STUCK IN HOUSTON ON NYE

Continental Airlines cancelled my flight connection. So I'm spending New Year's Eve in a Houston airport alone. Needless to say, I'm not really happy 'tall... I'm sad. At least if I were stuck in Mexico I could buy myself a drink. But Houston?!?

New Lands

So I clearly lied to myself in that last post-- not even public pressure was enough to get me to update on my exit from the Andean center of Peru. Nevertheless, there will be future posts. This time I'm headed to Mexico for three months...updates when I arrive in Oaxaca City. Until then, spending Christmas in Raleigh with the family and seeing old friends. Above, the family in North Carolina, and the Appalachian countryside.

Back from the field, onto it again on Wednesday

I'm climbing the mountains to disappear from contact for my last time on Wednesday. I promise that before that point I will update. And now that this is published I can't back down.

To the field and beyond....again

On the bus to Cuzco, which was only supposed to take around 8 hours, we got stopped just before our lunch restaurant because the road was blocked by a gas strike. Hundreds of cars were lined up on the road waiting to pass, many of them gas trucks. Our tour group sat around for about 5 hours doing nothing, waiting to eat and waiting to move on while the strikers continued their protest. Eventually, the tour guide told us that we should get out of the bus and march WITH the strike to show our sympathy for their cause and help them present a united front. By the time my friends and I had reached the front, the strikers were giving their victory speech. It was still a riling time, though. Eventually we got to Cuzco, though five hours late, and made our way to the hostel. The next day I walked around and saw the sights of the city before hopping on my bus to Lima. I've explored some of this city as well and will post pictures the next time I get a chance. The city is GIANT in so many ways and very modern. I've really enjoyed it and look forward to more exploring in the weeks to come.
In more news, I leave for Huarochiri tomorrow morning, so I'll be out of touch for another week. Until next time!
Love,
Augusta

Some more catching up

7/22: The party
On Thursday, we had all officially finished excavating so we went to the staff house to sit around and do lab work (a.k.a. get a tan) for most of the day. Mostly we were just waiting for the project party to start. Around 4 PM, our wish was granted. A pig was brought all the way from Arequipa and was roasted over the fire. Cesar, our host, grilled chicken and potatoes for us as well, and his family brought some delicious salads that made my mouth water before I even tasted them. There were drinks galore, and by 5 things were swinging. Joe put on his classy music and some people got up and swing danced while others sat around and enjoyed the meal. All the while, the fertile fields and the looming mountains presided over us humans on the patio. After the food, the whole group got up and danced until 9 or so, when everyone was yawning and thinking of their pillows. The Peruvians who were watching our dancing got a real kick out of it. They even pulled out a laptop and recorded a video of us with their webcam. Embarrassing!
7/23:
The next day was Friday and we left Vitor for good. We pulled up to our hotel in Arequipa for the last time and showered and rested until our group dinner. We had a last supper in a nice restaurant on the Plaza de Armas, and hung out at a karaoke bar before saying a final goodbye and heading off to bed.
7/24:



Saturday, Sam, Steven, Evan, Ellen and I all took a bus to the great city of Puno on the Lake Titicaca. We explored in the afternoon all of the city and found a fun rock slide on the top of a hill in the middle of the city. We also walked all the way to the pier and took pictures of the city at night, which was gorgeous. The next day we would find out that the proximate lake was only gorgeous under cover of darkness; in the daytime trash and scum make for a not-so-nice view.
7/25: tour
On Sunday we took an all day tour of some of the islands of the lake. We visited Los Uros, which consist of dozens of islands that are human-constructed entirely of reeds. The islands are surrounded by the reeds, they are made of reeds, the houses and kitchens atop the islands are reeds, and their transport between the islands are boats made of reed. This is why they are reed people.



They were very nice people, however. They let us play dress up.


