A typical problem: When I'm in one place I'm often wishing I were in another. So I find myself now, sitting in my bedroom at Yale College and wishing I were somewhere else. This may be a symptom of the liberal arts education. How am I supposed to enjoy being here, in the dry shackles of academia, when everything that I study tells me that there is so much more to see in the world? How am I supposed to avoid wishing for elsewhere?
I never thought I would want to visit the middle east, for instance, until I began taking my Islamic art class. Guess what? Islam has such a remarkable visual tradition. Thank goodness there are classes around to teach me about it! Thank goodness that I've been given the distinct privilege to take such classes. But how am I supposed to continue enjoy something like a CLASS once I've been given a little taste of what's out there to be seen, when the professor is hinting at this vast corpus of knowledge available OUT THERE.
The same goes for my Radical Cinemas class. It's such a deeply provocative subject, but how misplaced it feels to be seriously considering radical representations of the plight of the poor when you're in a school that runs on a 30 billion dollar budget, where the walls are sprouting ivy. It's problematic, really.
I fear that I am becoming too suspicious of the establishment. How to solve this?
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Monday, September 7, 2009
Fluxx
I'm glad that's school's started. The summer ended with a weekend at Monica's, which good fun. It was cool hanging out at her place, which was incredibly comfy even though there were a ridiculous number of houseguests there at the same time. Easily my favorite part of the weekend was our ride down the Providence East Bay bike path on Sunday morning. I hadn't gone on a bike in a while, but we had a really lovely ride (quite long and grueling but fun) through some of New England's best urban scenery, arriving at a very old carousel and a private beach where the ground was like sludge but the water rang pure.
I took the Amtrak back to New Haven the day dorms opened. New Haven doesn't ever change much, except that the 'residents,' the people who hang out on street corners and park their bikes curbside, seem especially discontent. Must be the state of the country right now; it's got everyone tied up in knots. That first day back, I zipcar-ed to pick up Kirsty at the airport in Hartford, and we ate burger king and listened to awful music on the way back. That night BF performed, at later on we met up to hang out and watch planet earth. Things got weird after that though- I fear that they've even taken a turn for the worst, but that's another conversation, I think.
I picked up Ming in Newark a couple of days later. That was something of an adventure, in that I had no idea how to get there and found myself quite nervous to be on the toll road with such poor directions. I got kind of lost- but found myself again without too much trouble (and with Ming's help). At her place, her mom made a really delicious lunch of Chinese foods. I hadn't met Ming's mother before, but found it wonderful that the two of them looked so much alike. When all was said and done, we had quite a humorous moment in which, as were leaving, I went to give her mom a hug, but then demurred, and then was awkward, and then hugged her after it was already so very awkward. Good stuff. We made the long ride home, stuck on the highway for some 5 hours, then had Thai food and went to bed.
I love my friends. I love seeing them here, on campus where I shall probably always imagine them, incapable mostly to picture them tucked away in the corners of the world from which they come. We all try to make each other understand something about the place that we come from- I think of how Kelly tries to paint Lancaster (this is something of a shoutout to the only person who read my blog all summer) - yet we never quite get there, as I can probably tell you more about Kelly's Lancaster friends and family than I can say about the town itself. Perhaps these people are the place itself. Hmm...that sounds right.
So if people are what defines a place then Yale is a good place because I'm around good people. I can't deny, though, that everyone's changing bit by bit, and so Yale stands in flux, not getting any worse or better but qualitatively becoming a different experience. It's one that I'm determined to enjoy. I will love them all and I will love Yale because I cannot help but do these two things. But I find myself increasingly unsure of where everything will settle. I excitedly wait to see it play out, as it will do when Autumn sets in and leaves whir down from branch to plush grass.
I took the Amtrak back to New Haven the day dorms opened. New Haven doesn't ever change much, except that the 'residents,' the people who hang out on street corners and park their bikes curbside, seem especially discontent. Must be the state of the country right now; it's got everyone tied up in knots. That first day back, I zipcar-ed to pick up Kirsty at the airport in Hartford, and we ate burger king and listened to awful music on the way back. That night BF performed, at later on we met up to hang out and watch planet earth. Things got weird after that though- I fear that they've even taken a turn for the worst, but that's another conversation, I think.
I picked up Ming in Newark a couple of days later. That was something of an adventure, in that I had no idea how to get there and found myself quite nervous to be on the toll road with such poor directions. I got kind of lost- but found myself again without too much trouble (and with Ming's help). At her place, her mom made a really delicious lunch of Chinese foods. I hadn't met Ming's mother before, but found it wonderful that the two of them looked so much alike. When all was said and done, we had quite a humorous moment in which, as were leaving, I went to give her mom a hug, but then demurred, and then was awkward, and then hugged her after it was already so very awkward. Good stuff. We made the long ride home, stuck on the highway for some 5 hours, then had Thai food and went to bed.
I love my friends. I love seeing them here, on campus where I shall probably always imagine them, incapable mostly to picture them tucked away in the corners of the world from which they come. We all try to make each other understand something about the place that we come from- I think of how Kelly tries to paint Lancaster (this is something of a shoutout to the only person who read my blog all summer) - yet we never quite get there, as I can probably tell you more about Kelly's Lancaster friends and family than I can say about the town itself. Perhaps these people are the place itself. Hmm...that sounds right.
So if people are what defines a place then Yale is a good place because I'm around good people. I can't deny, though, that everyone's changing bit by bit, and so Yale stands in flux, not getting any worse or better but qualitatively becoming a different experience. It's one that I'm determined to enjoy. I will love them all and I will love Yale because I cannot help but do these two things. But I find myself increasingly unsure of where everything will settle. I excitedly wait to see it play out, as it will do when Autumn sets in and leaves whir down from branch to plush grass.
Friday, August 21, 2009
SA post-SA
Since returning from South America, I have spent about a month in San Antonio. I wish I could remember everything that's happened since then, but... I can't. Funny, because I think I could probably repeat every single day of my Peru trip, yet right now I'm having a hard time even thinking of three or four big things to blog about. I guess I'll just have to do my best.
So, I'm not sure whether I've yet confirmed this or not, but my brother is definitely getting married. His fiancée is wonderful and we're all very glad to be welcoming her into our family soon. I guess in terms of things worth mentioning, our family has met for a few events with hers. About two weeks after I got back, the two families had a dinner at Sunny's house- it was alright; we ate fajita tacos and played guitar hero, and it was a decent time really. Then, last weekend, we had a big 'engagement party' at mom's house. That was fun as well, but it turned out to be a big to-do in the classic style, with over a hundred guests, barbecue, tents and a whole lot of work for mom and me. It turned out to be a really nice time, though, and my cousin Josh was back from Drum Corps, having lost over 40 lbs and gained a lot of independence that we haven't really seen out of him before, which was cool.
Um...what else...I really loved the movie Julie and Julia, which I saw with Mayra. Meryl Streep was so good as Julia Child (though the whole 'Julie' side of the story bored me a bit). Mayra and I have also played tennis, which was good, I think, because we're pretty evenly matched, as neither of us is especially good, nor are we terrible. Another nice thing that I almost feel badly about mentioning is that Mayra, as an employee, has a 50% discount at Banana Republic, which I've used to buy a new bag that I could never justify buying at full price. But we had some fun shopping and lunching at Paloma Blanca, which might be one of the best Tex-Mex restaurants in the city, even if it's so expensive that only cash-laden tourists seem to eat there.
I should maybe say something about my job real quick- the McNay was the first museum that I ever visited as a kid, and so it's been kind of wonderful to be able to work there. While I wish that I had gotten the chance to do curatorial interning this summer, or to work with the director, which is what would've happened in Monterrey, it was nevertheless really illuminating to work in the development department. I hadn't given much thought before to that side of museum work. I'm not so silly that I believed museums just sort of ran themselves financially, or off of admission sales, even. But I didn't fully appreciate the amount of momentum that has to come from the development office just to keep the institution alive. This job also gave me some insights into a similar job that I did at the Red Cross the year before- I almost wish that I could go back, now, and bring the RC some of the tools that the museum has, since I think they would really help the Red Cross out a great deal.
The highlight of the San Antonio leg of my trip, without a doubt, was the Los Campesinos! concert in Austin. Damn...there's not really anything like seeing a band that you really, really like play a show. I mean, I've been to other shows where I ended up liking the band by the end, but LC! is probably the one group I've most wanted to see live, and for whatever reason I've tried but it's never worked out before. Leni and I had quite a time with Carl and Pooneh seeing this thing. In some ways, it reminded me of what high school was like, not because we were acting like dumb babies or whatever but because the kind of lax, hanging out and sleeping on couches and watching movies late at night and driving around and all that is more HS for me than college. Even if I do waste plenty of time at Yale. I don't know... I'm not really expressing too well. But I found myself falling into internal habits as well, emotional habits that I had forgotten about. It's something like this knack (for better or worse) that I have for taking a small moment and trying to imagine it stretching to eternity- asking myself, 'can we go on this way forever'? This is something that I used to do alot, junior year most of all, and it's funny to me that I'm doing it again now that I'm going to be a junior. Last time, the answer was, 'no', this time, I hope to skip the huge upset that I caused me but we'll see. Mostly, this has to do with love I think. But by now I should know better than to fall in love with a few nice hours.
I'm worried that this will seem cryptic. What it boils down to is that I used to be in love, and then I it was over, and now I'm not so sure. But rather than falling in love with a person, I've fallen in love with a time of my life, I think (though this time is sort of best epitomized by a person) and I ask myself whether loving the person will make the time last forever... and the best way to ensure that it won't is not to be loved back. So there it is, plain as day.
Sheesh, San Antonio is rough on me.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Home Again, Home Again
I left Huaraz for Lima, to spend the last couple days shopping for souvenirs, enjoying for the last time Peru's delicious Ceviche, and hanging out on the hammock at the backpacker's family house. What a wonderful few days, spent lying in the sun, strolling the Malecon, or tucking in at the Rincón Chami. I walked from Miraflores to Barranco on Sunday, a peaceful stroll to outdoor food markets where I ate Ají de Gallina, one of my favorite Peruvian dishes, for the last time. It was a lovely walk, all along the cliffsides overlooking beaches. It gave me the opportunity to think back on my trip, draw some conclusions about what it's like to be by yourself and how much I've grown (I'm wary of writing that melodramatic travelogue about how much I've changed, but suffice it to say that this trip did change me in some way- it had to, or else I would've really hated my experience).
Anyway, I'm back in SA now with a much better understanding of ancient Andean art and architecture, and with some alterations in my understanding of modern Latin America. I hadn't given much thought to the Andes before, but from now on I think I'll have to think about the Andes when I think about South America- turns out they dominate a whole lot more of the continent than I previously realized. I guess thats the kind of thing that you could learn from an Atlas, but it's more surprising than that, because I'm having to accommodate this huge region into what I already thought was more or less a pretty sophisticated understanding of Latin America. Hmmm. I guess you never know what you think you know.
Um, anyway. San Antonio. Right now I'm at the McNay, doing my internship, so naturally I have plenty of time to write my blog. I guess I'm getting pretty excited about going back to school. A few things that make this especially exciting: 1. I got a Zipcar account, so more mobility = more FUN. 2. New job at the African Art department of the YUAG. More non-western art = more FUN. 3. English seminar on Coetzee. More Disgrace = more FUN. 4. Friends' summer stories are FUN too. 5. BF. More tapatío = more FUN.
Also, Monica Garcia (a close friend from High School) and I have officially committed to spend New Years in Mexico, DF!!! I know, I've been there 3 times since college started, but I can't help but feel excited anyway! I love the capital so much and busing it there is bound to make for an incredible holiday. What's more, we have also committed to spending three kings' day in Mexico, though by that point we hope to be in one of the provincial towns, possibly Xalapa, which I've heard is one of the most beautiful small cities in the country. Oh I'm so excited!!! And if anyone wants to join up for some good old holiday-time fun in Mexico, they're free to join us! All in all, we're thinking of doing from December 26 - January 7 (or 8), starting in Oaxaca and ending in Xalapa, with (like I said) New Years in Mexico DF, and we're going on the cheap- 13 dollars or less / night for lodging, $10 or less/day for food, and $100 for sightseeing, plus the cost of transportation (all buses).
Anyway, that's about it for now. San Antonio is on track to have the hottest summer in history, with temperatures reaching 110 degrees for 40 days in a row now. Good thing we have all that civic charm to make up for hellish temperatures.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Chavin, Huaraz, and darling Gilda Moreno
I never intended to spend much time in Huaraz. I´m still glad that that was the plan, but I ended up having an awesome time while I was there!
I got in really early in the morning and then quickly found a bus headed to Chavin de Huantar. On the bus ride, I met a lady from Lima named Netti who really, really loved to talk. Behind us sat this lady from Montreal and this girl named Sarah from the US. At our lunch stop, the four of us sat together and the Lima lady recommended that I order something called Pachamanca, which is a really cool dish, mostly because they prepare it in such a bizarre way. To make Pachamanca, you dig a whole underground and lay coals, creating a sort of subterranean oven, and then you stick three different kinds of meats, a tamale, a humita (another kind of tamale) and some potatoes and avas in there, and let it cook for like ten hours. What comes out is heavenly! Although I really only ate the tamales and chicken.
Chavin is such an amazing site! It´s now easily one of my favorites, partly because its really fun to visit. Chavin is...i don´t know... interactive, I guess, because it has all of these tunnels that they dramatically call ¨labyrinths¨ to wander around in, and because the whole experience of approaching the Lanzon, a giant sculpture at the heart of these socalled labyrinths, is so otherworldly. As if that weren´t surreal enough, on the wall at the beautiful new site museum (funded by the Japanese embassy) was a picture and biography of Professor Burger, who is listed as a Chavin Expert! Also, it was really neat to see the beautifully sculpted tenoned heads in person.
Chavin really put me in the mood to see some more ruins, so that American girl and I decided to take a day hike the next day for some Wari ruins about 10 Km outside of Huaraz. Wilkawain is probably the most throroughly reconstructed of any site that Ive encountered in Peru, as it looks completely intact. On the downside, they added some stairs for visitor access that can be really confusing, since they tried to make it look as if these were part of the original construction, but again, it was fun to just sort of climb into the ruins and feel our way around in the dark rooms.
