Written the night of the 19th
I arrived in Peru May 15th
after a very long day of traveling. After realizing that I was not on
the flight with Megan, the student who I was supposed to be
traveling, to us almost missing flights, Megan and I made it to
Arequipa.
I was glad to have a day to spend in Arequipa. Though some broken Spanish we were able to get a map of the
city from the lady who worked at the Hotel and she wrote on it where
was safe for us to be. Arequipa gets a lot more tourists than
Moquegua so it was nice to get to go in to all of the touristy shops.
Because of this the people also seemed to speak more English which
made the day a little easier on the two of us. Arequipa is right near
some really pretty snow capped mountains and a Volcano. The city has a number of guide services which take people
rock climbing, rafting, kayaking, trekking, mountain biking etc. It
would have been great to of had the time to get to do this. If I ever
get a chance to come to Peru on a personal trip I would love to go
back to Arequipa and look into this.
The next day our professor and the
other people in our group came by in a taxi and picked us up. We
stopped in a grocery store briefly and then were on our way to
Moquegua. The ride to Moquegua is about four hours. There were 6 of
us in the van with all of our luggage. It made for a bit of an
interesting ride. We made it to Moquegua around dinner time and
stopped at Margaritas, our favorite rotisserie chicken place in town.
I am now staying at my professors
house until a house is found for us and more people arrive. Her house
is really nice. The views are spectacular. They have an apple
orchard, grapefruit and fig plants and their neighbor and friend has
two ponies on the property. One of the ponies is pregnant so
hopefully we will get to see the baby this summer. We have been
working on getting everything organized so that we can start to dig
soon. I have also been in the lab analyzing ceramics, which is not my
favorite thing to be doing. However on Monday I am going to beginning
working with the faunal remains for my project. I am excited to get
started.
Today we had lunch at the house of a
man who lives in town and is from Ireland. He is friends with our
professor. He knows the archaeologists in town since he is one of the
few people who live here whose first language is English. He served
pasta, which was really yummy, and mushroom soup. I also got to meet
some of the other students working with another professor who is
here. I have already gotten a lot of practice with my Spanish. I can see it really improving over this summer. I hope to walk into Spanish 203
and blow the socks off of my professor.
I am looking forward to the other
students arriving and moving down into the city. I will then be on a
more regular schedule and get to get a lot of work done. I will keep
you updated on how my lab work is going and how excavating is once we
get started. I hope that everyone's summer has gotten off to a good
start.
This is the view from the house I am currently staying at
This is of the main plaza in Arequipa
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