The Amazing Race

Have you ever been interested in getting lost, running into language barriers, and engaging with strangers? Then the Amazing Race is the perfect opportunity to do all of these things.

However, this activity is not as scary as it sounds and, in fact, has been one of the highlights of my experience. For this activity, everyone split into groups and was given clues as to where to go and each destination that the clues led us to had the next clue that brought us to the next destination. We started out the race with some group members stomping grapes which gave us some insight into the wine making process and the Grape Harvest Festival that occurs every year here in Peru. The festival is based in the the district in Lima called Surco and focuses on their history/traditions which of course involves wine making and tasting! Every year, a Harvest Queen is elected for the festival and she receives the honor to participate in the grape stomping. Next we had to track down a woman named Olga who has a white kiosk where she gave us some traditional Peruvian chocolate. Then, we were able to grab a pork loin and sweet potato sandwich for lunch and for dessert try many different fruits from a local market. After this, we practiced our marketing skills at booths at the Indian Market and had to sell 20 soles worth of merchandise to shoppers. This task was more difficult than I thought it would be, and only one of us was successful in actually completing this task. Following this, we met up with Jaime at a local park where he taught us to learn to play pan flutes. Lastly, we headed to towards the ocean to practice our juggling skills for soccer. Cory received first place with 14 juggles, I received second with 7 juggles, and Abbi came in third with 5 juggles.

Rather than splitting into teams, we eventually decided to work together and I believe that was very rewarding as we all worked together to navigate through the city, talk to the locals in order to find our way as well as better understand some of our activities that we were completing. The kindness we received throughout the course of this activity was tremendous. We had to attempt to ride the local buses to get from destination to destination and many bystanders as well as the bus drivers were more than happy to help and point us in the right direction. Many people who saw us participating in these activities who themselves have knowledge in these particular areas were more than happy to explain their knowledge of everything to us. I believe that this activity helped me to expand my knowledge in Spanish speaking. Although I am still not an expert, I believe that I am improving everyday and am excited to continuously improve over the rest of this experience.