After visiting this site, there was still one more about 1 km up the hill, so we headed there. On the way over, though, we heard live music and found that quite odd, since we were more or less in the middle of nowhere. As we approached the site, the music got louder and louder, until we realized that there was a little blonde lady in traditional dress dancing while her band played their instruments in the background. Intrigued, we stood at a good distance watching and snapping photos, and I soon realized that there was a lady holding a bounce card to give the singer good light and a guy with a camera... they were making a music video! And not long after we hid ourselves (we thought we had done it well) to watch, little Gilda Moreno called out to us to come over and dance with her in her music video! hahaha so we left our bags on this rock and went over to stand by her, and she just told us to follow her rhythm and look at her now and then when it matched the lyrics (kind of hard to anticipate actually) but we did our best and it was the craziest experience. Afterwards, she talked to us for a while, and she was so nice and insisted that we stick around for the rest of the shoot, so we went with the crew as they changed locations and this time posed as angered lovers behind her while she pretended to intrude in our otherwise peaceful relationship. Then the cameraman did closeups of our faces to get our eyes, and this little lady, Gilda, was just such a sweetheart with all her crazy costumes and dramatic flair...I dunnno, it was one of the best things that has happened on the whole trip!
So after our brush with celebrity, we finally visited the other ruins, and then headed back down the mountain to Huaraz. On the way, we got sic ed by dogs for trying to take pictures of sheep, saw a typical Andean woman doing her laundry naked in her back yard, and then got chased by dogs again, but it was great scenery and a nice walk. I only have twenty something seconds left...so I guess thats it for now!
I got in really early in the morning and then quickly found a bus headed to Chavin de Huantar. On the bus ride, I met a lady from Lima named Netti who really, really loved to talk. Behind us sat this lady from Montreal and this girl named Sarah from the US. At our lunch stop, the four of us sat together and the Lima lady recommended that I order something called Pachamanca, which is a really cool dish, mostly because they prepare it in such a bizarre way. To make Pachamanca, you dig a whole underground and lay coals, creating a sort of subterranean oven, and then you stick three different kinds of meats, a tamale, a humita (another kind of tamale) and some potatoes and avas in there, and let it cook for like ten hours. What comes out is heavenly! Although I really only ate the tamales and chicken.
Chavin is such an amazing site! It´s now easily one of my favorites, partly because its really fun to visit. Chavin is...i don´t know... interactive, I guess, because it has all of these tunnels that they dramatically call ¨labyrinths¨ to wander around in, and because the whole experience of approaching the Lanzon, a giant sculpture at the heart of these socalled labyrinths, is so otherworldly. As if that weren´t surreal enough, on the wall at the beautiful new site museum (funded by the Japanese embassy) was a picture and biography of Professor Burger, who is listed as a Chavin Expert! Also, it was really neat to see the beautifully sculpted tenoned heads in person.
Chavin really put me in the mood to see some more ruins, so that American girl and I decided to take a day hike the next day for some Wari ruins about 10 Km outside of Huaraz. Wilkawain is probably the most throroughly reconstructed of any site that Ive encountered in Peru, as it looks completely intact. On the downside, they added some stairs for visitor access that can be really confusing, since they tried to make it look as if these were part of the original construction, but again, it was fun to just sort of climb into the ruins and feel our way around in the dark rooms.
After visiting this site, there was still one more about 1 km up the hill, so we headed there. On the way over, though, we heard live music and found that quite odd, since we were more or less in the middle of nowhere. As we approached the site, the music got louder and louder, until we realized that there was a little blonde lady in traditional dress dancing while her band played their instruments in the background. Intrigued, we stood at a good distance watching and snapping photos, and I soon realized that there was a lady holding a bounce card to give the singer good light and a guy with a camera... they were making a music video! And not long after we hid ourselves (we thought we had done it well) to watch, little Gilda Moreno called out to us to come over and dance with her in her music video! hahaha so we left our bags on this rock and went over to stand by her, and she just told us to follow her rhythm and look at her now and then when it matched the lyrics (kind of hard to anticipate actually) but we did our best and it was the craziest experience. Afterwards, she talked to us for a while, and she was so nice and insisted that we stick around for the rest of the shoot, so we went with the crew as they changed locations and this time posed as angered lovers behind her while she pretended to intrude in our otherwise peaceful relationship. Then the cameraman did closeups of our faces to get our eyes, and this little lady, Gilda, was just such a sweetheart with all her crazy costumes and dramatic flair...I dunnno, it was one of the best things that has happened on the whole trip!
So after our brush with celebrity, we finally visited the other ruins, and then headed back down the mountain to Huaraz. On the way, we got sic ed by dogs for trying to take pictures of sheep, saw a typical Andean woman doing her laundry naked in her back yard, and then got chased by dogs again, but it was great scenery and a nice walk. I only have twenty something seconds left...so I guess thats it for now!
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Cajamarca
So, the Cajamarca segment of the trip only lasts 2 and a half days, but for the sake of not getting behind Ill quickly make a note about it.
The guidebook that the Canadian girl gave me calls Cajamarca {a hidden gem, like Cuzco before the tourists came,} and I think thats about right. There are tourists, actually, but most of them are from Lima. Apparently, Cajamarca is like Perus jealously guarded secret, the place where all the capitaleños go to see the highlands for a weekend without having to put up with all the gringos.
Oops, too bad. Im here too...haha
So anyway, Cajamarca falls behind its southern cousin in the sense that theres not much to see in terms of tourist attractions. Yesterday, I got the see the Cuarto de Rescate, a room that Atahualpa filled up with gold for a ransom, but the Spanish naturally ripped him off, taking his gold and killing him anyway. Also, there is a site called Cumbemayo, with some really beautiful water canals that are naturally attributed to religious practice. A couple of smallish museums too. Once Id sort of wrapped up these activities, I went shopping for some gifts for the fam.
What Cajamarca lacks in tourist attractions, though, it definitely makes up for with charm and good cooking. Cajamarca has a lovely plaza, my favorite after the one in Arequipa, and a beautiful, verdant mountain setting. Streets are lined in Cobblestone, colonial style architecture is the order of the day, and the balconies so ubiquitous in Peru here find their best incarnation. Cajamarca is also the dairy capital of Peru, which is so lovely... today my cafe con leche was so very fresh (though Im wondering whether it was ever pasteurized?) and the cheese that went with the bread divine. There are also Humitas, tamales made of super sweet corn. On the night that I arrived, I went to dinner at a charming Italian restuarant called om gri, with a staff of two, a dinner setting of only three tables, and what may be the best ravioli that Ive ever eaten. The owner, Tito, talked to me the entire time that he was cooking. What a character! He told me all about his life studying cooking throughout Europe, his illegitimate children, and praised me for liking Lima (many visitors dont) and for eating at Astrid y Gaston, which he said was an investment. He did this whole number about how food is an expression of the pueblo and how even international cooking has a place in Peruvian culture... what a guy!
Getting to Cajamarca was yet another adventure. The bus left at 4 am, at which time I discovered that I was feeling very, very ill. I spent the first six hours of the bus ride about as sick as I had been in Chiclayo, and, at one point, was forced to use an outhouse (a decidedly unforgettable experience). A little boy sat by me on the bus eating peanuts and throwing the shells onto the ground...cute for about five minutes until he started spitting up. As if that wasnt enough, a typical highlander lady got on the bus cuddling her baby llama in her arms and sat right across from me. All the while, my heads burning up and my stomach is doing hurdles. Oh, what a ride!
Anyhow, there are a few things going on that have nothing to do with my trip, but which are interesting nonetheless. It looks like my older brother might be getting married. At least, my dad told me so yesterday on the phone. Yesterday he turned 30. Apparently, he planned to ask his girlfriend to marry him on the same day. Anyway, I wonder how it turned out. That he had intentions to get married is all news to me...I guess I shouldve talked to him more while I was actually in San Antonio, because this story is pretty much coming out of nowhere. But if he did ask her to marry him, I hope that she said yes, because all of this time I have thought my brother wasnt really a big one for commitment so this would be a huge step for him. Plus, Ive been thinking lately that it would be fun to go to a wedding.
Also, I think I have an idea for a writing project when I get home. Its sort of an elaboration of the play that I wrote last year when I was in Buenos Aires. Right now, I wish I had a means to sit down and just write, because I really cant say whether Ill have the same kind of enthusiasm once Im back in the US. Anyway, I suppose Ill just have to wait and see.
Huaraz tomorrow. My last stop before I go back to Lima, and then (I cant really believe Im saying it) Im headed back home.
The guidebook that the Canadian girl gave me calls Cajamarca {a hidden gem, like Cuzco before the tourists came,} and I think thats about right. There are tourists, actually, but most of them are from Lima. Apparently, Cajamarca is like Perus jealously guarded secret, the place where all the capitaleños go to see the highlands for a weekend without having to put up with all the gringos.
Oops, too bad. Im here too...haha
So anyway, Cajamarca falls behind its southern cousin in the sense that theres not much to see in terms of tourist attractions. Yesterday, I got the see the Cuarto de Rescate, a room that Atahualpa filled up with gold for a ransom, but the Spanish naturally ripped him off, taking his gold and killing him anyway. Also, there is a site called Cumbemayo, with some really beautiful water canals that are naturally attributed to religious practice. A couple of smallish museums too. Once Id sort of wrapped up these activities, I went shopping for some gifts for the fam.
What Cajamarca lacks in tourist attractions, though, it definitely makes up for with charm and good cooking. Cajamarca has a lovely plaza, my favorite after the one in Arequipa, and a beautiful, verdant mountain setting. Streets are lined in Cobblestone, colonial style architecture is the order of the day, and the balconies so ubiquitous in Peru here find their best incarnation. Cajamarca is also the dairy capital of Peru, which is so lovely... today my cafe con leche was so very fresh (though Im wondering whether it was ever pasteurized?) and the cheese that went with the bread divine. There are also Humitas, tamales made of super sweet corn. On the night that I arrived, I went to dinner at a charming Italian restuarant called om gri, with a staff of two, a dinner setting of only three tables, and what may be the best ravioli that Ive ever eaten. The owner, Tito, talked to me the entire time that he was cooking. What a character! He told me all about his life studying cooking throughout Europe, his illegitimate children, and praised me for liking Lima (many visitors dont) and for eating at Astrid y Gaston, which he said was an investment. He did this whole number about how food is an expression of the pueblo and how even international cooking has a place in Peruvian culture... what a guy!
Getting to Cajamarca was yet another adventure. The bus left at 4 am, at which time I discovered that I was feeling very, very ill. I spent the first six hours of the bus ride about as sick as I had been in Chiclayo, and, at one point, was forced to use an outhouse (a decidedly unforgettable experience). A little boy sat by me on the bus eating peanuts and throwing the shells onto the ground...cute for about five minutes until he started spitting up. As if that wasnt enough, a typical highlander lady got on the bus cuddling her baby llama in her arms and sat right across from me. All the while, my heads burning up and my stomach is doing hurdles. Oh, what a ride!
Anyhow, there are a few things going on that have nothing to do with my trip, but which are interesting nonetheless. It looks like my older brother might be getting married. At least, my dad told me so yesterday on the phone. Yesterday he turned 30. Apparently, he planned to ask his girlfriend to marry him on the same day. Anyway, I wonder how it turned out. That he had intentions to get married is all news to me...I guess I shouldve talked to him more while I was actually in San Antonio, because this story is pretty much coming out of nowhere. But if he did ask her to marry him, I hope that she said yes, because all of this time I have thought my brother wasnt really a big one for commitment so this would be a huge step for him. Plus, Ive been thinking lately that it would be fun to go to a wedding.
Also, I think I have an idea for a writing project when I get home. Its sort of an elaboration of the play that I wrote last year when I was in Buenos Aires. Right now, I wish I had a means to sit down and just write, because I really cant say whether Ill have the same kind of enthusiasm once Im back in the US. Anyway, I suppose Ill just have to wait and see.
Huaraz tomorrow. My last stop before I go back to Lima, and then (I cant really believe Im saying it) Im headed back home.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Chiclayo and Chachapoyas
Hmmm...it´s kinda hard for me to make a blog entry about Chiclayo, because now that I think about it, I didn´t go out of my way at all to experience it. When I was there, I really didn´t like the city, and I didn´t even find the ruins all that impressive or feel particularly attached to the local archaeology, even though it was much the same as that of Trujillo, which I loved. I don´t really know how to account for it. So I guess I´ll just quickly summarize the days.
So...the first day I got to Chiclayo, the cabbie dropped me off at the wrong hotel, but not only that, he went inside to collect commission because it´s a popular scam for cab drivers to take their foreign passengers to the wrong place. So, I go inside and realize I´m not where I´m supposed to be...but the guy behind the desk was pretty cool about it and even told me how to get to the correct place.
I´m running sort of low on money, and the ruins around Chiclayo are pretty far from the city center, so that taking a combi or collectivo of some kind really isn´t a viable option. In place of that, I decided to book a tour on the first day, in order to get a pretty good idea of where everything was. With the tour, we went to Huaca Rejada, where they found the senor of Sipan and something like twenty other burials. It´s a great story, but it actually makes for a pretty unimpressive visit. After this, we lunched (I ate delicious arroz con pato) and then went to another museum, where all of the Senors gold is stored. This was considerably more impressive, and I especially liked these giant gold and turquoise earrings that the senor had in sets. The last stop of the day was Tucume, which is basically a huge valley of pyramids, though they only actually allow you to visit two of them, which is pretty lame. But we climbed up, got a nice view of some coastal communities, and then left. Maybe I didn´t have a great time at these ruins, but on the upside I did meet some other travelers, which is a much bigger challenge on the largely unvisited north coast than in the southern highland towns (or in Lima for that matter). On the tour, I talked a lot to this lady whos actually from Lima, which was interesting because Limeans tend to have quite radical views of the provinces, I think. Also, there was a couple from Denmark doing an around the world...or maybe just around SAm, I can´t remember. Anyway, after the tour was over, I met up with this Danish couple and we went to Chiclayos newish, American style mall, called the Real Plaza. After a dinner chock full of fresh vegetables (just what we all wanted), we went for Starbucks, and then to see a movie, Knowing, at the mall´s theater. I quite liked the movie, actually. I mean, I know that it´s not a great movie or whatever, but I enjoyed myself.
The next day I was sick as a dog. Woke up at like 5 am and spent the rest of the day in bed, watching American imported TV and wondering if I was going to die.
Skipping over that unpleaseantness, I decided while I was ill that I hated Chiclayo and never wanted to return. In fact, I fell into quite a slump, probably because I had been in bed all day. I got really frustrated and wished that my trip was over and all the rest of it. So on the next, and last, day of my stay in that city, I decided to skip any sort of attempt to be a responsible student of PreColumbian civilization and I went to Chiclayo´s Mercado Modelo, inside of which is a witches market where you can buy ingredients for potions and get cured by a shaman. To get there, though, you first have to walk by the city´s produce market and butchers. Basically, it´s this huge, semi outdoor complex underneath tents. From the second I walked into this thing, I felt pretty nervous, because everyone was definitely staring at me (like I said, not a whole lot of foreigners up there, especially not to see something like THAT) and because once you really get inside of this complex you realize how huge it is, and it becomes quite a claustrophobic experience. I just tried to rush past the vegetable part, but I realized I really had no idea where the witches market was. So I past the vegetables and then ended up with the meats...which was really unfortunate. The stench was so ungodly, like everything was just rotting, and the sight was completely bizarre, which huge sides of cow sitting on a table next to this ridiculously long knife...I don´t even know. I doñt actually have a weak stomach, believe it or not, but I thought I was going to throw up in the middle of this market...which probably would´ve blended in perfectly with the general atmosphere, honestly. So straight back to the back I headed, and after some searching found the witches market, which wasn´t that interesting after all.
So by this point I´m pretty depressed, and I start wishing I were Mexico like I had planned to be ALL YEAR LONG before that stupid swine flu and the tec de monterrey cancelling the program and the state department fucking me over and all that. I had mostly stopped thinking about that, of course, because why bother? Anyway, so I leave the market and head back to that American style mall, not knowing what else to do, and I buy a ticket to see Up, the only movie showing at the time. And I know this probably sounds silly but this is how it happened : Seeing that movie actually made me renew my resolve not to lose the spirit of this adventure, to experience the best of South America in this once in a lifetime setup that Ive got going on here. There´s this sequence at the beginning where the couple is dreaming of visiting South America, but real life keeps getting in the way and the wife dies before they ever get the chance to visit. Their dreaming, though, really reminded me of everything that I love about Latin America, about the fact that Ive spent a whole LOT of my life thinking about and trying to understand and wanting to be in this part of the world. I don´t know... I regret now that I more or less wasted two days feeling bad for myself and missing out on whatever Chiclayo had to offer (which must be SOMETHING) but in the end I think what matters is that I conciously decided to enjoy what little time left I have on this trip. Which really is very little time, actually, considering how much I still want to do. Maybe Peru doesn´t exactly fit in with the way I´ve thought about this part of the world...but thats the point, right? I dont know...but when I was thinking all of this I just sat in the theater and cried, and cried, and cried, though I really can say I left renewed. I should add that there´s something in there, too, about strength in loneliness, but I can´t quite put my finger on what that is yet.
As it turns out, there could have been no better introduction to Chachapoyas, the tiny capital of the department of Amazonas. As I blog now, I´m sitting high up in the cloud forests, in the Ceja de Selva, where the warm air of the jungle hits the mountains and creates jungle like vegetation. It´s so beautiful! I can´t believe that I only get to spend two days here, but like I said, this trips almost over so Ive got to get moving.
On my first day in Chacha, I arrived at my beautiful hotel at 5 am, slept until 11, and then went to the travel agency to book a tour for Kuelap. At the agency, the guy told me that I could also, if I wished, have a visit to Gocta, the third highest waterfall in the world, just an hours drive outside (and in the jungle). With my newfound sense of adventure, I thought that it would be a great idea! So I went to Gocta and began the hike. It was far more difficult than I anticipated. First, to get to the falls, you have to hike 2 and a half hours each way, and the hike is constant up and down climbing (though it seemed, in both directions, like it was mostly up). Also, the Amazon has been having a lot of rain recently, so the road, which was not paved in ANY form whatsoever, had turned completely to mud. It was disgusting....I had mud on my pants, up to my knees, sinking in over my shoes, and all the while I´m just trying not to fall. And the whole way there, the campesinos with there lame mules were making fun of me because I was single! (It was explained to me later that they´re far more accustomed to seeing a couples set up). Anyway, I was mostly unperturbed by the mud and the peasants, though the climbing was rough. But in the end the falls were beautiful, and I got some nice photos, and when my exhausted body finally made it back to town I was happy I had done the trek.
Today I went to Kuelap. It´s a really crazy site...since we´re in such a remote location Chacha has had its own unique development, so it looks nothing like any other Andean site, what with round buildings and all. But anyways, I enjoyed that, and I ate some delicious cecina de res, an Amazonian dish a lot like jerkey.
Tomorrow, I´m off for quite a trip. At 4am, the bus leaves for Celendin, a rather treacherous ride, actually, because it goes on some pretty dangerous highways on, of course, cliffsides. From Celendin, it´s another three hours to Cajamarca, which is my main destination. I could avoid this kind of trek by going BACK to Chiclayo and trying to catch a same day bus to Cajamarca, but this could potentially take twice as long, and plus I have such ugly feelings towards Chiclayo that I´d much rather take this grueling 14 hour andean highway trek than backtrack to stupid Chiclayo and potentially overnight. Ugh. Anyway, this post has gone way too long. But as it comes to a close it´s just all so exciting and I just can´t help it!
So...the first day I got to Chiclayo, the cabbie dropped me off at the wrong hotel, but not only that, he went inside to collect commission because it´s a popular scam for cab drivers to take their foreign passengers to the wrong place. So, I go inside and realize I´m not where I´m supposed to be...but the guy behind the desk was pretty cool about it and even told me how to get to the correct place.
I´m running sort of low on money, and the ruins around Chiclayo are pretty far from the city center, so that taking a combi or collectivo of some kind really isn´t a viable option. In place of that, I decided to book a tour on the first day, in order to get a pretty good idea of where everything was. With the tour, we went to Huaca Rejada, where they found the senor of Sipan and something like twenty other burials. It´s a great story, but it actually makes for a pretty unimpressive visit. After this, we lunched (I ate delicious arroz con pato) and then went to another museum, where all of the Senors gold is stored. This was considerably more impressive, and I especially liked these giant gold and turquoise earrings that the senor had in sets. The last stop of the day was Tucume, which is basically a huge valley of pyramids, though they only actually allow you to visit two of them, which is pretty lame. But we climbed up, got a nice view of some coastal communities, and then left. Maybe I didn´t have a great time at these ruins, but on the upside I did meet some other travelers, which is a much bigger challenge on the largely unvisited north coast than in the southern highland towns (or in Lima for that matter). On the tour, I talked a lot to this lady whos actually from Lima, which was interesting because Limeans tend to have quite radical views of the provinces, I think. Also, there was a couple from Denmark doing an around the world...or maybe just around SAm, I can´t remember. Anyway, after the tour was over, I met up with this Danish couple and we went to Chiclayos newish, American style mall, called the Real Plaza. After a dinner chock full of fresh vegetables (just what we all wanted), we went for Starbucks, and then to see a movie, Knowing, at the mall´s theater. I quite liked the movie, actually. I mean, I know that it´s not a great movie or whatever, but I enjoyed myself.
The next day I was sick as a dog. Woke up at like 5 am and spent the rest of the day in bed, watching American imported TV and wondering if I was going to die.
Skipping over that unpleaseantness, I decided while I was ill that I hated Chiclayo and never wanted to return. In fact, I fell into quite a slump, probably because I had been in bed all day. I got really frustrated and wished that my trip was over and all the rest of it. So on the next, and last, day of my stay in that city, I decided to skip any sort of attempt to be a responsible student of PreColumbian civilization and I went to Chiclayo´s Mercado Modelo, inside of which is a witches market where you can buy ingredients for potions and get cured by a shaman. To get there, though, you first have to walk by the city´s produce market and butchers. Basically, it´s this huge, semi outdoor complex underneath tents. From the second I walked into this thing, I felt pretty nervous, because everyone was definitely staring at me (like I said, not a whole lot of foreigners up there, especially not to see something like THAT) and because once you really get inside of this complex you realize how huge it is, and it becomes quite a claustrophobic experience. I just tried to rush past the vegetable part, but I realized I really had no idea where the witches market was. So I past the vegetables and then ended up with the meats...which was really unfortunate. The stench was so ungodly, like everything was just rotting, and the sight was completely bizarre, which huge sides of cow sitting on a table next to this ridiculously long knife...I don´t even know. I doñt actually have a weak stomach, believe it or not, but I thought I was going to throw up in the middle of this market...which probably would´ve blended in perfectly with the general atmosphere, honestly. So straight back to the back I headed, and after some searching found the witches market, which wasn´t that interesting after all.
So by this point I´m pretty depressed, and I start wishing I were Mexico like I had planned to be ALL YEAR LONG before that stupid swine flu and the tec de monterrey cancelling the program and the state department fucking me over and all that. I had mostly stopped thinking about that, of course, because why bother? Anyway, so I leave the market and head back to that American style mall, not knowing what else to do, and I buy a ticket to see Up, the only movie showing at the time. And I know this probably sounds silly but this is how it happened : Seeing that movie actually made me renew my resolve not to lose the spirit of this adventure, to experience the best of South America in this once in a lifetime setup that Ive got going on here. There´s this sequence at the beginning where the couple is dreaming of visiting South America, but real life keeps getting in the way and the wife dies before they ever get the chance to visit. Their dreaming, though, really reminded me of everything that I love about Latin America, about the fact that Ive spent a whole LOT of my life thinking about and trying to understand and wanting to be in this part of the world. I don´t know... I regret now that I more or less wasted two days feeling bad for myself and missing out on whatever Chiclayo had to offer (which must be SOMETHING) but in the end I think what matters is that I conciously decided to enjoy what little time left I have on this trip. Which really is very little time, actually, considering how much I still want to do. Maybe Peru doesn´t exactly fit in with the way I´ve thought about this part of the world...but thats the point, right? I dont know...but when I was thinking all of this I just sat in the theater and cried, and cried, and cried, though I really can say I left renewed. I should add that there´s something in there, too, about strength in loneliness, but I can´t quite put my finger on what that is yet.
As it turns out, there could have been no better introduction to Chachapoyas, the tiny capital of the department of Amazonas. As I blog now, I´m sitting high up in the cloud forests, in the Ceja de Selva, where the warm air of the jungle hits the mountains and creates jungle like vegetation. It´s so beautiful! I can´t believe that I only get to spend two days here, but like I said, this trips almost over so Ive got to get moving.
On my first day in Chacha, I arrived at my beautiful hotel at 5 am, slept until 11, and then went to the travel agency to book a tour for Kuelap. At the agency, the guy told me that I could also, if I wished, have a visit to Gocta, the third highest waterfall in the world, just an hours drive outside (and in the jungle). With my newfound sense of adventure, I thought that it would be a great idea! So I went to Gocta and began the hike. It was far more difficult than I anticipated. First, to get to the falls, you have to hike 2 and a half hours each way, and the hike is constant up and down climbing (though it seemed, in both directions, like it was mostly up). Also, the Amazon has been having a lot of rain recently, so the road, which was not paved in ANY form whatsoever, had turned completely to mud. It was disgusting....I had mud on my pants, up to my knees, sinking in over my shoes, and all the while I´m just trying not to fall. And the whole way there, the campesinos with there lame mules were making fun of me because I was single! (It was explained to me later that they´re far more accustomed to seeing a couples set up). Anyway, I was mostly unperturbed by the mud and the peasants, though the climbing was rough. But in the end the falls were beautiful, and I got some nice photos, and when my exhausted body finally made it back to town I was happy I had done the trek.
Today I went to Kuelap. It´s a really crazy site...since we´re in such a remote location Chacha has had its own unique development, so it looks nothing like any other Andean site, what with round buildings and all. But anyways, I enjoyed that, and I ate some delicious cecina de res, an Amazonian dish a lot like jerkey.
Tomorrow, I´m off for quite a trip. At 4am, the bus leaves for Celendin, a rather treacherous ride, actually, because it goes on some pretty dangerous highways on, of course, cliffsides. From Celendin, it´s another three hours to Cajamarca, which is my main destination. I could avoid this kind of trek by going BACK to Chiclayo and trying to catch a same day bus to Cajamarca, but this could potentially take twice as long, and plus I have such ugly feelings towards Chiclayo that I´d much rather take this grueling 14 hour andean highway trek than backtrack to stupid Chiclayo and potentially overnight. Ugh. Anyway, this post has gone way too long. But as it comes to a close it´s just all so exciting and I just can´t help it!
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Trujillo
I love Trujillo!
The first day, I went to some nice museums, and at one of them, there was this REALLY hot tour guide. But that should come as no surprise because many of the men in Trujillo are quite attractive (well, considering). Um...I need to start blogging more because I definitely can´t remember what else I did that day. Probably ate some Chifa.... oh, and read Kafka on the Shore, which may not be an especially great piece of literature, though it makes for good travel reading.
The second day I remember pretty well, though, because I went to CHAN CHAN. Unless you are really familiar with Peruvian archaeology, I bet you´ve never heard of it. But its AWESOME. Such a huge complex, with beautiful relief of seagulls and wish, and undulating lines representing waves. There´s even a freshwater (apparently in peru they say sweetwater) lake in the middle of the complex. The guide had a strong accent, so I had a hard time following some of what she was saying, but I´m pretty sure the lake was man made by tapping into the water table..or something like that. Anyway, it´s impressive, the whole site, whether or not I´m giving it justice. And then after visiting the city of Chan Chan and the site museum, I went to the Huaca el Dragon, or the Huaca Arco Iris (maybe I like that name more), which is basically a pyramid group in the middle of what is now Trujillo´s largest ghetto, La Esperanza. I paid a cab driver to wait for me outside the ruins, because I really didn´t want to find my way out of La Esperanza on my own. Inside, though, are pyramids with even more impressive reliefs showing what looks like two dragons facing each other, dancing under a rainbow. Totally Peru´s gayest icon.
