Old parts of town, old rocks, and a sweet old man

          Sunday was a national holiday here in Arequipa. It was "Day of the Farmer" and so the school canceled classes to take us on a field trip to show us old parts of town and teach us about the farmer. It was school about the culture :-)

           We went to a couple old plaza's in town and then got to take a little tour of one of the old churches that was built around 1718 I think? I took a lot of pictures so I will put most of them in my Picasa album on the main page if y'all care to peruse them. After the tour, we went out in the country to basically a rock quarry. The rocks, from what I understood of the spanish explanation, are hardened lava from a volcano explosion in the 1800s. We met an 88 year old man named Marcelino who works every day chipping out huge bricks by hand. He does more manuel labor in 1 day than I do in 2 weeks probably. It was amazing to see the vastness of the quarry and to think that all the stacked up bricks were made by hand!

Me and Marcelino 

          After the tour we went back to school and ate potatoes and traditional food of Peru made for us by the school staff. There are pictures of an oven made out of rocks in our courtyard. This oven (horno) is the traditional oven of the farmer. The farmer children would gather small potatoes and put them in the oven and then when the farmers came in they would make the fire to cook the potatoes, peel off the skin, and then eat them. Our oven collapsed on us in the middle of the operation haha so we had to improvise. We put the potatoes underneath all the rocks and covered with dirt so it could cook while we were gone. We also got to eat 2 other types of potatoes, fried Yuca, corn, and chancho (pork). It was delicious!! :-)

The Oven in our courtyard :-)

The potatoes cooked in the traditional oven. 

        After the festivities, I stayed with all of the German students(which is most of the students right now) and we all watched the Germany vs Greece soccer game. Germany won 4- 2 so there was much rejoicing haha. 

The weekend was then spent doing homework and relaxing at home. It was lovely :-)

        Oh! 1 more thing! The 2 other girl students that live with me and I have started a tradition of baking something yummy on Saturday. Last week wasn't a group effort but 1 of the girls made an apple pie and then this week we made Carrot cake with cream cheese icing!! It made everybody happy on Sunday when we ate it with our family. :-)

Thanks for reading y'all! Comment or email me know if there is something in particular you would like me to blog about!