The other island we visited was Taquile Island. We hiked for about forty five minutes to get to the main square, where we found this going on:

It was a festival that they put on every day in the high seasons for tourists. There were also dozens of stalls selling their fine textiles. Then we finally got to eat lunch at a nice restaurant where they served us quinoa soup and trout. In all of the restaurants on the island, they only serve trout and omelets. They also have a very practical marriage practice where a couple lives together before they get married. If they don't work out, they don't get married. Of course, if they do work out, the marriage takes place over a whole week and is supposed to be tragic for the couple. This was explained to us in broken English by our guide, "Johnny".
7/26:
The next day we all went to the market and bought our lunch from the various stalls that sold fruits and vegetables, and then went to a bread place to get our bread. We hiked a couple miles out of the city and decided to climb what appeared to be a hill but later turned into a mountain. Physical exertion of any kind is harder at the Puno altitude, and this was no exception. We had to stop every ten minutes or so just to catch our breath. About halfway up, we stopped and ate our delicious cheap and fresh lunch, and then continued the rest of the way. Our gold at the end of the rainbow:


The best view of the lake one can find.
7/27: The next day, we took a touristic bus to Cuzco. I leave the more exciting parts of this trip for my update tomorrow! (political intrigue to follow)

Now in Lima....quality time with Annie and Sloan

Hi all! I arrived in Lima after a LONG and very uncomfortable night bus, so I was a little loopy as I got into the taxi and rode to Callao, just outside of Lima, where Annie and Sloan live. During the ride through the city, I wasn't convinced that I was still in Peru after all because everything was so giant and I saw tons and tons of chains. The stores along the street I was riding were supersized, even for the US, and I saw Dunkin Donuts, Burger King, KFC, Chinese buffets, McDonalds, and a Plaza Vea (Peruvian groceries) and Saga Fallabella (Peruvian department store), plus more. Once I arrived, though, I ate a quick snack and collapsed in a nap. Today, we visited el Museo de la Nacion, run by the INC (National Institute of Culture, or Instituto Nacional de Cultura). It was free because right now in Peru are the Fiestas Patrias, the independence celebration. This is a five day weekend for all Peruvians and many of the cultural institutions are open to the public for free. We saw an excellent photo exhibit commemorating the years of the Shining Path violence in Peru. This was a period of violence and fear that only ended ten years ago. The exhibit was REALLY well done and reminded me a lot of the Holocaust Museum in DC. I wish I had taken some photos.... There was also an exhibit open about the indigenous art movement, and I was drooling over all of the colors and designs in the paintings. And no Peruvian museum is complete without a tribute to its Precolombian past. Some of the best ceramics, textiles, and artisanry available are housed in this museum, and they were breathtaking in their detail. Sloan poses in front of some impressive ceramic:


I rode my first public bus back to the house! It was a little hectic but not too crowded, so it wasn't bad. We ran into one of the directors of the dig with Zach on the bus which was a happy coincidence, so now I've met most of the people involved. It will certainly be an interesting adventure. Annie tells me that they plan on returning to San Damian, the town out of which the project is working in the district of Huarochiri, on Monday or Tuesday, so I will probably have updates of my Lima explorations until then. And then I'm out for at least another week!
Hasta la vista bebi....
PS I forgot to mention before that I have lots and lots of photos that I haven't posted here available on photobucket.com. Just search for augustajgudeman's photos. They may be boring though.

Once again, I apologize for the long delay!!! It´s been way too long, but once again I was much busier than anticipated.
Quickly I´ll give an overview of what I´ve been doing and then I´ll go into more detail, though that will probably have to wait until later.
There were two weeks left in the field, from July 11 to July 23. Then Saturday the 24th I left Arequipa with four friends to travel to Puno, where we spent three days and three nights exploring the city and the lake. Saturday we walked around the streets, Sunday we took a tour of the Titicaca islands, and Monday we took a hike up a mountain and saw the city in its glorious sprawl in the basin and along the sides of the mountain. Then early Tuesday morning we took a touristic bus from Puno to Cuzco, hoping to get a tour along the way. We got into Cuzco last night, Tuesday night, really really late because a strike had interrupted our tour and set us a couple hours behind (more on this later!!! It was pretty exciting). Then all of today I´ve been exploring the city of Cuzco which impresses me despite my knowledge of its heavy emphasis on tourism.
Now some details:
The week after I last updated was just another week in the field. Nothing special really happened. We kept the same schedule every day, excavating all day from early morn til the afternoon, and then going back and relaxing until dinner, and finally collapsing into bed. We stopped playing cards at night except for one very intense card game called Nertz (courtesy of Crystal :) ) that is like solitaire if it were on speed. Then we had another weekend in Arequipa where I got brutally sunburned on one side of my body because I sat out by the pool, but it was still a great weekend for going out and experiencing the night life! The next weekend, I managed to get brutally burned on the other side, so it all evened out in the end. There are some great bars with great names that became our favorites, called Deja Vu, Frogs and Split. One of these weekends was the final world cup game and we spent the whole afternoon in a bistro bar that leaned heavily towards the Netherlands in their loyalty. I didn´t have too much of a preference which team won, but those Spaniards are BEAUTIFUL. Especially one Jesus (appropriately named).
The last week in the field was a whirlwind and was sooo much fun. On Tuesday we visited a bodega and learned about wine production and its history in our valley. Vitor was extremely important for the region and the whole colony of Peru in the colonial era because its main products were wine and aguardiente (now called pisco. The Church, powerful institution that it was, had a great need for wine and Vitor satisfied that need for the surrounding areas. It was exported all over the colony from our valley. The bodega we visited had an emphasis on tradition, so they tried to keep the production and the grapes the same as that time. This meant that the wine had a sickly vinegar taste. Apparently the Spaniards did NOT know good wine. That, and they didn't realize that the grapes they brought over from the Old World might taste a little differently grown in New World soil. It wasn´t much to my taste. But the bodega was pretty informative and created a GREAT bonding time among the students. (see below)

Then we came back to the compound, ate dinner and watched a very appropriate movie, Indiana Jones. The next night almost all of the students and a couple of the grad students camped out on our archaeological site. We were driven back to the field and we set up on the ceremonial site of Millo where the view of the sky and the valley is gorgeous. We rushed to collect firewood for the night and then got our fire going. We had made a fire circle and I toasted my tuna sandwhiches on the rocks. We sat around the fire while we talked and tried not to get too scorched by the fire. Some of the guys thought it would be funny to tell a story about a wolf they had seen around the site, but having grown up with Nathan I could spot a lie from a mile away, so I wasn´t too concerned. Thanks, Nathan, for the training ;).
The next day we were all done in the field having finished our excavations, and so we all went to the staff house and did lab work. There was a party that night, but I shall have to leave that for tomorrow because now I have to run and catch my 15 hour bus ride to Lima.
Hasta luego!!!
PS I will post pictures soon too.

The field.