Well, Peru´s gayest pyramid and the north´s biggest ghetto had nothing on the next day´s trip to the Huaca de la Luna. I arrived again by cab, as Ms. Vanini of the hostel advised, and this time, we went through a much poorer town, well outside of Trujillo. Off the highway, the cab turned onto a dirt road, and we went through a really, really poor community. On the side of the road flowed slowly ran water like sludge though a filthy canal, and the houses, made of mud, looked much worse than in the area from the day before. I have been though some pretty rough areas, but this time, even in the cab, I was praying the whole time that the cab just didn´t get stuck on this dirt road, or break down or anything like that. At last at the Huaca, the frescoes were really beautiful, the most interesting of which depicted angry spiders. On the way out, though, I got to the exit and there were ABSOLUTELY NO CABS. Like, anywhere. So I waited...for an hour. And none came! All the cabs that were there were with tourists, who were being paid to wait, like I had the day before. After a very long wait, the man in charge of the grounds came up to me and told me I had better take the bus back to Trujillo, because he didn´t think any cabs would come that day. So after about half an hour more this broke ass blue bus came and picked me up. At that point it was empty, but after driving through the neighborhood for a while, we picked up basically an entire school of children, a couple pregnant ladies, and some farmers (I saw someone plowing a field with an ox...who left his companions and got on the bus too). Anyway, so that was a crazy bus ride back, and it took forever but eventually we got to Trujillo.
Oh, okay, so then later that night these guys tried to scam me. I was walking down the street to the grocery store to buy some kind of improvised meal for the evening, when this guy who called himself ´Fabio´and his friend started talking to me, at first about my earring, and then about Trujillo nightlife. And so I was like, okay, nortenos arent especially friendly so its nice that they´re talking to me. And then he starts telling me how hes studying English and he is supposed to ask a native English speaker some questions for his class to make a prsentation. Education, of course, being a weak spot for me, I agree to go have coffee with him and his friend to answer some questions about what I think of Peru. Once we get there, he does ask me these ´questions´ (things like...how many countries have you been in and what do you think of Peru´s contamination?). Um...anyway. Then he and his friend pull out a 100 soles billl and keep trying to get me to change it for them. And I insist that I can´t...but he keeps on going. And then suggests that we go to the ATM so I can pull out dollars to trade with him, since the next day, supposedly, he´s going to Ecuador, where they have dollars. I tell him I can´t do that, because I have no ATM card on me...which I didn´t. But anyway, we keep going this way for quite some time, even with him getting quite visibly angry, until at last he and his friend leave me with my coffee, to go ´try at the bank´, and the whole time I´m feeling silly because the whole thing had sort of felt like a set up from the beginning. But at the same time I had more or less conciously decided to go along with it, just to see what would happen, knowing that I didn´t really have anything to lose (in my wallet were no actual cards, just about US 20 bucks in cash). But once I left the cafe I thought to myself that it´s quite tricky telling good people from bad ones, and the thought left me really really sad.
Hmmmmm. I really loved Trujillo anyway. The city really has a sense of class. The beautiful wooden balconies, like those in Lima but better maintained, give the city a real sense of class. Trujillo has tree lined streets and good food. I learned on my last night that there´s not much in the way of night life...I went to one straight Pena and two gay discos and all were closed down(the gay discos because of public outrage, the taxista told me) so I ended the night by eating a hamburger at a stand in the middle of a quiet neighborhood. The next day, though, when I travelled to Chiclayo, I immediately missed Trujillo SOO much.
Trujillo´s beautiful; Chiclayo sucks; Chachapoyas tomorrow. AAAAH!!!
The first day, I went to some nice museums, and at one of them, there was this REALLY hot tour guide. But that should come as no surprise because many of the men in Trujillo are quite attractive (well, considering). Um...I need to start blogging more because I definitely can´t remember what else I did that day. Probably ate some Chifa.... oh, and read Kafka on the Shore, which may not be an especially great piece of literature, though it makes for good travel reading.
The second day I remember pretty well, though, because I went to CHAN CHAN. Unless you are really familiar with Peruvian archaeology, I bet you´ve never heard of it. But its AWESOME. Such a huge complex, with beautiful relief of seagulls and wish, and undulating lines representing waves. There´s even a freshwater (apparently in peru they say sweetwater) lake in the middle of the complex. The guide had a strong accent, so I had a hard time following some of what she was saying, but I´m pretty sure the lake was man made by tapping into the water table..or something like that. Anyway, it´s impressive, the whole site, whether or not I´m giving it justice. And then after visiting the city of Chan Chan and the site museum, I went to the Huaca el Dragon, or the Huaca Arco Iris (maybe I like that name more), which is basically a pyramid group in the middle of what is now Trujillo´s largest ghetto, La Esperanza. I paid a cab driver to wait for me outside the ruins, because I really didn´t want to find my way out of La Esperanza on my own. Inside, though, are pyramids with even more impressive reliefs showing what looks like two dragons facing each other, dancing under a rainbow. Totally Peru´s gayest icon.
Well, Peru´s gayest pyramid and the north´s biggest ghetto had nothing on the next day´s trip to the Huaca de la Luna. I arrived again by cab, as Ms. Vanini of the hostel advised, and this time, we went through a much poorer town, well outside of Trujillo. Off the highway, the cab turned onto a dirt road, and we went through a really, really poor community. On the side of the road flowed slowly ran water like sludge though a filthy canal, and the houses, made of mud, looked much worse than in the area from the day before. I have been though some pretty rough areas, but this time, even in the cab, I was praying the whole time that the cab just didn´t get stuck on this dirt road, or break down or anything like that. At last at the Huaca, the frescoes were really beautiful, the most interesting of which depicted angry spiders. On the way out, though, I got to the exit and there were ABSOLUTELY NO CABS. Like, anywhere. So I waited...for an hour. And none came! All the cabs that were there were with tourists, who were being paid to wait, like I had the day before. After a very long wait, the man in charge of the grounds came up to me and told me I had better take the bus back to Trujillo, because he didn´t think any cabs would come that day. So after about half an hour more this broke ass blue bus came and picked me up. At that point it was empty, but after driving through the neighborhood for a while, we picked up basically an entire school of children, a couple pregnant ladies, and some farmers (I saw someone plowing a field with an ox...who left his companions and got on the bus too). Anyway, so that was a crazy bus ride back, and it took forever but eventually we got to Trujillo.
Oh, okay, so then later that night these guys tried to scam me. I was walking down the street to the grocery store to buy some kind of improvised meal for the evening, when this guy who called himself ´Fabio´and his friend started talking to me, at first about my earring, and then about Trujillo nightlife. And so I was like, okay, nortenos arent especially friendly so its nice that they´re talking to me. And then he starts telling me how hes studying English and he is supposed to ask a native English speaker some questions for his class to make a prsentation. Education, of course, being a weak spot for me, I agree to go have coffee with him and his friend to answer some questions about what I think of Peru. Once we get there, he does ask me these ´questions´ (things like...how many countries have you been in and what do you think of Peru´s contamination?). Um...anyway. Then he and his friend pull out a 100 soles billl and keep trying to get me to change it for them. And I insist that I can´t...but he keeps on going. And then suggests that we go to the ATM so I can pull out dollars to trade with him, since the next day, supposedly, he´s going to Ecuador, where they have dollars. I tell him I can´t do that, because I have no ATM card on me...which I didn´t. But anyway, we keep going this way for quite some time, even with him getting quite visibly angry, until at last he and his friend leave me with my coffee, to go ´try at the bank´, and the whole time I´m feeling silly because the whole thing had sort of felt like a set up from the beginning. But at the same time I had more or less conciously decided to go along with it, just to see what would happen, knowing that I didn´t really have anything to lose (in my wallet were no actual cards, just about US 20 bucks in cash). But once I left the cafe I thought to myself that it´s quite tricky telling good people from bad ones, and the thought left me really really sad.
Hmmmmm. I really loved Trujillo anyway. The city really has a sense of class. The beautiful wooden balconies, like those in Lima but better maintained, give the city a real sense of class. Trujillo has tree lined streets and good food. I learned on my last night that there´s not much in the way of night life...I went to one straight Pena and two gay discos and all were closed down(the gay discos because of public outrage, the taxista told me) so I ended the night by eating a hamburger at a stand in the middle of a quiet neighborhood. The next day, though, when I travelled to Chiclayo, I immediately missed Trujillo SOO much.
Trujillo´s beautiful; Chiclayo sucks; Chachapoyas tomorrow. AAAAH!!!
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Cuzco? ´Cooco´? Cusco? or Q´osqo?
Oh man. I just got to Trujillo, and all I want to do is write about Trujillo. I love Trujillo! I´ve liked every city (and pueblo) that I´ve visited in Peru so far, but Trujillo is already easily my favorite. Trujillo is so classy, so old. The men are so stylish. The women are beautiful. And everyone is so tall! I love Trujillo, Love it, Love it!
But before I got to Trujillo, I was in Cuzco, and then in Lima for another day, so I think I´d better write about that or else I´ll lose track of whats going on and that would be really unfortunate.
So... Cuzco. I think my plane ride there sums it up pretty well. I sat in the front row of the plane, with nice leg room, by two girls, one from Australia and the other from Canada, who I didn´t talk to much. As we came close to landing, as soon as we went beneath the cloud layer and could see mountains, the girls started snapping pictures of each other. With the aerial view of Cuzco as their backdrop. They snapped away and snapped away, of each other, even though their background was barely visible to them, or to me. ¨We´re about to land in Cuzco,¨ the Australian girl told her Canadian friend. ¨We´ll never have a better time.¨
¨What does that mean?¨the Canadian asked. ´
Öh, I don´t know,¨ the Australian said. ¨But it´s Cuzco. We´ll hardly have a better time. Ever.¨
I liked Cuzco, or Qósqo, or whatever you choose to call it. I really did. The first night that I was there, I met a different Canadian girl, named Laura, who gave me her travel guide and took me around to show me the city. We wandered past the plaza de armas, a few late night markets, and through Cuzcos shadier parts (to which I´m naturally attracted, as usual; Lord help me but I don´t know why) and then made our way back up the steep walk through the neighborhood of San Blas to the hostel. From the hostel balcony, it´s a beautiful view of the city. From up there, I became aware of just how special of a place Cuzco is. I have some good photos from up there to prove it.
Of course, I spent the whole next day getting screwed over by Cuzcos tourist sharks. First there was the business of getting a ticket for Inti Raymi. 90 dollars is the going price...if youre silly enough to pay it. And guess who was? What I found out, just as I left my money at the Banco de Credito, is that the steep ninety dollar fee is only for a seat, headphones, radio guide, commemorative book, and DVD. You can sit up on the hill at Sacsayhuaman for free. Of course, you don´t find that out waiting in four lengthy lines for tickets. But I got my Inti Raymi ticket by noon and then went to Sacsayhuaman. Again, I became aware of jus how special Cuzco is. From atop the hill where the site is located, Cuzco the city is so impressive. And the inca walls are so well crafted, alongside which sit the older preInca constructions. As I sat in this older part of the ruins, particularly in an Inca cemetary, a man who claimed to be a curandero using native practices walked by me and explained that the Inca first studied these older walls still exist because the Inca wanted to first study humility before building their own constructions. Sounds like a bunch of sentimental hogwash to me, but it looks like I still remember it anyway.
Um...the next day I went to Pisac. In some ways, the day was really frustrating. I took the bus there and we spent two hours getting to the town. And from there it was either another bus, walking, or cab, to get to the ruins, and this line of cabbies totally conspired to rip potential tourists off on cab fare, as each of them insisted that it would cost 15 soles (US five bucks) to get there...and then it was right around the corner. I was pretty grumpy about this, but I wasnt walking 6 km or getting on another bus. And what was worse was that on the way there and back, the cab driver kept picking up HITCHHIKERS (ie random village people) and letting them ride on my tab wherever they needed to go. He would pick up some random person, and they would get on and start talking to the cab driver in Quechua, and meanwhile I would be sitting there just hoping to get to the ruins while they got a lift at my expense. One of these people, though, at least talked to me, and explained the process of making adobe. She was an old lady, so I naturally was happier to give her a lift, say, than I was to pick up some of the scarier looking middle aged men.
Um. Well, anyway, that made for an interesting adventure, and then Pisac was quite nice as well. Actually, its beginning to look like Cuzco was a constant vacillation between pleasure and strife. At Pisac, I was again shocked by amazing beauty. The site is huge, beautifullly sited on a mountainside, and there´s lots of cool was to interact with the land. Theres a cemetary to scramble through, a tight tunnel through through mountain to reach a sun temple called the Inti Huatna, and then a series of storage vessels hidden from the main path along a steep downward trail that I explored (until I had a nearly perilous fall and then turned chicken...haha).
Anyway Pisac was really wonderful, and exhausting, and after eating cream of asparragus soup in the little pueblo, I left the seemingly haunted pueblo in a colectivo where I talked to the driver the whole time about what the US was like. He was shocked to learn that men in the US don´t usually marry until thirty years old, which was how I answered his question when he asked whether I have a wife. He wanted to know also what beer was made from in the US and whether Id had really chicha yet. I hadn´t. But I convinced him to teach me a few words in Quechua and before getting off the collectivo in Cuzco, much happier with my ride back than with the way there.
Then at night there was a huge parade for Inti Raymi, which was the next day. So packed! Almost rivaled San Antonio Fiesta in terms of civic festivities. It was really a cool thing to see. The native dress of Cuzco is not necesarilly atractive, as they wear these knit vests and hats with a billion ribbons, and all the ladies go dancing down the streets with this on while the men where some crazy textiles ted randomly on their bodies. Also, every single group in the parade danced to the same song, which is apparently called ¨todos bailan,¨ honked out on trumpet instead of being played sweetly on the qena. All this is to say that Im not really sure that I aesthetically loved what was happening as the content of this festival. But nevermind that, because it was so cool to see what was going on, especially all the people in the audience (even the fat little lady with a tophat and a baby tied to her back who kept shoving me really hard to get through a long line on the sidewalk).
Okay. Inti Raymi! Huge festival, lots of standing around. Music and dance, a la indigena. I liked watching, because it was really beautiful. But at the part principal in the Sacsaywaman I got really sad, because I realized just how much I wanted to be sitting up on the hill with all the other, normal people, how it wasnt fair that it was supposed to be a festival for indigenous people and yet none of them were getting the VIP service, none of them were sitting in the bleachers because they were all either up on the hill because they couldn´t pay for a seat that expensive or were down the street selling grilled Cuy or chicha from a plastic bucket because they had to work instead of taking the day off to watch the celebration of the sun. I don´t know..it made me really sad, so much so that I had a hard time enjoying it.
