Day 2:  A dally in the Sacred Valley

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Assembling the Cast of Characters!

The next day was really just everyone arriving, taking it easy (anyone from the East Coast was whacked out from no sleep!) and an informal Dinner, it was easy to see that Elizabeth had assembled a very eclectic team, along with Mike and Bone there was:

• Bruce Tyler - Bone's long time friend from PwC days, currently the Global Leader for the IBM Digital Insights and Big Data Practice

• Mike Stefanik - Bruce's friend from when Bone and Bruce worked for Mike who was their client at SunTrust, currently running a Risk Practice at E&Y

• Ron Koch - Another long time IBM colleague who worked with Bone when Ron was a client in Richmond at Capital One, He was now working with Bone in Paris

• Regine Verougstraete - A Belgian Artist, married to a Hollywood Director living in Los Angeles and selling her paintings

• Katherine Lucchese - A very strong person that runs her own business in Northern California and was an aquaintance of Elizabeths

• Darby Davenport - A San Francisco native (grew up on Russian Hill!), whose Dad now lived in Ann Arbor and had her Masters from Michigan!

• Katherine Brewer (KB) - Darby's best friend who joined her at Michigan and recently went on a "Radical Sabatical", leaving her job to determine what she wanted to do next.

• Renee Dineen - A great lady that worked at Genetech with Katherine B and Darby, who just set out in her own consulting company.

All Type A's, successful (Mike and Bone excepted!), and extremely diverse in experiences, worldviews, politics and lives. It was gonna be interesting!!!

The first day started with a late breakfast where the "leadership" for the BIG's started!  Liz, as leader went first  with:

"The Team were with Poets, they didn't even know it!" First Day's Poem

Leadership Focus and Elizabeth’s Strength: Building Community  

Poem So Much Happiness ~ Naomi Shihab Nye It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness. With sadness there is something to rub against, a wound to tend with lotion and cloth. When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up, something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.  

But happiness floats. It doesn’t need you to hold it down. It doesn’t need anything. Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing, and disappears when it wants to. You are happy either way. Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house and now live over a quarry of noise and dust cannot make you unhappy. Everything has a life of its own, it too could wake up filled with possibilities of coffee cake and ripe peaches, and love even the floor which needs to be swept, the soiled linens and scratched records . . .  

Since there is no place large enough to contain so much happiness, you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you into everything you touch. You are not responsible. You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it, and in that way, be known.  

 

 As the group reflected and rested from the looong flight in Bone and Bruce skipped out to check out the very cool Sun Church right next door!

 

Checking out the Sun Church!

It was really a quick recon trip, The group was gonna leave for their first cultural visit to a Garden Villa for underprivileged children in 20 minutes, So it was a speed tour!

 

The High Priest of the Peruvian Mountain Quechua Culture Holly Wissler!

During the Bus ride Liz introduced the Troops to a Peruvian expert par none, especially in the Quechua peoples in the Andes, Holly Wissler. Holly Holly Wissler was a applied ethnomusicologist, Fulbright Scholar and educator living and working in Cusco, Peru. Her doctoral research focused on the musical rituals of the indigenous Quechua group of Q’eros in the southern Peruvian Andes. had made a career in learning the language, culture, and songs of Peru, she even was a star of a National Geographic special on a Quechuan clan in the Andes, where she followed the trials of a Quechuan named Victor who raised sheep sheep and also helped as a tour guide part time.

Victor was not having a good life at the time of the filming. His young wife had recently passed in childbirth. Worse his infant son turned out to be a deaf mute. As is the way in the Mountains Victor quickly remarried, but unfortunately the new wife did not want to care for a special needs baby and wanted to leave the baby outside to its fate.... Here is where Holly went from journalist/culturalist to an active participant in the story. She adopted the infant soon to be given the name Dante and both their lives would never be the same. Holly brought Dante with the Troops over the next week where everyone adopted the always smiling 14-year old.  The riveting true story took up the whole time to the retreat, out in paradise!

 

Garden of Paradise!

The estate was, amazing. It was a blistering hot day high in the mountains the flora was spectacular! The Owner, who works with the kids talked about the work to build the house and the gardens. They truly made a haven for disadvantaged children! 

 

Devils in Paradise! Mike and Bone

With the irrepressible Mike Stefanik!

Looking up the Andes!

As discussed in the planning sessions the Group made a donation of several hundred dollars (which was like several thousand dollars in the States) before they left.

On the ride back the overnight traveller snoozed and dosed on the way back. After a quick dinner,  Mike and Bone put in earlier, for tomorrow they check out an Inkan Tambo!