Its been two weeks since I´ve been able to update--- sorry, relatives and concerned ones, for the long delay. I didn´t really think about how busy I would be here! It´s kind of hard to find time to sit down and think about everything that´s been happening and then make it appropriate for publishing publicly on the web, haha.
The night before we left for the field was a Saturday and we were on our own for dinner. A group of us were trying to be thrifty with our meal, so we went walking looking for Italian. We came upon a restaurant that served all kinds of pastas and had "combo meals", which had a pasta, a protein, garlic bread and a drink for only 5 and a half soles, which translates in to about $2. We all ordered our food at the front and sat down (the place was very small) to wait. Suddenly we heard a ding and realized that all of our meals would be prepared individually using a microwave, and ONLY a microwave. I´m fairly certain that the sauce was prepared from a powder mix too. But I ate it anyways and the next day felt absolutely awful, and for the next three days anytime I thought about pasta I felt nauseous. I felt sick on the way to the field and at the field for the first three days or so...it was not a fun feeling. But I´m much better now!
Our accomodations are pretty rustic. We are in a compound where only the bedrooms are indoors. Everything else is outside, including where eat and hang out, and it gets REALLY cold at night. There is only cold water and it is dangerous to ingest. We are downriver from Arequipa, so Vitor gets all of the pollution from the second largest city in Peru. Showers are frigid which is why only the bravest of us take one shower a week. Some of the people (I won´t name names) don´t even shower that often, and save their showers for the weekends. By Friday, none of us can really smell anyone because we all smell the same.
During the week we wake up at 6 AM, pull on our dirty dusty clothes for the field, brush our teeth using the water from our water bottles and get prepared for the day. Around 6:20 the staff show up from their house ready for breakfast. We all gather at the tables and wait for the hot water and local bread to be set out, which we eat with marmalade from a bag and Manty- plastic butter. Then we get soupy sweet oatmeal and some kind of fruit and call it a meal. On special days we get hard boiled eggs too. Then we pack our lunch for the day, which is three sandwhiches and some fruit, and hop in the trucks to head to the site.
For the first part of the time we were excavating in the ceremonial area of site which is on top of a hill. So every morning after a 20 minute drive through the Vitor countryside, we hop out and cross the small strip of fertile vegetated area around the river, cross the river, and hike up the hill carrying all of our gear for the dig. Then we get to work in our trenches and work until 3 pm. During that time we dig, we sift, we map, and we record. The most tiring part isn´t the physical work, it is being in the sun all day. Then we leave and ride back to the compound to wait until dinner. We have to write field notes every day, in which we record everything that happened that day, so a lot of us will sit down at the dinner tables and write our field notes together before the food. Then inevitably we start complaining about how hungry we are and have to find a distraction from our stomachs. Cards are our best friends, but everyone´s sick of all the games now. It didn´t take very long.
Dinner happens around 6:30 or seven. We wait until the staff arrive and then are served whatever dish has been prepared. We get dessert every night which is a nice treat. After that point, most of us are tired enough that we happily crawl into bed by 8:30 or 9. And it begins anew the next day.

Last weekend instead of coming back to Arequipa we went to Moquegua which is a city more to the south than Arequipa and located on the coast. It was smaller than Arequipa but I liked it better. I wish I had taken pictures of the city but I forgot. That Saturday, however, Nene arranged for us to be given a tour of Cerro Baul, which is a very very high hill top where an elite city was built by the Wari. We had to hike up to the top which was quite a lot of exercise, but once we were on top it was totally worth it. I took a video of the view:

It was really great to see a place that´s had so much excavation done on it because the archaeologists really have a good idea of what was happening on the site, so they could give a very detailed narration of how things worked when it was actually occupied. At our site in Vitor, we are only beginning to scratch the surface of understanding, which is exciting but challenging.

Alright I´m running out of time on my internet, so I will update more next week. I´m off to see the world cup final with my friends!

So it begins....

The field school officially began on Sunday, so I woke up early and packed everything out of my hostel and trekked the ten blocks up hill to move into the much more expensive, but so much grander, hotel in which the project is putting us during our stay in Arequipa. The picture is the sunset view from my room. Nene, one of the project directors, has been making sure we are well fed and well watered. Every night we go out we have excellent food and a round of pisco sours, which is the classic Peruvian cocktail. It´s made out of pisco, a grape liquor, lemon, and egg whites.

A picture of the first night out:

In the mornings we have an excellent breakfast provided by the hotel--its about the only time I get fresh fruits and vegetables because we are supposed to avoid them--water contamination. On the bar they set out all kinds of fresh fruit juices (pineapple, orange, and papaya), dried local cereal grains (trigo, soya, quinoa, and a special granola), honey, yogurts, marmalades, three kinds of breads, fruits (banana, clementines, papaya, and pineapple), tomatoes, avocados, queso andino (a local cheese- its very salty and yummy), and scrambled eggs. For drinks there is a really dark coffee served with hot milk, and different kinds of tea including coca tea, anis tea, and other herbs. Breakfast is one of my favorite meals here!