Time to wrap this up, I think. So my second to last day in Cuzco I went to Tipon, with a cab driver who I hired for a few hours to take me, wait for me, and bring me back, since Tipon is probably the hardest of the sites to get to by yourself. Turns out my cabbie was (of course) a native Quechua speaker and happened to know quite abit about archaeology, which seems to be true of a lot of cusqueños, so he took me, got off of the car with me, and walked around, showing me a lot of interesting stuff. This was the least crowded of any site on the boleto turistico, probably because its so hard to reach. But it was also my favorite. Beautiful canals, highly symmetrical fountains. The only other people there were some american tourists doing healing rituals. Me and the cabbie kind of laughed at them, because it seemed so silly to see all these middle aged white people dressed in all white clothing doing witchery at a site that they probably didn´t know much about (there was one guy there who decided it would be cleansing to stick his bald head under the ancient fountain and let the water run on his exposed scalp'''''so weird). Anyway, we walked around, and the cabbie showed me how to use a series of ancient steps that I probably wouldn´t have noticed otherwise, and it was a lovely time. On the way back to Cuzco, we drove by his village, just outside of San Jeronimo, and he showed me the school his daughters attended. All in all it was pretty sweet, and I lucked out to have such a good guide.
Oh, the same day, I also spent the morning hiking to qénqo. It was gross, because I had to walk along the highway, and scary for the same reason considering that peruvians are not exactly magnificent drivers. And once I got to Qenqo it wasn´t that exciting. I almost busted a lung getting there though.
Alrighty, almost at the end. So the last day I took an organized tour, beause I realized that it was the only way that I would ever get to all of the sites that I was still missing on the boleto turistico. So I went with the tour group to Ollantaytambo and Chincheros, and back to Pisac. The coolest part was watching weavers in Chincheros. The weirdest part is that I got hit on by this weird lady from Ecuador who was 33 and on the tour with her son, who was FOUR YEARS YOUNGER THAN ME. She kept showing me her pictures and making me tell her how good she looked, and she kept telling me I was good looking and dropping hints that she wanted an American boyfriend because she was tired of Latino machistas. I kept hanging out with her though because she and her son were actually really funny (when she wasn´t making me feel uncomfortable that is) and because it was better than spending the whole tour by myself.
I ended my tour in Cuzco by learning a new card game, Hearts, with four new British friends on the hostel.
This post has gone REAALLLY long. I think I´ll have to write about my night in Lima (which deserves a post) with the Trujillo batch. It´s time for me to get out and see more of Trujillo now, anyway. YAY! I love Trujillo!!!!
But before I got to Trujillo, I was in Cuzco, and then in Lima for another day, so I think I´d better write about that or else I´ll lose track of whats going on and that would be really unfortunate.
So... Cuzco. I think my plane ride there sums it up pretty well. I sat in the front row of the plane, with nice leg room, by two girls, one from Australia and the other from Canada, who I didn´t talk to much. As we came close to landing, as soon as we went beneath the cloud layer and could see mountains, the girls started snapping pictures of each other. With the aerial view of Cuzco as their backdrop. They snapped away and snapped away, of each other, even though their background was barely visible to them, or to me. ¨We´re about to land in Cuzco,¨ the Australian girl told her Canadian friend. ¨We´ll never have a better time.¨
¨What does that mean?¨the Canadian asked. ´
Öh, I don´t know,¨ the Australian said. ¨But it´s Cuzco. We´ll hardly have a better time. Ever.¨
I liked Cuzco, or Qósqo, or whatever you choose to call it. I really did. The first night that I was there, I met a different Canadian girl, named Laura, who gave me her travel guide and took me around to show me the city. We wandered past the plaza de armas, a few late night markets, and through Cuzcos shadier parts (to which I´m naturally attracted, as usual; Lord help me but I don´t know why) and then made our way back up the steep walk through the neighborhood of San Blas to the hostel. From the hostel balcony, it´s a beautiful view of the city. From up there, I became aware of just how special of a place Cuzco is. I have some good photos from up there to prove it.
Of course, I spent the whole next day getting screwed over by Cuzcos tourist sharks. First there was the business of getting a ticket for Inti Raymi. 90 dollars is the going price...if youre silly enough to pay it. And guess who was? What I found out, just as I left my money at the Banco de Credito, is that the steep ninety dollar fee is only for a seat, headphones, radio guide, commemorative book, and DVD. You can sit up on the hill at Sacsayhuaman for free. Of course, you don´t find that out waiting in four lengthy lines for tickets. But I got my Inti Raymi ticket by noon and then went to Sacsayhuaman. Again, I became aware of jus how special Cuzco is. From atop the hill where the site is located, Cuzco the city is so impressive. And the inca walls are so well crafted, alongside which sit the older preInca constructions. As I sat in this older part of the ruins, particularly in an Inca cemetary, a man who claimed to be a curandero using native practices walked by me and explained that the Inca first studied these older walls still exist because the Inca wanted to first study humility before building their own constructions. Sounds like a bunch of sentimental hogwash to me, but it looks like I still remember it anyway.
Um...the next day I went to Pisac. In some ways, the day was really frustrating. I took the bus there and we spent two hours getting to the town. And from there it was either another bus, walking, or cab, to get to the ruins, and this line of cabbies totally conspired to rip potential tourists off on cab fare, as each of them insisted that it would cost 15 soles (US five bucks) to get there...and then it was right around the corner. I was pretty grumpy about this, but I wasnt walking 6 km or getting on another bus. And what was worse was that on the way there and back, the cab driver kept picking up HITCHHIKERS (ie random village people) and letting them ride on my tab wherever they needed to go. He would pick up some random person, and they would get on and start talking to the cab driver in Quechua, and meanwhile I would be sitting there just hoping to get to the ruins while they got a lift at my expense. One of these people, though, at least talked to me, and explained the process of making adobe. She was an old lady, so I naturally was happier to give her a lift, say, than I was to pick up some of the scarier looking middle aged men.
Um. Well, anyway, that made for an interesting adventure, and then Pisac was quite nice as well. Actually, its beginning to look like Cuzco was a constant vacillation between pleasure and strife. At Pisac, I was again shocked by amazing beauty. The site is huge, beautifullly sited on a mountainside, and there´s lots of cool was to interact with the land. Theres a cemetary to scramble through, a tight tunnel through through mountain to reach a sun temple called the Inti Huatna, and then a series of storage vessels hidden from the main path along a steep downward trail that I explored (until I had a nearly perilous fall and then turned chicken...haha).
Anyway Pisac was really wonderful, and exhausting, and after eating cream of asparragus soup in the little pueblo, I left the seemingly haunted pueblo in a colectivo where I talked to the driver the whole time about what the US was like. He was shocked to learn that men in the US don´t usually marry until thirty years old, which was how I answered his question when he asked whether I have a wife. He wanted to know also what beer was made from in the US and whether Id had really chicha yet. I hadn´t. But I convinced him to teach me a few words in Quechua and before getting off the collectivo in Cuzco, much happier with my ride back than with the way there.
Then at night there was a huge parade for Inti Raymi, which was the next day. So packed! Almost rivaled San Antonio Fiesta in terms of civic festivities. It was really a cool thing to see. The native dress of Cuzco is not necesarilly atractive, as they wear these knit vests and hats with a billion ribbons, and all the ladies go dancing down the streets with this on while the men where some crazy textiles ted randomly on their bodies. Also, every single group in the parade danced to the same song, which is apparently called ¨todos bailan,¨ honked out on trumpet instead of being played sweetly on the qena. All this is to say that Im not really sure that I aesthetically loved what was happening as the content of this festival. But nevermind that, because it was so cool to see what was going on, especially all the people in the audience (even the fat little lady with a tophat and a baby tied to her back who kept shoving me really hard to get through a long line on the sidewalk).
Okay. Inti Raymi! Huge festival, lots of standing around. Music and dance, a la indigena. I liked watching, because it was really beautiful. But at the part principal in the Sacsaywaman I got really sad, because I realized just how much I wanted to be sitting up on the hill with all the other, normal people, how it wasnt fair that it was supposed to be a festival for indigenous people and yet none of them were getting the VIP service, none of them were sitting in the bleachers because they were all either up on the hill because they couldn´t pay for a seat that expensive or were down the street selling grilled Cuy or chicha from a plastic bucket because they had to work instead of taking the day off to watch the celebration of the sun. I don´t know..it made me really sad, so much so that I had a hard time enjoying it.
Time to wrap this up, I think. So my second to last day in Cuzco I went to Tipon, with a cab driver who I hired for a few hours to take me, wait for me, and bring me back, since Tipon is probably the hardest of the sites to get to by yourself. Turns out my cabbie was (of course) a native Quechua speaker and happened to know quite abit about archaeology, which seems to be true of a lot of cusqueños, so he took me, got off of the car with me, and walked around, showing me a lot of interesting stuff. This was the least crowded of any site on the boleto turistico, probably because its so hard to reach. But it was also my favorite. Beautiful canals, highly symmetrical fountains. The only other people there were some american tourists doing healing rituals. Me and the cabbie kind of laughed at them, because it seemed so silly to see all these middle aged white people dressed in all white clothing doing witchery at a site that they probably didn´t know much about (there was one guy there who decided it would be cleansing to stick his bald head under the ancient fountain and let the water run on his exposed scalp'''''so weird). Anyway, we walked around, and the cabbie showed me how to use a series of ancient steps that I probably wouldn´t have noticed otherwise, and it was a lovely time. On the way back to Cuzco, we drove by his village, just outside of San Jeronimo, and he showed me the school his daughters attended. All in all it was pretty sweet, and I lucked out to have such a good guide.
Oh, the same day, I also spent the morning hiking to qénqo. It was gross, because I had to walk along the highway, and scary for the same reason considering that peruvians are not exactly magnificent drivers. And once I got to Qenqo it wasn´t that exciting. I almost busted a lung getting there though.
Alrighty, almost at the end. So the last day I took an organized tour, beause I realized that it was the only way that I would ever get to all of the sites that I was still missing on the boleto turistico. So I went with the tour group to Ollantaytambo and Chincheros, and back to Pisac. The coolest part was watching weavers in Chincheros. The weirdest part is that I got hit on by this weird lady from Ecuador who was 33 and on the tour with her son, who was FOUR YEARS YOUNGER THAN ME. She kept showing me her pictures and making me tell her how good she looked, and she kept telling me I was good looking and dropping hints that she wanted an American boyfriend because she was tired of Latino machistas. I kept hanging out with her though because she and her son were actually really funny (when she wasn´t making me feel uncomfortable that is) and because it was better than spending the whole tour by myself.
I ended my tour in Cuzco by learning a new card game, Hearts, with four new British friends on the hostel.
This post has gone REAALLLY long. I think I´ll have to write about my night in Lima (which deserves a post) with the Trujillo batch. It´s time for me to get out and see more of Trujillo now, anyway. YAY! I love Trujillo!!!!
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Arequipa
On the bus that I took from Lima to Arequipa, I was shocked to see just how luxuriously I would be treated. The seats on the bus Cruz del Sur are upholstered in leather, with plenty of leg room and they recline to a position in which it is actually conceivable that you could sleep. I was so impressed! As if just sitting in this beautiful bus seat wasnt fun enough, the Cruz del Sur buses had plenty of other surprises up their sleeves. Movies I actually like... like Sweet Home Alabama! And not even dubbed in Spanish! And in between movies, they made the experience truly interactive by holding a BINGO game on the bus, with a prize of one free ride home on this glorious bus! I was so pleased...but I should have listened closer to the instructions, because I thought you only had to cover one line of the bingo card. I was so excited to think that I had won that I shouted out Bingo! in an obnoxiously excited voice, and help up my card and waved it around. The Peruvian man behind me looked at my card, shook his head, and said, No, falta mucho. And he was right....we were supposed to cover the whole card first.
Oops, I announced to the bus. I messed up.
I didnt win the Bingo game even following the correct rules, by the way.
So we arrived at Arequipa. After paying 50 centimos to use an extremely clean bus station bathroom, I went to the ticket counter and got a nasty surprise. Bus routes to Cuzco have been cut off! There is a protest going on where the highway connects the two cities, and because of this huelga, buses cannot pass. I would have been more anxious about fixing the problem right away (Kirsty, I hope youre reading this, though Im pretty sure you dont even know I have it), but taking a page from the Motul trip of Spring Break I decided to play it by ear and see what I could do before freaking out.
Apparently, the only option to get me to Cuzco is to take the bus to Lima and then to fly from Lima to Cuzco. It was not extremely expensive, thankfully, even though it was more than I originally thought that I would pay. But I was glad to get all of that drama behind me. And with it behind me, I finally got to take a look at Arequipa, which is a really special city.
Arequipa is nestled among three mountain volcanoes, Misti (which I learned is Quechua for white, thanks to reading Arguedas), Picchu Picchu, and one more whose name Ive unfortunately forgotten at the moment (it might be something like Chalki?). At any rate, Arequipa is SO beautiful, similar, I think, to cities in Mexico like San Miguel de Allende in Guanajuato. Its hard to breathe up here, because the altitude really is quite shocking, and sometimes I feel that altitude when Im walking around, in the form of a weird tingling all over my body. Arequipa has a beautiful square, where Ariquipenos and the hugest concentration of pigeons Ive ever seen share public space, and lots of historical buildings, like the Cathedral and the Convent (apparently, in Peru monks live in convents and monjas live in monasteries). Anyway, Arequipa is best enjoyed, I think, by strolling. Thats how Ive found it, at least. Though besides strolling, I have also enjoyed some of the citys cultural activities. I was the ONLY visitor the whole day at the Museum of Archaeology by the Catholic UNiversity, for instance, and the security guard had to turn on all the lights so that I could see the exhibit. I also visited the Museum of Andean Sanctuaries today, where Juanita, one of the oldest corpses found well preserved in situ, is housed. I dont usually find that kind of think creepy, but seeing that mummified little girl actually kind of freaked me out. Shes kept under really low lighting, in a really cold room, inside three glass boxes. The whole effect is really quite chilling. Add to this, in fact, that before we even got to the room where Juanita is housed, a girl on the tour actually FAINTED, collapsed in front of us onto the floor. The guide, a very well composed lady who, I must mention, was wearing nothing but Under Armour for a shirt, ran for security, and the rest of us followed the French girl out to the plaza where the guard promptly elevated her legs to get the blood back to her head. (For those who are concerned, she was fine afterwards, and was able to continue the tour and see Juanita through her own two yeux.)
