Sad to be happy!

This is finally it, today we completed our final team executive presentations.  All the speakers today did an amazing job, displaying all their hard work and experiences.  There were definitely quite a few touching moments to be had by all.  Below is a final group picture taken after.

This was for most of us our final day together and in Cusco, and even though we are all going to be now separated by great distances on land and water. We will always be the friends we were in Cusco!  Thank you all to the team and the people we met along the way. An amazing time and I have learned so much from every one of you!   

Sharing the Canadian spirit!!

Just wanted to share pictures of all my new friends..  Sporting their new Canadian spirit!!  :)

Client Presentation Day

Today is the big day!!  Our team has worked very hard to get to this point, not only here in Cusco, but through the application process, pre-work and preparation work, which took place over the course of a year before arriving here.  Looking back on this last month, we completed all the stages as we had planned.  Week 1, getting to know our client and refining the statement of work. Week 2, researching, Week 3, developing our solution and week 4, preparing our final presentation with our solution deliverables.

Our meeting was scheduled for 11am and even though we were  very good at keeping the customer up to speed with our solution and results, we were (or at least I was) still quite nervous.  This was real, this was the final, will we simply meet their expectations or will we exceed them?

Well after a solid 3 hours (which felt like just over 30 minutes), we concluded our final presentation and received some great questions a feedback from our client.  I believe it is safe to say from our detailed survey that the client was very pleased with our results and the additional value added protions on Project Management Framework and LSS methodologies.

Here is our celebration picture!!  All smiles just for the record! :)

(right to left: Helena Myer, Shirley Pazos (the client; aka The Boss), Arun Joshi, Ana Miranda, Jeff Robbins (Me) and Rita Vargas)

Life of a tourist. :) (Part 3 - South Valley Tipon, Pikillacta)

On our final group adventure, we toured the South Valley.

A little side note:
I need to take a minute to mention that the weather had been changing, nights getting colder (not Canadian cold) but more brisk.  Where the sun in the daytime can sometimes feel like someone is holding a magnifying glass over your head. (when they say sunscreen, hat and layers, it's not a joke)  Around 5pm when the sun drops, you want to be close to a sweater.

Back to the tour:
Tipon is a complex set of Inca Ruins, located in the east of Cusco, on the Road to Puno / Titicaca Lake.

It is believed as having been used by the Incas to cultivate vegetables for the upper and prayers class, and for ceremonial purposes.

The Ruins, as many Peruvian Ruins, are very well kept, but what makes it unique is its large system of irrigations pipelines, spreading water on the wide terraces.

The water continuously flows, and many scientists regularly come to understand how the architecture of the site.

The Pikillaqta site is located at the east of Cusco, belonging to the sitrict of Quispicanchi. This site was not built by Inca, it was built before their time. The population living in this place were called the Wari, and used different materials to build their houses, such as earth, which gives the houses the red colour.

The site is supposed to have been a religious place, abandoned at some point of time.

We finished the day by visiting the Andahuaylillas village, with its gorgeous church, also know as the Sistine Chapel of Latin America. The walls are fully painted by scenes of the life of San Jeronimo, as the church is dedicated to him. The Church was built by the Spanish community but to reach more easily the indigenous population, painted texts were presented in Queshua, Wari language and Castillano.  We were not allowed to take pictures in side of course.

Volunteer Day (The Fundation Niños del Arco)

What an outstanding experience, we spent the day in the most amazing school.  You can tell it was built with care, hard work, dedication and an outstanding attention to detail.  This school provides education to children of ages 10-20. It is available when no other means are possible.

Schedule for the day:
- 7am departure from hotel. Bus will arrive at 6:45am
- 7:00- 8:30am – Ride out to Urubamba and Arco Iris
- 8:30 a 10:30 am. - share your culture, professional and personal development experiences.
- 10:30 a 11:00 am. - Snack Break
- 11:00am. a 01:00pm - Intercultural games with children groups /elementary age.

These children were so caring, respectful and resonated with self confidence. I sincerely ended my experiences with the message "we should never stop learning and thank you for the opportunity for me to learn from you (the children)"

Life of a tourist. :) (Part 2 - Moras/Salineras and Moray)

On May 18th, our group went on another scheduled team outing, destination Moras/Salineras and Moray.

We started off the day at Moray, an archaeological site northwest of Cuzco. The picture simply don't do the site justice as these circular depressions are massive.(largest of which is about 30 m (98 ft) deep) This site was used by the Inca to study the effects of different climatic conditions on crops.

Next on to Maras, which is a huge salt mine. Before this, when I thought about a salt mine, or simply when I said "pass the salt". I definitely did not think about this type of operation. From a distance the process looks sort of simple and messy, but up close you get a real respect for how the system works flawlessly.  These ponds are all separated and the water that feeds them comes from just a little consistently flowing stream of salt water. (Yes to all that know me, I tasted it.. Maybe three times)  In this season the pools are full of water and are not mined, once the water evaporates the pools are then stripped of the salt and ready for processing.

Productivity at its best!!

We had an extremely productive week! We started it off by having the Document of Understanding signed off with our client and the project deliverables have been broken up as follows:

The rest of the week was spent researching and evaluating tools for our recommendations on ICT. Arun is tackling ICT for early warning systems, Helena is looking at ICT for governance and I worked on ICT for healthcare. It has been quite the eye opener, looking at solutions for healthcare communication with working with limited mobile networks. There is quite a bit of open source software based on SMS technology.

By the end of the week we completed all the research and spent most of the following week formalizing the recommendations.

Life of a tourist. :) (Part 1 - Sacred Valley)

On May 11th, our group went on a scheduled team outing, destination Sacred Valley!  We visited Pisac, Ollantaytambo and the village of Chinchero. All of these places were quite astonishing, check out the workmanship on some of the ruins.  The Incas worked very hard and were extremely skilled and I would say "they didn't cut any corners", but that saying just doesn't make sense when you see how all the stone fit together like pieces of a puzzle.

Pisac:

Ollanyaytambo:

Chinchero: