Sunday, May 20, 2012

Week One


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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