Ive really enjoyed my time in Arequipa. At the hostel, Ive been one of only a few americans to pass through. The three Californians from Lima were there, and I also ran into Rose and Scott from Australia again. During the days, Im still mostly by myself, touring these cities on my own, but at nights its nice to have the hostel people around. I actually met a girl from Philly there, who has been living in Chile for the past 8 months. We went to see a classical music concert together, a free show put on by the Orquesta Sinfonica de Arequipa, (just lost my train of thought, a little boy came in asking me for money) and the concert was wild. The second act was a guitar solo played with orchestra, and the soloists children, who were in the audience, suddenly decided in the middle of the act that they missed their dad and started jumping up and down in the middle of the aisle (the concert was held in a cathedral) calling out for him. The conductor, a really tall woman named Zoila, turned around angrily and scowled at the audience as she conducted, and the now very loud children were soon scooped up and hauled out. Of my two nights in Arequipa, that was the more classy entertainment. Last night, I played cards with two Swiss girls, a Dutch girl, and a boy from the UK who is working at the hostel and studying Spanish. We played this weird game that I know exists in the US, but none of the Europeans knew what to call it, so I cant say. It was quite fun though, and we had some really sour wine to add to the rollicking ambience.
My bus back to Lima leaves in about two hours, but Im a real stickler for getting everywhere early. I suppose, then, that I should go. But Arequipa needs more description! Ill close by saying that I really amused myself writing a letter to Monica that I think sums everything up pretty well. Also, I forgot to mention that a cab driver made a gun sign with his hand and made shooting noises directed at his head in order to convince me to stay somewhere else. Bam, bam, boom. Oh, Peru.
Oops, I announced to the bus. I messed up.
I didnt win the Bingo game even following the correct rules, by the way.
So we arrived at Arequipa. After paying 50 centimos to use an extremely clean bus station bathroom, I went to the ticket counter and got a nasty surprise. Bus routes to Cuzco have been cut off! There is a protest going on where the highway connects the two cities, and because of this huelga, buses cannot pass. I would have been more anxious about fixing the problem right away (Kirsty, I hope youre reading this, though Im pretty sure you dont even know I have it), but taking a page from the Motul trip of Spring Break I decided to play it by ear and see what I could do before freaking out.
Apparently, the only option to get me to Cuzco is to take the bus to Lima and then to fly from Lima to Cuzco. It was not extremely expensive, thankfully, even though it was more than I originally thought that I would pay. But I was glad to get all of that drama behind me. And with it behind me, I finally got to take a look at Arequipa, which is a really special city.
Arequipa is nestled among three mountain volcanoes, Misti (which I learned is Quechua for white, thanks to reading Arguedas), Picchu Picchu, and one more whose name Ive unfortunately forgotten at the moment (it might be something like Chalki?). At any rate, Arequipa is SO beautiful, similar, I think, to cities in Mexico like San Miguel de Allende in Guanajuato. Its hard to breathe up here, because the altitude really is quite shocking, and sometimes I feel that altitude when Im walking around, in the form of a weird tingling all over my body. Arequipa has a beautiful square, where Ariquipenos and the hugest concentration of pigeons Ive ever seen share public space, and lots of historical buildings, like the Cathedral and the Convent (apparently, in Peru monks live in convents and monjas live in monasteries). Anyway, Arequipa is best enjoyed, I think, by strolling. Thats how Ive found it, at least. Though besides strolling, I have also enjoyed some of the citys cultural activities. I was the ONLY visitor the whole day at the Museum of Archaeology by the Catholic UNiversity, for instance, and the security guard had to turn on all the lights so that I could see the exhibit. I also visited the Museum of Andean Sanctuaries today, where Juanita, one of the oldest corpses found well preserved in situ, is housed. I dont usually find that kind of think creepy, but seeing that mummified little girl actually kind of freaked me out. Shes kept under really low lighting, in a really cold room, inside three glass boxes. The whole effect is really quite chilling. Add to this, in fact, that before we even got to the room where Juanita is housed, a girl on the tour actually FAINTED, collapsed in front of us onto the floor. The guide, a very well composed lady who, I must mention, was wearing nothing but Under Armour for a shirt, ran for security, and the rest of us followed the French girl out to the plaza where the guard promptly elevated her legs to get the blood back to her head. (For those who are concerned, she was fine afterwards, and was able to continue the tour and see Juanita through her own two yeux.)
Ive really enjoyed my time in Arequipa. At the hostel, Ive been one of only a few americans to pass through. The three Californians from Lima were there, and I also ran into Rose and Scott from Australia again. During the days, Im still mostly by myself, touring these cities on my own, but at nights its nice to have the hostel people around. I actually met a girl from Philly there, who has been living in Chile for the past 8 months. We went to see a classical music concert together, a free show put on by the Orquesta Sinfonica de Arequipa, (just lost my train of thought, a little boy came in asking me for money) and the concert was wild. The second act was a guitar solo played with orchestra, and the soloists children, who were in the audience, suddenly decided in the middle of the act that they missed their dad and started jumping up and down in the middle of the aisle (the concert was held in a cathedral) calling out for him. The conductor, a really tall woman named Zoila, turned around angrily and scowled at the audience as she conducted, and the now very loud children were soon scooped up and hauled out. Of my two nights in Arequipa, that was the more classy entertainment. Last night, I played cards with two Swiss girls, a Dutch girl, and a boy from the UK who is working at the hostel and studying Spanish. We played this weird game that I know exists in the US, but none of the Europeans knew what to call it, so I cant say. It was quite fun though, and we had some really sour wine to add to the rollicking ambience.
My bus back to Lima leaves in about two hours, but Im a real stickler for getting everywhere early. I suppose, then, that I should go. But Arequipa needs more description! Ill close by saying that I really amused myself writing a letter to Monica that I think sums everything up pretty well. Also, I forgot to mention that a cab driver made a gun sign with his hand and made shooting noises directed at his head in order to convince me to stay somewhere else. Bam, bam, boom. Oh, Peru.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
even MORE about Lima
I wouldn´t want to short the people staying in the hostel some attention in my blog. But... I don´t know, there have been so many people here that it makes it really hard to give each person I´ve gotten to know a fair treatment. I guess I´ll just have to be brief, then.
The first night that I was here I hung out in the living room with two girls from Kansas, this guy named Jacques who quit his job substitute teaching in order to travel, and a guy named Matt who is a former US military man from Kentucky. Um...we just watched some TV for a couple of hours and drank Pisco sours (I like those drinks because they really shock your mouth with the SWEETNESS....SO much sugar.) The next night, we played drinking game style Jenga on the patio until it felt like time to go to the club. We went with a pair of American girls who I really liked, named Evie and Emily (they really WERE a pair) because they were really amiable and because Evie called me my love and Im a sucker for that sort of unwarranted familiarity.
There´s also a guy from Colombia who is some kind of philsophy grad student. He keeps to himself a lot, but he ocassionally joins us on the patio when we are hanging out at night. He doesn´t talk much and when he does, he thinks through every single word so carefully...and we all just make fun of the fact that he´s a philosopher. There was also a woman named Kaley who works for Europol, who loves sex jokes and talks about her hot swiss boyfriend´s bum. Then there was Jonathan, a filipino lawyer from New York, who loves talking about New York. Last night a teacher from San Antonio, who (at first) I thought was about my age, and a Finnish hippy who found some Peruvians God Knows Where in Lima and brought them back to hang out last night. It´s great fun really, especially because the people here are really different from the kind of people I usually socialize with. Almost everyone that I have hung out with here is much older than I am. Many of them are married, like Diane, the archaeology grad student who will be working at Morro at the end of the month. Lots of people in their thirties. Lots of people who teach middle school.
Anyway, that´s probably not all THAT important.
I´m trying to figure out where to go after Cusco still. Arequipa may not actually have been the best choice (I guess I´ll have to see when I get there tomorrow) because I feel obliged to visit as many archaeological SITES as possible and Arequipa seems to have a greater abundance of museums, along with some natural wonders I suppose, but that´s okay because it´s only a stopover for two nights. Cusco is obvious. I can´t wait for Inti Raymi at Sacsayhuaman. But after that? I think it would be fun to go to Bolivia, to see Tiwanaku, but I don´t actually know whether that is feasible. That is to say, I´m happy to pay for a visa, but I´m not really sure that they would give me one. If I somehow make it to La Paz it would be really fun to visit the witches´market, but like I said, I´m wondering whether that´s feasible.
Within Peru, here are some of the possibilities. I would like to visit Cajamarca because I´ve heard that it´s beautiful, and also because one of the authors on my self designed reading list is from Cajamarca, but again, I don´t know what Cajamarca has to offer in terms of archaeology. Even further out, I would like to go to Chachapoyas, because there´s this amazonian site called Kuelap that looks SO COOL, but the guidebook says that it is dangerous to get there because buses often wreck due to extremely poor roads, especially during this season. Oh...what´s a boy to do?
Finally, I think I should talk about the challenges involved in travelling alone. I can´t yet say that I´m lonely in the way that I expected to be, but what I can say is that its a real challenge to travel alone because responsibility for your safety and the success of your trip falls on your own shoulders. If, for instance, I decided that I didn´t want to see Lima or any of Peru anymore, whos to stop me? I could just lay in bed all day, and there might not actually be anyone to tell me to do otherwise. Also, when I go somewhere or do something, there often isn´t anyone around to help me be sure that I´m doing things right. How am I supposed to know if I´m forgetting some essential detail, or who can help me see that some aspect of the landscape is not right if my intuition isn´t enough? Who´s supposed to help me choose what city to see, what sites not to miss, and how can I possibly be in charge of thinking through EVERYTHING on my own?
For real. Travelling by yourself is hard.
The first night that I was here I hung out in the living room with two girls from Kansas, this guy named Jacques who quit his job substitute teaching in order to travel, and a guy named Matt who is a former US military man from Kentucky. Um...we just watched some TV for a couple of hours and drank Pisco sours (I like those drinks because they really shock your mouth with the SWEETNESS....SO much sugar.) The next night, we played drinking game style Jenga on the patio until it felt like time to go to the club. We went with a pair of American girls who I really liked, named Evie and Emily (they really WERE a pair) because they were really amiable and because Evie called me my love and Im a sucker for that sort of unwarranted familiarity.
There´s also a guy from Colombia who is some kind of philsophy grad student. He keeps to himself a lot, but he ocassionally joins us on the patio when we are hanging out at night. He doesn´t talk much and when he does, he thinks through every single word so carefully...and we all just make fun of the fact that he´s a philosopher. There was also a woman named Kaley who works for Europol, who loves sex jokes and talks about her hot swiss boyfriend´s bum. Then there was Jonathan, a filipino lawyer from New York, who loves talking about New York. Last night a teacher from San Antonio, who (at first) I thought was about my age, and a Finnish hippy who found some Peruvians God Knows Where in Lima and brought them back to hang out last night. It´s great fun really, especially because the people here are really different from the kind of people I usually socialize with. Almost everyone that I have hung out with here is much older than I am. Many of them are married, like Diane, the archaeology grad student who will be working at Morro at the end of the month. Lots of people in their thirties. Lots of people who teach middle school.
Anyway, that´s probably not all THAT important.
I´m trying to figure out where to go after Cusco still. Arequipa may not actually have been the best choice (I guess I´ll have to see when I get there tomorrow) because I feel obliged to visit as many archaeological SITES as possible and Arequipa seems to have a greater abundance of museums, along with some natural wonders I suppose, but that´s okay because it´s only a stopover for two nights. Cusco is obvious. I can´t wait for Inti Raymi at Sacsayhuaman. But after that? I think it would be fun to go to Bolivia, to see Tiwanaku, but I don´t actually know whether that is feasible. That is to say, I´m happy to pay for a visa, but I´m not really sure that they would give me one. If I somehow make it to La Paz it would be really fun to visit the witches´market, but like I said, I´m wondering whether that´s feasible.
Within Peru, here are some of the possibilities. I would like to visit Cajamarca because I´ve heard that it´s beautiful, and also because one of the authors on my self designed reading list is from Cajamarca, but again, I don´t know what Cajamarca has to offer in terms of archaeology. Even further out, I would like to go to Chachapoyas, because there´s this amazonian site called Kuelap that looks SO COOL, but the guidebook says that it is dangerous to get there because buses often wreck due to extremely poor roads, especially during this season. Oh...what´s a boy to do?
Finally, I think I should talk about the challenges involved in travelling alone. I can´t yet say that I´m lonely in the way that I expected to be, but what I can say is that its a real challenge to travel alone because responsibility for your safety and the success of your trip falls on your own shoulders. If, for instance, I decided that I didn´t want to see Lima or any of Peru anymore, whos to stop me? I could just lay in bed all day, and there might not actually be anyone to tell me to do otherwise. Also, when I go somewhere or do something, there often isn´t anyone around to help me be sure that I´m doing things right. How am I supposed to know if I´m forgetting some essential detail, or who can help me see that some aspect of the landscape is not right if my intuition isn´t enough? Who´s supposed to help me choose what city to see, what sites not to miss, and how can I possibly be in charge of thinking through EVERYTHING on my own?
For real. Travelling by yourself is hard.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Lima de Peru (part 2)
Pachacamac is in the town of Lurin, about forty'five minutes from the city. I consulted with the hostel owners and they promised me that it would be super easy to get to on public transport. WRONG! First I had to take a bus to the highway. Buses in Lima, though, are not really like buses anywhere else that I´ve been. You shove yourself onto this crowded little van where a young guy walks around and takes your money, and maybe you go where you think you´re headed and maybe you don´t, because the buses aren´t labelled so well and the drivers are prone to following their own whims. So I got on this bus and asked the kid who was taking up the money, (are we going to Puente Primavera? And he assured me that we were...until I asked him ten minutes later and he was like, well, we´re going somewhere else, but it´s practically the same thing. And I could barely understand him because he was speaking a kind of Spanish that didn´t sound anything like the beautiful singsong of the Limenos, but instead sounded like a lot of grunting, so I had no idea what he was saying, but no, wé weren´t going where I needed to go, and I got mad and got of the bus and caught a cab to the Puente.
