the High Andes, at the magnificent Sacred Valley near Cuzco, at coastal Nasca which has huge, baffling drawings in the desert. The early Peruvians' profound knowledge of the elements had endowed them with strong mystical attitudes. The Incas, who claimed to be direct descendants of the sun, represented the final, splendid phase of a 3000-year-old culture.

Located along the Pacific coast of South America, Peru is bordered by Ecuador and Colombia to the north, Brazil and Bolivia to the east and Chile to the south. Most tourists crisscross the land by local airlines, treading the vestiges of ancient civilizations. I had a few days to visit the highlights: Cuzco, Machu Picchu, and Arequipa. My journey, from the 21st century to the 16th century, becomes a heady adventure when I put myselve in the hands of the director film and writer Carlos Paz.

Where I belong

Hi!

My name is Ericka Ghersi (Peru) and I teach Spanish at The University of Florida (Gainesville). I have been teaching Spanish in The United States since 1998, and I still enjoy it!
I love seing my students into it, especially here in Florida. Most of my students have either friends or relatives from a Spanish speaking country, and each time I meet more and more people interested not only in learning the language but the culture. I think that is what I like most, i.e. in my family, I can see how my female and male cousins and nephews and nieces borned in The United States want to get closer to their parents culture, and their friends also get interested about it.

For me, talking about Peru is talking about a magical place, untouchable, and I belong to it. If you ask if I am proud of being peruvian, the answer is more than proud. And if you do not believe it, go to Peru, visit its towns, and Incas ruins, also learn about its geography, and history; and you will see what I am talking about. Here I am posting some pictures of MachuPicchu (one of the main Incan ruins).