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<\/p>\nMy adventures in Cusco truly did not end until I boarded my plane to New York.\u00a0 My final day in the city commenced with 7am mass at the cathedral in the Plaza de Armas.\u00a0 The beautiful cathedral is the focal point of the city center and I had admired it throughout my trip.\u00a0 It took until my final hours in the city for me to finally experience Sunday mass in the cathedral.\u00a0 The breathtaking mass was of course led in Spanish, the first Spanish mass I had ever attended, and I was excited to realize I could follow along and fully understand the priest\u2019s homily.\u00a0 Sometimes I struggle to focus and fully understand during English masses so this was a really exciting feat.<\/p>\n
My last day in Cusco also happened to be the day of Inti Raymi, a city-wide celebration of the Incan sun god (Inti).\u00a0 The celebration commenced at Qorikancha where hundreds of performers danced in worship of the sun god.\u00a0 I was amazed by the volume of people and the coordination of this performance.\u00a0 Even after consulting my host family, we still couldn\u2019t figure out how all of the performers learned their routines and formations without being able to rehearse at Qorikancha beforehand.<\/p>\n
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The Inca making his way from Qorikancha to the Plaza de Armas during Inti Raymi<\/em><\/p>\n From there, the performers proceeded to the Plaza de Armas, followed closely by all of the spectators.\u00a0 The entire city center was shut down for this celebration and the waves of people trailing the progression dominated the streets.\u00a0 The celebration in the Plaza de Armas was followed by another movement of all the performers and spectators to Sacsayhuaman.\u00a0 During Incan times, the culmination of the festival at Sacsayhuaman included human and animal sacrifices to worship the sun god.\u00a0 The modern continuation of Inti Raymi has of course done away with the human sacrifice component. \u00a0However, the reenactment of an animal sacrifice is one of the central aspects of the celebration.<\/p>\n The excitement that permeated the city leading up to and during Inti Raymi was infectious.\u00a0 Everyone from Gabi to Abuela waited in anticipation for the celebration; on my way to mass at 7am that morning, the streets were already lined with people waiting for the 9am start.\u00a0 It was amazing to see how strong the influence of Incan culture still is on the city and people of Cusco.\u00a0 Their connection with traditions of the past was inspiring, and unlike anything I\u2019d seen in the US.\u00a0 Looking back, this was one of my favorite aspects of life in Cusco.\u00a0 The city is now heavily Catholic, but the strong influence of Incan culture and religion is undeniable.<\/p>\n My view of Qorikancha at the start of Inti Raymi.\u00a0 Look at the crowds!<\/em><\/p>\n I am thankful that I got to spend my final day in Cusco as I did.\u00a0 My early start to the day helped me make the most of my final hours in such an amazing city.\u00a0 The ability to see Inti Raymi firsthand was the best concluding experience I could have imagined.\u00a0 It really helped solidify my understanding of the historical significance of the city I had spent the last 6 weeks in.\u00a0 The goodbyes with my host family were the hardest part of my final day, but I\u2019m still holding out hope that I\u2019ll be able to visit Cusco in the future and see them again.\u00a0 I am blown away by how fast my time in Cusco went but am thankful for all of the experiences I had and people I met.\u00a0 In terms of my language acquisition process, I know undoubtedly that this trip was a pivotal moment for me in terms of my conversational abilities and confidence in the language.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My adventures in Cusco truly did not end until I boarded my plane to New York.\u00a0 My final day in the city commenced with 7am mass at the cathedral in the Plaza de Armas.\u00a0 The beautiful cathedral is the focal point of the city center and I had admired it throughout my trip.\u00a0 It took … Continue reading A Bittersweet Final Day in Cusco<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3003,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[210747],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-peru"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3003"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3449"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3452,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3449\/revisions\/3452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/files\/2018\/08\/IMG_8847-300x225.jpg\")
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