At the Puente, though, I was suppposed to transfer. What do you know, but the bus to which I transferred was yet another small van, crowded with a bunch of people from Lima´s outskirts. The whole way there I sat next to a lady with a crowded baby on her lap, and yet again, I was not even sure that I was going to get to the ruins because I´d already come to doubt what bus drivers told me from the other ride. When we at last arrived, I was so grateful...
Pachacamac, unfortunately, just looked like a pile of rocks. The sky was perfectly, abysmally gray. And there were a bunch of kids on field trips that apparently weren´t used to seeing an American and kept trying to talk to me, saying ¨What is your name¨ a hundred thousand times. Charming.
Then I rode the bus back, which was a whole other affair. Same crowded state, same confusion. This time, though, there was a robbery in the aisle. Three guys took the backpack of another guy, and they started FIGHTING. ON THE BUS. RIGHT BEHIND ME. Literally scrapping, throwing punches. Not immediately realizing what was happening, I got hit upside the head. The lady next to me screamed (this one had a baby too). And the driver and the money collecting kid didn´t do anything. Just let it go on until the next stop, where the three thieves tumbled off the van and the kid who got robbed stayed on nursing his bloody nose.
Holy shit. On my first venture out.
Anyway, I took a cab back to my general area and walked a mile back to the hostel. A lady was walking her dog (without a leash), and when he merilly jumped onto the curb and nipped at my legs she laughed. Which made me laugh too. But then the dog ran into the empty street and she started screaming. AY, CARAJO, NO TE METES EN LA CALLE SIN PERMISO!!! And the poor little dog jumped back on to the curb and I couldn´t help but thinking that all of Lima is insane.
Sunday I went out into the city with two friends I met here at the hostel. What fun!
I´ve been out clubbing a couple of times with other hostel people. Lima may be wacky, but they do know how to party.
Um...I need to write more, but there´s a little line for the compu, so I´d better go!!!
At the Puente, though, I was suppposed to transfer. What do you know, but the bus to which I transferred was yet another small van, crowded with a bunch of people from Lima´s outskirts. The whole way there I sat next to a lady with a crowded baby on her lap, and yet again, I was not even sure that I was going to get to the ruins because I´d already come to doubt what bus drivers told me from the other ride. When we at last arrived, I was so grateful...
Pachacamac, unfortunately, just looked like a pile of rocks. The sky was perfectly, abysmally gray. And there were a bunch of kids on field trips that apparently weren´t used to seeing an American and kept trying to talk to me, saying ¨What is your name¨ a hundred thousand times. Charming.
Then I rode the bus back, which was a whole other affair. Same crowded state, same confusion. This time, though, there was a robbery in the aisle. Three guys took the backpack of another guy, and they started FIGHTING. ON THE BUS. RIGHT BEHIND ME. Literally scrapping, throwing punches. Not immediately realizing what was happening, I got hit upside the head. The lady next to me screamed (this one had a baby too). And the driver and the money collecting kid didn´t do anything. Just let it go on until the next stop, where the three thieves tumbled off the van and the kid who got robbed stayed on nursing his bloody nose.
Holy shit. On my first venture out.
Anyway, I took a cab back to my general area and walked a mile back to the hostel. A lady was walking her dog (without a leash), and when he merilly jumped onto the curb and nipped at my legs she laughed. Which made me laugh too. But then the dog ran into the empty street and she started screaming. AY, CARAJO, NO TE METES EN LA CALLE SIN PERMISO!!! And the poor little dog jumped back on to the curb and I couldn´t help but thinking that all of Lima is insane.
Sunday I went out into the city with two friends I met here at the hostel. What fun!
I´ve been out clubbing a couple of times with other hostel people. Lima may be wacky, but they do know how to party.
Um...I need to write more, but there´s a little line for the compu, so I´d better go!!!
Lima de Peru (part 1)
Oh. My. God.
This place is crazy!!!
Tonight is my last night in Lima before I head south to Arequipa, Peru´s second largest city. I would have blogged sooner, talking about things as they happened instead of trying to remember everything that´s gone on in the past four days, but I feel that that would have been literally impossible. I´m so tired by the end of each day here that I have absolutely no strength left for writing, let alone remembering.
Anyway...so I got to Lima on Wednesday after a really long flight, where the little old lady sitting in the aisle across from me kept dropping all of her important immigration documents without noticing (en DONDE estaba? en DONDE??) and spilling her sodas on the floor and on my shoes. Good talker, though.
Anyway, afterwards I took the pick up service and was made so much less nervous about being in a new place by the driver, who was chatty (like most Peruvians seem to be) and assured me that I would feel right at home at the hostel. Which is interesting, considering its pretty hard to feel comfortable on the highways in Lima. At night, teenagers literally hang out ON the highways on the way here from the airport. There were kids standing in the middle of the freeway, tugging on their girlfriend´s arms and laughing and just STANDING around! And everyone was doing it, too... strange, really.
Anyway, Thursday I spent the whole day walking, pretty much. Saw some pre Inka ruins in the neighborhood of Miraflores, and took a stroll down the Malecon, a cliffside park overlooking Lima´s lovely beaches. What a sight! And What do you know...I found Havana! The Dulce de Leche place from Argentina apparently has an outpost in Lima... what a nice surprise! The same day, I ate Chifa, a sort of blend of Chinese and Peruvian food.
I don´t remember what I did on Friday. I think (actually, now I´m sure) that I went to two museums, the Larco and the Arqueology museums. Larco was so cool! The national museum, not so much...
Saturday was where my real adventures began. I decided it was time to really get out there and adventure, so I planned a trip to Pachacamac. (con´t above)
This place is crazy!!!
Tonight is my last night in Lima before I head south to Arequipa, Peru´s second largest city. I would have blogged sooner, talking about things as they happened instead of trying to remember everything that´s gone on in the past four days, but I feel that that would have been literally impossible. I´m so tired by the end of each day here that I have absolutely no strength left for writing, let alone remembering.
Anyway...so I got to Lima on Wednesday after a really long flight, where the little old lady sitting in the aisle across from me kept dropping all of her important immigration documents without noticing (en DONDE estaba? en DONDE??) and spilling her sodas on the floor and on my shoes. Good talker, though.
Anyway, afterwards I took the pick up service and was made so much less nervous about being in a new place by the driver, who was chatty (like most Peruvians seem to be) and assured me that I would feel right at home at the hostel. Which is interesting, considering its pretty hard to feel comfortable on the highways in Lima. At night, teenagers literally hang out ON the highways on the way here from the airport. There were kids standing in the middle of the freeway, tugging on their girlfriend´s arms and laughing and just STANDING around! And everyone was doing it, too... strange, really.
Anyway, Thursday I spent the whole day walking, pretty much. Saw some pre Inka ruins in the neighborhood of Miraflores, and took a stroll down the Malecon, a cliffside park overlooking Lima´s lovely beaches. What a sight! And What do you know...I found Havana! The Dulce de Leche place from Argentina apparently has an outpost in Lima... what a nice surprise! The same day, I ate Chifa, a sort of blend of Chinese and Peruvian food.
I don´t remember what I did on Friday. I think (actually, now I´m sure) that I went to two museums, the Larco and the Arqueology museums. Larco was so cool! The national museum, not so much...
Saturday was where my real adventures began. I decided it was time to really get out there and adventure, so I planned a trip to Pachacamac. (con´t above)
Monday, May 25, 2009
Making Do
UGH! San Antonio is so boring! And I really mean it, too...
Since my last blog, I have watched an entire season of Ugly Betty. This does not bode well for "training myself" for Peru.
On Saturday, one of my best friends from home, Sarah, and I went to La Cantera, where she did a job application for Anthropologie. Oddly enough, I applied to work there two summers ago, but now it makes perfect sense to me that they wouldn't hire me, because the people working there are quite glamorous and I can't really picture myself working there anyhow. Sarah, I think, has a much better shot at it. =) Anyway, I had a lot of fun hanging out with her, especially afterwards, when we went to play tennis at the courts in the park and then danced BF/ played the accordion at my house.
Also, I reserved a bed at my first hostel in Peru. On the upside, it's about a hundred meters from the beach, and it has a ninety-three percent approval rating based on over three hundred responses. On the downside, it's a hostel. At least I'll get to meet people, though.
As today was memorial day, I went to my family's house for some barbecue and cake. Originally planned was a blowout, but as it turns out, it was much smaller, I think due to illnesses and the like. Both my brother and sister was there, and it was nic to see them. Alfred has lost a lot of weight (I almost couldn't believe it when I saw him) and Emily is having boy trouble..?! How do these things happen?
I can't wait for June 10th. It feels so far away, especially when I think about the course of the week. This whole business of having long stretches of boredom, punctuated by occassional moments of fun, is quite draining. Summer's nice, but I'm ready for Yale now. No, that's not right... I'm ready for an adventure. Peru. Honduras or Mexico City? It'll all happen soon enough, or at least I'll keep telling myself so. Till then, though, I'll make do.
Since my last blog, I have watched an entire season of Ugly Betty. This does not bode well for "training myself" for Peru.
On Saturday, one of my best friends from home, Sarah, and I went to La Cantera, where she did a job application for Anthropologie. Oddly enough, I applied to work there two summers ago, but now it makes perfect sense to me that they wouldn't hire me, because the people working there are quite glamorous and I can't really picture myself working there anyhow. Sarah, I think, has a much better shot at it. =) Anyway, I had a lot of fun hanging out with her, especially afterwards, when we went to play tennis at the courts in the park and then danced BF/ played the accordion at my house.
Also, I reserved a bed at my first hostel in Peru. On the upside, it's about a hundred meters from the beach, and it has a ninety-three percent approval rating based on over three hundred responses. On the downside, it's a hostel. At least I'll get to meet people, though.
As today was memorial day, I went to my family's house for some barbecue and cake. Originally planned was a blowout, but as it turns out, it was much smaller, I think due to illnesses and the like. Both my brother and sister was there, and it was nic to see them. Alfred has lost a lot of weight (I almost couldn't believe it when I saw him) and Emily is having boy trouble..?! How do these things happen?
I can't wait for June 10th. It feels so far away, especially when I think about the course of the week. This whole business of having long stretches of boredom, punctuated by occassional moments of fun, is quite draining. Summer's nice, but I'm ready for Yale now. No, that's not right... I'm ready for an adventure. Peru. Honduras or Mexico City? It'll all happen soon enough, or at least I'll keep telling myself so. Till then, though, I'll make do.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Homecoming, Or the Story About Saenz the Witch
There are some clear signs that tell me I am home. The giant size of the drinks. The lack of an internet connection. The huge spaces between buildings. The way the sky looks so big. The way everything is advertised using the word "Aztec" - Aztec Bakery, Aztec Ballroom, Aztec Barbers, and, next door, Aztec Auto Upholstery.
There are also signs that tell me that I've been away. These signs are more subtle. There aren't any new buildings, really, and the buses still squeak and they still haven't fixed the highway. But I can tell that I've been away because surrounding me is everyone else's sense of urgency. They all seem eager to tell me something, probably because they know that I'm only going to be here for a little while. My sister has made sure that I see that she's doing better at her new high school (and I'm glad). My dad wants to show off the yearbook he's been working on at school.
And then there's my grandma, who's perhaps most eager of all to communicate.
Today at lunch, she, my mom and I were eating barbecue. My mom was talking about some book she had just read, I can't even remember what it was, when my grandmother interrupted her.
"So you like mystery stories?" she said.
"Well, not really," my mom said. "It's more like a drama."
My grandma ignored her and told her own story.
Her father had two wives. This was a fact that I had always known, because I knew that my grandmother had her brothers and sisters, and also had some stepbrothers and stepsisters besides. I never knew much about the other woman before. But apparently, that other woman, the first wife, was a witch.
My grandmother has forgotten this witch's first name, but her last name was Saenz. My great-grandfather and this witch lived in the same town, and when the witch decided that she wanted a baby, she put one of her spells in my great-grandfather's drink. The day after she cast her spell, they were married.
Together they had several children. But despite the witch's original desire to be with my great-grandfather, she was not a faithful wife. While he was away, she would sit in front of the house and put spells on the passers by, and they would come into the house with her. My own grandma was rather vague about their activities, but she said that the witch's main interest was in playing these men for their money. She would enchant them, take their cash, and then let them go.
Eventually, word got back to my great-grandfather of what was going on. When he found out that his wife had been casting her spells on random men, he was devastated. At the same time, however, my great-grandmother had just arrived in town, and he immediately thought of her as the woman he would rather be with than the unfaithful witch.
He had legal issues, though. A divorce was not nearly as easy to come by those days as in these. So my great-grandfather sought the legal council of a lawyer. The lawyer recognized her brand of sorcery for what it was. "She's got you under a spell," he supposedly says, "but even worse, she's got you under the law."
But the lawyer had a recommendation. "Get out of here," he said, "to another state, and take that other girl with you. When you come back everything will be alright."
My great-grandfather didn't know where to go, but he figured he would take his advice. So he left his small town in northern Mexico and traveled with the woman that he wanted to be his new wife all the way up to Michigan. They didn't stay long; they just went to look. But when they came back to their hometown, the witch was dead.
"And thank goodness," my own grandmother said.
"Yeah, thank goodness," added my mom, who started on a magical narration of her own.
They went on like this for a while. Of course, both of them had probably heard each other's stories a number of times, but I think that they were telling them for my benefit. It's as if they want to make sure that I know these things before it's too late. After all, my grandma insisted that I keep thinking about the witch, telling me, "someone should really write this down." At least it's here; for now this is the best I can do.
There are also signs that tell me that I've been away. These signs are more subtle. There aren't any new buildings, really, and the buses still squeak and they still haven't fixed the highway. But I can tell that I've been away because surrounding me is everyone else's sense of urgency. They all seem eager to tell me something, probably because they know that I'm only going to be here for a little while. My sister has made sure that I see that she's doing better at her new high school (and I'm glad). My dad wants to show off the yearbook he's been working on at school.
And then there's my grandma, who's perhaps most eager of all to communicate.
Today at lunch, she, my mom and I were eating barbecue. My mom was talking about some book she had just read, I can't even remember what it was, when my grandmother interrupted her.
"So you like mystery stories?" she said.
"Well, not really," my mom said. "It's more like a drama."
My grandma ignored her and told her own story.
Her father had two wives. This was a fact that I had always known, because I knew that my grandmother had her brothers and sisters, and also had some stepbrothers and stepsisters besides. I never knew much about the other woman before. But apparently, that other woman, the first wife, was a witch.
