Now that we are no longer working with the teachers and students at Colegio Roosevelt, our schedule will be a little less routine for the rest of our time in Peru. On Friday morning, we walked to the University of Antonio Ruiz de Montoya (UARM) for our seminar and class discussion where we continued discussing philosophy of education, and how education is a political and ethical activity. The way a specific school, school district, or community runs affects the way its students are taught and what opportunities they will have throughout their education and future. From a political standpoint, we can see that school districts are controlled by the interest of the state, which focuses on the output of schools, which is difficult to measure qualitatively. Rather, we as a nation measure the quantitative outputs of a school, such as test scores, graduation rates, etc. simply because it is the easiest. As a pre-service teacher, finding a balance between ethical teaching and political teaching and how the two can work together rather than contrast is crucial to understand as I begin my teaching career.
After our discussion, we took a quick break and headed to a nearby café for coffee and a snack before departing from UARM to the ruins of Pachacamac, located near the coast in Lima. We learned that the structures that are still there today were constructed around 200 AD and flourished for about 1,300 years until the Spanish invaded the territory. While a lot of the structures have been uncovered, they simply don’t have the resources to uncover all of the surrounding structures and there is now actually an entire new district built upon some of the Pachacamac site. It was interesting to hear about the history of the site and how the community had been taken over by the Huari people and later the Incan people in the 1400s. We learned that the tradition of the Pachacamac culture was to sacrifice animals and also young boys and women. When European descendants came to Peru, many of the tombs were looted and much of the silver and gold is now gone and the mummies were destroyed and scattered, leaving bones, cloth, and animal pelts exposed above the sand. We finished the tour at the Temple of the Sun where the sacrifices took place, which stood atop a hill with a spectacular view of the current city below and the ocean.
As we had Saturday and Sunday for free time, we spent the weekend shopping, eating, relaxing, and exploring. We slept in Saturday morning and had breakfast at 10 AM and then walked to Salaverry mall where we shopped at some familiar stores like Forever 21 and Gap, and also at some new favorites. For lunch, we ate at Tanta, an outstanding restaurant founded by Gastón Acurio, a renowned Peruvian chef and entrepreneur. We have seen multiple Tanta restaurants while being here in Lima and we learned that there are also multiple in Chile as well as one in Chicago. Saturday night, we returned to Miraflores and also Barranco and saw the differences in nightlife between the two districts and Jesus MarÃa.
After sleeping in again on Sunday, we headed to the Burrito Bar in Barranco for yet another delicious meal and then walked around the city and along the beach, and of course, snuck in a little time for shopping. As we have done every Sunday since arriving in Peru, we then got gelato from Blu Gelateria before returning home to finish up some schoolwork for the upcoming week.