Then we are all driven to the university which Nene attended when she was growing up in Arequipa to hold classes in the morning. We lunch and then head to local educational/cultural sites. Yesterday we visited two museums. The first is a local private museum which houses one of the most important recent archaeological discoveries. Her name is Juanita, and she is a mummy. They have her preserved in a giant glass box with two layers of thick glass, special aeration and temperature control, etc. Its very fancy stuff, and costs a fortune to keep up. Her body is so well preserved that the grimace of fear on her face is legible. She was a sacrifice - that is, the Inka brought her up to the mountain specifically to sacrifice to the gods, so no wonder the poor girl´s last emotion was fear. Fun fun.

The second was a textile museum, funded by a company that sells fine textile clothing (alpaca and vicuña sweaters).Kind of interesting. There were live llamas, alpacas, and vicuñas which we could pet. There were also live Andean women weaving. They were on display too but we couldn´t pet them. Only take pictures.

The next day we visited the Santa Catalina Monastery, which is actually a convent that has been in use for centuries. I think it was founded in the 1500´s or so. They´ve got the whole thing, which was built to be a tiny city, still upkept to show to tourists, though there´s a section that is off limits to everyone because there are still nuns living there. The order´s specific restrictions are that once the women enter, they are never allowed to leave or have contact with the outside world again. Only God (and the other nuns, though they tried to limit contact between them as much as possible). We learned a lot on the tour and its all pretty creepy and lonely-sounding.

The day after we went on a 4 hrArequipa tour which I was at first cynical about but later really loved. We were put on a GIANT double decker bus that was painted a flamboyant blue and barely fit on the roads and the tour guide´s voice was projected with a very loud speaker. There were many many stares from the streets. But we went to lots and lots of places around the city and I really enjoyed seeing more than just the historic district. We finally got to see the parts of Arequipa that people actually live in.

At nights we usually went out to the bars and clubs. It was during the week so they were all pretty dead, but we had a good time among ourselves, anyway. Being a giant group of gringos, we were stared at wherever we went, but now we´re just used to it.

We head to the field tomorrow after lunch at one of the nicest restaurants in Arequipa. Tomorrow morning will be busy with packing, preparing for the field (which really means buying alcohol to make sure we´re not bored at night), and getting to the site. I won`t be in touch for another week, and I´m sure there will be plenty to share. Until then!!!

Love, Augusta

This post is for Stephanie Gudeman

I´m still here. I´m still alive. Everything´s beautiful.

Aquí en Arequipa

Estoy en Arepuipa, and I´m ok so far....I got into Lima pretty late last night and was a little overwhelmed right out of the airport by the large amounts of people yelling and holding signs. Luckily, Zach found me and I met the head of his project and we took a taxi back to the apartment that Zach, Annie and Sloan (his wife and daughter) are staying for the year that they´re here. I had enough time to sleep, shower and eat, and then I had to be back at the airport for my flight to Arequipa. My spanish is NOT as good as I was hoping it would be, so that´s been a bit of a disappointment. And I´m also just scared to look like an idiot, so I speak less than I probably would.

The first big WOW moment happened as I got off the plane onto the tarmac and turned around: the mountains were large and looming and gorgeous and I felt like I was finally in PERU. As soon as I figure out how to upload pictures from my camera (which is proving a little more difficult than I thought), I´ve got a great picture from the airport of the mountains.

The city of Arequipa is really cool and really pretty, but its so painfully obvious that I´m a tourist.....anyway, I´m off to find food and get back to the hostel. Wish me luck!

Hanging out in the condo in Chicago...there are some really nice views of the city, which you can see over my computer in the photo!

Birthday in Chicago

I'm starting out in Chicago. Here with Janma, Grandpa and Nathan to relax after finals and moving out of the dorms. Only a week until the early flight from O'hare to Lima.