Formative, Positive Experience

I did SIT Peru: Indigenous Peoples and Globalization the fall of my junior year. I wanted to go abroad primarily for language-learning purposes; I'm a Spanish major and I felt the limitations of learning a language in a classroom. This particular program aligned very well with my other academic interests too; I had taken some classes on North American Indigenous history and studied Indigenous agriculture. The program was a great fit for me and I found it to be a good balance of challenge and support. I always felt that I had the tools I needed to do what we were asked to do, whether that was field work or essay writing.

I had a wonderful host family in Cusco and got particularly close with my mom while I was there. I went to family gatherings, ate meals, and ran errands with my family as much as possible and learned a lot from them. They were very welcoming.

One thing to be aware of with this program is that you'll be taking classes and travelling with other students from the US; my cohort always spoke English with each other and that impeded our language learning to some extent. For some people having other students from the US around helped with culture shock, but at times I felt that I wasn't getting as much out of the experience as I might have if I'd been forced to make more local connections.

The part of my time abroad that I think about most often is my Independent Study Project (ISP). All students in the program complete a month-long project, the result of which is a 25 page paper in Spanish. Although it sounded daunting at first, I am so so glad I did this. I designed a project on conservation of native potatoes in a group of Indigenous communities and their collaboration with an international seed bank. I stayed in the community I was working with for a week on my own. It was an incredible way to follow my interests and learn how to be a student outside the classroom, and I met people who changed the way I think about the world.

This is a great program! Very organized in terms of logistics, even though changing circumstances sometimes altered our travel plans. I would recommend SIT Peru to students with intermediate to advanced Spanish who don't mind having to study during their study abroad.