Spanish classes and ""el misti""
¿Como Estan?
Hi, We are comfortably in Arequipa now, and have been for the past three days. This is apparently the city¨"del sol", however the vancouver weather has been haunting us, and there has been an unprecedented (for this time of year) 5 days of cloud. We have yet to see the spectacular Arequipa views of 5000+ m high volcano, curiously called "el Misti".
Our hostel room in the central downtown area (which is beautiful) is a large, sunny, windowed room which unfortunately is above the inner courtyard of an elusive bar (we have yet to locate the entrance) which repeatedly plays, all night, not only the 70´s and 80´s greatest hits (Total eclipse of the heart... 6+ times in one night), but also the Rocky IV soundtrack (Ollie claims it is III, which is the one with the Russian baddie?). Our party room is also complete with real wood-fire BBQ smoke on Friday nights. We shouldn´t complain, because we do have hot water in the Bathroom (which
we have to go through to retreat to our smokey sleeping place).
We were saying that the town is lovely. It is. There are so many very old stone buildings, now used as markets, hotels, banks, and some stone roads. Not very new to (perhaps) a european, but to a north american it is something amazing.
We are soon to be leaving our hostel though because we are to live with a Peruvian family beginning on monday. It is through the spanish language school where we have been taking lessons for two gruelling days now (muchos verbos! says Ollie, aka Bernardo. Carolina is enjoying the grammar). The family has been warned of our notorious eating habits; our profesor Carlos has given us (as he felt) a much needed lesson on proteinas, carbohidratas, y vitaminas. However, we have been sticking to the vegan thing, and we have
been promised fruit (at least) at our new residence.
We have yet to visit any real sites around here, of which there are many (mostly churches). We did visit Iglesia San Francisco, where we interupted the guide´s siesta. Carolina enjoyed seeing the huge ceramic vino vats (what are monks doing with so much wine?) though she was unable to obtain much info on their contruction. Bernardo enjoyed the 500 year old velvet and silver and gold threaded cloaks which the guide encouraged us to "touch, touch!" The tour was ended with the guide asking for ´tips, please´. We haven´t yet seen the main attraction, Monestaria Santa Catalina, but probably will because Arequipeños seem to be offended that we inexplicably haven´t seen the star attraction.
We probably won´t be in touch by e-mail while we are trying to learn more spanish (we realize now that we basically know none!), for the next week or so.
No signs of ´la tourista´yet.
C&O
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