In Arequipa - yea!

Wow! I can't believe I've been in Arequipa for almost a month now! I really like it here - it has almost all of the things I wanted in South America, except for beaches. But it's WARM, while Cusco was not. I've also been much happier with the food here. In my seven weeks in Cusco, I only had one meal in a restaurant that came close to being satisfying. Here, I've found a few. I was told by a schoolmate in Cusco that the food was better here and he was right!

I did have fun my last night in Cusco, which happened to be my birthday. It was supposed to be movie night at my school, which consists of anywhere from 4 to 10 of us in a small room gathered around a TV. The movie always had a Spanish/English mix of audio and subtitles. We watched several Pedro Almovadar movies while I was there, but I digress. When I arrived for movie night they had a party set up for me. We drank, played (drinking) games, drank, ate, drank a little more and then went dancing. I'm not great with the set dancing steps when sober, so though Martin tried to show me how to salsa he finally gave up, and we all just danced in our own way!

ah the scarf game. Start with a circle of people and 2 scarves. One person takes the first scarf and a person a few people away takes the second. Scarf 1 needs to tied around your neck with a single knot, then untied and passed. Scarf 2 needs to be tied around your neck with a double knot, untied and then passed. The person who ends up with both scarfs at once is the loser and has to take a drink. I swore when I left the Y that I wouldn't play "icebreaker" games again, but this one was really fun. Perhaps the rum added to the entertainment.

I've really enjoyed Arequipa so far, and will definitely be here through February. I'm in school again here, only for 2 weeks this time and am in my second week now. After my first day I went to lunch at my favorite little restaurant, Cafe Fez, and a woman from my school was there with her husband. We talked over lunch and as it turns out, they are living here for a year and a half, but will be traveling from December 19 through the end of March. They were planning to leave their 2 bedroom apartment empty and pay the rent, but said that if I wanted to sublet that would be great! I'm not planning to stay through March because I have to cross the border again in the beginning of March so I think that I'll just leave Peru at the end of February. Until then I have an extra bed (after Dec 19!) if anybody wants to come to Arequipa.

The top of El Misti, one of the three volcanos that dominate the skyline in Arequipa. I thought I got such a cool and unusual shot with the well-placed cloud, but when I looked it up on Wikipedia, there was a similar picture with a much nicer foreground, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Misti.