My grandmother has forgotten this witch's first name, but her last name was Saenz. My great-grandfather and this witch lived in the same town, and when the witch decided that she wanted a baby, she put one of her spells in my great-grandfather's drink. The day after she cast her spell, they were married.
Together they had several children. But despite the witch's original desire to be with my great-grandfather, she was not a faithful wife. While he was away, she would sit in front of the house and put spells on the passers by, and they would come into the house with her. My own grandma was rather vague about their activities, but she said that the witch's main interest was in playing these men for their money. She would enchant them, take their cash, and then let them go.
Eventually, word got back to my great-grandfather of what was going on. When he found out that his wife had been casting her spells on random men, he was devastated. At the same time, however, my great-grandmother had just arrived in town, and he immediately thought of her as the woman he would rather be with than the unfaithful witch.
He had legal issues, though. A divorce was not nearly as easy to come by those days as in these. So my great-grandfather sought the legal council of a lawyer. The lawyer recognized her brand of sorcery for what it was. "She's got you under a spell," he supposedly says, "but even worse, she's got you under the law."
But the lawyer had a recommendation. "Get out of here," he said, "to another state, and take that other girl with you. When you come back everything will be alright."
My great-grandfather didn't know where to go, but he figured he would take his advice. So he left his small town in northern Mexico and traveled with the woman that he wanted to be his new wife all the way up to Michigan. They didn't stay long; they just went to look. But when they came back to their hometown, the witch was dead.
"And thank goodness," my own grandmother said.
"Yeah, thank goodness," added my mom, who started on a magical narration of her own.
They went on like this for a while. Of course, both of them had probably heard each other's stories a number of times, but I think that they were telling them for my benefit. It's as if they want to make sure that I know these things before it's too late. After all, my grandma insisted that I keep thinking about the witch, telling me, "someone should really write this down." At least it's here; for now this is the best I can do.
Monday, May 11, 2009
The Pleasures of Planning
Why do I get so much pleasure out of making plans?
At a party, I took a personality quiz in front of all my friends. It told me, curiously enough, that people of my personality type like to make plans even more than they like carrying them out. Everyone who was watching told me, "That sounds just like you!"
Last night, I made a plan that made me happy. My plan was to set my alarm for 8 in the morning. My plan was quite simple. I was going to wake up early to go talk to my professor about my summer plans at 9:15 in his office. I woke up, watched an episode of Ugly Betty on my computer, took a quick shower, and went to my professor's office.
This professor is basically my favorite of any. He teaches a course on Andean archaeology, and even though I'm not particularly good at the subject, I really, really like going to the classes. He's one of those professors who tells really awesome stories; in fact, I feel like the main reason why I like his class is because it's worth it to attend just to get the anecdotes. Usually, his best stories are more about archaeology than they are about ancient cultures, so we hear about how digs go wrong or how the Peruvian government messes stuff up to the detriment of science. These are the kinds of stories that make me think I would like to be an archaeologist, even though I don't think I'd be much good at it.
Anyway, I show up in his office, and of course he tells me a few good stories before we get down to business. First is the story about the super-gay lawyer/poet/archaeologist who owns the world's largest collection of Peruvian masks, the world's largest collection of some kind of vessel (I forget which), and an awfully impressive collection of dresses and costumes. "God," my professor said, "he just loves those costumes." Then there was an anecdote about the guy who was looking for a really old civilization, but was thwarted by his misinterpretation of some projectile points left by construction workers. And there was also a particularly artful story about Pablo Neruda's house in Chile, where he kept a life's collection of knickknacks collected from around the world. Neruda's house is filled with pieces of glass, sailors' wheels, and anchors, and mermaid's hair.
Then we made plans. I'm going to Perú! I got the money for the trip, and I'm going to spend my trip looking at Peruvian art and trying to contextualize some twentieth century literature written with a significant pre-Hispanic element. I basically retrofitted my old project to fit this new country. I'm not sure how well it'll fit, but I'm excited to make it work.
I leave for Perú on the tenth of June and come back to San Antonio on the twenty-first of July. Then, afterward, Emily and I will go on a roadtrip of some sort afterwards.
Making plans. Ecstasy. So much better than watching them fall apart.
But that's not to say that there isn't something to be said for the spontaneous. Today, I had to say some difficult goodbyes, but afterwards, I hung out with my BFs for a while. We ate lunch with the dean of the latino cultural house, and then afterwards, Alejandro sewed Kirsty a dress while she packed, and we listened to music and goofed around a bit. I got called an eeyore. And I helped Kirsty move her boxes to storage.
Silliman storage is SO MUCH BETTER than TD's. Look, I hate to say it, but if you saw there's you'd agree. They have uniform boxes, and they stack them neatly in rows on shelves where they're easy to access. Come on, TD - get with it.
Anyway, after I helped Kirsty move her stuff, I played the song "I love you always forever" on youtube as I said my goodbyes. It added a delicious dramatic effect, and it made it sound really important when I said things like "keep in touch this summer." I couldn't resist all that drama - I just couldn't!
And in fact, when you decide to say your goodbyes, you should play some highly dramatic music in the background, too. Plan on it, even if it's silly. The planning part will only make it that much better.
At a party, I took a personality quiz in front of all my friends. It told me, curiously enough, that people of my personality type like to make plans even more than they like carrying them out. Everyone who was watching told me, "That sounds just like you!"
Last night, I made a plan that made me happy. My plan was to set my alarm for 8 in the morning. My plan was quite simple. I was going to wake up early to go talk to my professor about my summer plans at 9:15 in his office. I woke up, watched an episode of Ugly Betty on my computer, took a quick shower, and went to my professor's office.
This professor is basically my favorite of any. He teaches a course on Andean archaeology, and even though I'm not particularly good at the subject, I really, really like going to the classes. He's one of those professors who tells really awesome stories; in fact, I feel like the main reason why I like his class is because it's worth it to attend just to get the anecdotes. Usually, his best stories are more about archaeology than they are about ancient cultures, so we hear about how digs go wrong or how the Peruvian government messes stuff up to the detriment of science. These are the kinds of stories that make me think I would like to be an archaeologist, even though I don't think I'd be much good at it.
Anyway, I show up in his office, and of course he tells me a few good stories before we get down to business. First is the story about the super-gay lawyer/poet/archaeologist who owns the world's largest collection of Peruvian masks, the world's largest collection of some kind of vessel (I forget which), and an awfully impressive collection of dresses and costumes. "God," my professor said, "he just loves those costumes." Then there was an anecdote about the guy who was looking for a really old civilization, but was thwarted by his misinterpretation of some projectile points left by construction workers. And there was also a particularly artful story about Pablo Neruda's house in Chile, where he kept a life's collection of knickknacks collected from around the world. Neruda's house is filled with pieces of glass, sailors' wheels, and anchors, and mermaid's hair.
Then we made plans. I'm going to Perú! I got the money for the trip, and I'm going to spend my trip looking at Peruvian art and trying to contextualize some twentieth century literature written with a significant pre-Hispanic element. I basically retrofitted my old project to fit this new country. I'm not sure how well it'll fit, but I'm excited to make it work.
I leave for Perú on the tenth of June and come back to San Antonio on the twenty-first of July. Then, afterward, Emily and I will go on a roadtrip of some sort afterwards.
Making plans. Ecstasy. So much better than watching them fall apart.
But that's not to say that there isn't something to be said for the spontaneous. Today, I had to say some difficult goodbyes, but afterwards, I hung out with my BFs for a while. We ate lunch with the dean of the latino cultural house, and then afterwards, Alejandro sewed Kirsty a dress while she packed, and we listened to music and goofed around a bit. I got called an eeyore. And I helped Kirsty move her boxes to storage.
Silliman storage is SO MUCH BETTER than TD's. Look, I hate to say it, but if you saw there's you'd agree. They have uniform boxes, and they stack them neatly in rows on shelves where they're easy to access. Come on, TD - get with it.
Anyway, after I helped Kirsty move her stuff, I played the song "I love you always forever" on youtube as I said my goodbyes. It added a delicious dramatic effect, and it made it sound really important when I said things like "keep in touch this summer." I couldn't resist all that drama - I just couldn't!
And in fact, when you decide to say your goodbyes, you should play some highly dramatic music in the background, too. Plan on it, even if it's silly. The planning part will only make it that much better.
Friday, May 8, 2009
The Last Day
I'm not moving out tomorrow, but everyone else is. Ming leaves in the afternoon, Sasha's going back to Woodbury (is that what it's called?) sometime in the early evening. And then TD will feel empty.
Today was such a good day, though! I woke up at seven to do the works cited page for a paper, and then turned that thing in. It was such a pleasure to see the kids who chose to take the final instead of writing the term paper, because they looked so tense and I wasn't one of them.
Then I went to the library and dropped off about twenty books. Even the guy behind the returns desk, who probably has seen a lot of extreme library abusers, looked impressed.
Next, I went with Sasha to the DUH to make an appointment for the optometrist. The lady behind the desk wanted to give her an appointment in the fall, but Sasha wouldn't take no for an answer. She bullied the lady (or charmed her, maybe) into giving her an afternoon appointment. Messed around with her a bit until at last she acquiesced.
Um... then I ate lunch (Mexican food, or so they say) and went for my first post-Swine flu job interview. As a result of my frantic attempt to apply for every job for college students posted on the world wide web, I was invited to talk with the employees about working at the African Art department of the university art gallery. The two girls who conducted my interview were both really cool; both were under 30, and one had tons of piercings on her face and wore this cool hipster outfit, while the other was more conservative but still entertaining. In the middle of the interview, she asked me a question to the effect of, "have you ever had a conflict with an employee or supervisor of your work?"
I have, in fact, had many such experiences, but none that I wanted to repeat. Shocked, I responded with, "Well, I had this co-worker who was always LYING about me. I don't know why. It was so stupid! She would tell everyone that I didn't come into work, and that I was always late, which would make me really mad because I'm sure it looked bad when it got back to the general manager."
She asked me how I resolved that conflict. I wished, immediately, that I had thought about the outcome of that story before telling it.
"Well...you see," I said, "It wasn't that big a deal. Eventually she just got fired, and then she couldn't bother me anymore."
Not my most illustrious story. But thankfully there are a hundred million more of my apps out there just waiting to be read.
Something more interesting: my sister and I may go for a cross-country road trip this summer. We'll see!
I want to write more, but I have to go to bed. Maybe tomorrow.
Today was such a good day, though! I woke up at seven to do the works cited page for a paper, and then turned that thing in. It was such a pleasure to see the kids who chose to take the final instead of writing the term paper, because they looked so tense and I wasn't one of them.
Then I went to the library and dropped off about twenty books. Even the guy behind the returns desk, who probably has seen a lot of extreme library abusers, looked impressed.
Next, I went with Sasha to the DUH to make an appointment for the optometrist. The lady behind the desk wanted to give her an appointment in the fall, but Sasha wouldn't take no for an answer. She bullied the lady (or charmed her, maybe) into giving her an afternoon appointment. Messed around with her a bit until at last she acquiesced.
Um... then I ate lunch (Mexican food, or so they say) and went for my first post-Swine flu job interview. As a result of my frantic attempt to apply for every job for college students posted on the world wide web, I was invited to talk with the employees about working at the African Art department of the university art gallery. The two girls who conducted my interview were both really cool; both were under 30, and one had tons of piercings on her face and wore this cool hipster outfit, while the other was more conservative but still entertaining. In the middle of the interview, she asked me a question to the effect of, "have you ever had a conflict with an employee or supervisor of your work?"
I have, in fact, had many such experiences, but none that I wanted to repeat. Shocked, I responded with, "Well, I had this co-worker who was always LYING about me. I don't know why. It was so stupid! She would tell everyone that I didn't come into work, and that I was always late, which would make me really mad because I'm sure it looked bad when it got back to the general manager."
She asked me how I resolved that conflict. I wished, immediately, that I had thought about the outcome of that story before telling it.
"Well...you see," I said, "It wasn't that big a deal. Eventually she just got fired, and then she couldn't bother me anymore."
Not my most illustrious story. But thankfully there are a hundred million more of my apps out there just waiting to be read.
Something more interesting: my sister and I may go for a cross-country road trip this summer. We'll see!
I want to write more, but I have to go to bed. Maybe tomorrow.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
THE FIRST ENTRY
My thought, originally, was to write a little bit every day while I was in Mexico. What a novel idea, I know. I wonder how many blogs exist filled with nothing but travel stories. I happen to know that at least one fellowship requires each of its fellows to write a blog about what they do while they're away. Blogs about travel. Anyway, even if it's been done before I still think it's a good idea.
My thought was to write about my two months working at the Museum of Mexican History, and, later, about the month I would spend doing research in and around the valley of Mexico and the state of Veracruz. Then came the swine flu.
The swine flu.
That good-for-nothing H1N1 virus has left me in quite a bind. First, the Tec de Monterrey sent their message saying that they were no longer able to host us. Then I found out that the fund I was going to be using for my research can't endorse trips to Mexico either. Both things, I suppose, make sense. But now what am I supposed to do?
In order to answer this question, I went today to the office of Undergraduate Career Services. They promised all of the disenfranchised Mexico group that they were going to help us find internships for the summer. But when I walked in, the lady was like, "well, there's an opening as a climate change analyst."
A climate change analyst?
A worthy endeavor, no doubt. But until I take any class remotely related to actual science I think I'd better keep looking.
I suppose that's all for now. Until next time, when I decry what my professor recently called "the cult of busy smartness!"
My thought was to write about my two months working at the Museum of Mexican History, and, later, about the month I would spend doing research in and around the valley of Mexico and the state of Veracruz. Then came the swine flu.
The swine flu.
That good-for-nothing H1N1 virus has left me in quite a bind. First, the Tec de Monterrey sent their message saying that they were no longer able to host us. Then I found out that the fund I was going to be using for my research can't endorse trips to Mexico either. Both things, I suppose, make sense. But now what am I supposed to do?
In order to answer this question, I went today to the office of Undergraduate Career Services. They promised all of the disenfranchised Mexico group that they were going to help us find internships for the summer. But when I walked in, the lady was like, "well, there's an opening as a climate change analyst."
A climate change analyst?
A worthy endeavor, no doubt. But until I take any class remotely related to actual science I think I'd better keep looking.
I suppose that's all for now. Until next time, when I decry what my professor recently called "the cult of busy smartness!"
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