Miklo came to visit for 1 weekend only

I'm so glad I have such great friends. I haven't seen, or hardly talked to, Miklo in almost 4 years, yet he sent me an email because he'd seen that I'm living in Peru and wanted to come visit. To be honest, at first I was a little skeptical that he'd come but he actually did. He works for American Airlines and so he was able to get a really cheep flight and take off Friday and Monday for a short visit to Peru.

He got here mid-day on Friday, so I was able to pick him up at the airport just in time to get a little lunch and then go back to the school. And poor Miklo had to sit in my night classes and be subjected to a ton of questions from my students.

Saturday we went to Huayco, a small village outside of Arequipa. The village was so small that it didn't have any restaurants and so lunch was just some left over bread and water from a small shop. The village is built on the side of a hill next to the Rio Chili, and they used to have some kind of factory there by the water but now it's deserted.
The streets were really quiet and deserted, and so we probably only ran into a handful of people the whole time we were there. We wandered up and down the different streets crisscrossing the village on the hillside and so we had plenty of exercise just doing that.
There was a tiny, picturesque church fitting the size and feeling of the village overlooking the Rio Chili and terraced fields below.

We climbed down to the river and walked all along the old factory paths before exploring the crumbling old factory itself. There wasn't really a good way into the old factory, I guess because they don't want people going in there, so we had to climb up an old fire escape ladder.




After Huayco we took the bus back toward Arequipa and stopped off in some random town along the way (bigger though than Huayco) and satisfied our hunger with a "menu". Menu is the local meal of the day at the small family run restaurants. Evidently all of these places always serve the same soups on the same days of the week. I guess I haven't been often enough to know which soup is going to be on which day because I feel like I'm always eating Caldo Blanco. They are usually so much food that you can't finish it all and for only  s/. 4-6, about $2. It's a big bowl of soup and then a rice dish with potatoes (ALWAYS!) and some kind of meat and vegetables if you're really lucky. The amount of vegetables they eat here is something I can't get over after living in China, where I'd go days without eating anything but vegetables and not noticing it. Anyway, the food is tasty, the soup always more than the rice and filling to say the least. :) I like trying so many different kinds of potatoes!

Back in Arequipa, I took Miklo to the Mirador de Carmen Alto. 

On the street just down from Carmen Alto,
 there's this long mural of Ramon Castillo. 

And a little local culture

Hangin around in Arequipa

One awesome thing about traveling so much is that you get to meet lots of other travelers like yourself, with the same openness, spontaneity and outlook on life. But the downside is that in the time it takes to get to know these friends they're already moving on to their next great adventure and you have to say goodbye. I can't even think about counting all the cool, down to earth people I've met in the past 4 years. Although I'm always reminded of how many I've lost track of when another one of my friends leaves.

Both of my close friends here left last weekend. Amanda used to be the Academic Coordinator in Extreme, and she decided to leave after deciding that she's found the love of her life and can't live away from him another minute. So she ran off to Switzerland. And then Preston, an Extreme teacher and also a former teacher in China, finished his contract and decided to travel before flying back to the States. So because the 2 of them were leaving we went around Arequipa to see some touristy things before they go.

First, I took a tour with Preston in the Cathedral at Plaza de Armas. It's an impressive Cathedral from the outside because it's white edifice built about 400 years ago out of the volcanic stone, Silla. Then inside there are a bunch of Catholic relics made of precious metals and gems or diamonds, and supposedly all of the statues and big things such as the organ were shipped from Europe especially for the church. Other than that the inside of the cathedral seemed pretty normal to me (or maybe it's only because I've been to the best of the best in Rome).

The tour took us on to the roof and gave us an awesome view out over Plaza de Armas and El Misti. Probably my favorite part of the tour. Up on the roof we saw the church bells...and the backwards 'p' in Arequipa on the side of the bell. lol.



 Later, we met up with Amanda and walked out to Mirador de Carmen Alto. I was pretty surprised that there were fields, like countryside fields, so close to the center of the city. Only within a 20 minute walk from where I live. So as we followed Rio Chili upstream there were more and more green fields along the banks of the river, until we got to the super touristy viewpoint, Mirador de Carmen Alto.

A shoeshine stand near Siglo Veinte...
I feel like it's something that would be really popular in China.

Rosh HaShanah

Our big production!

Even though Peru is a Catholic country I've never felt any anti-antisemitism toward me when I tell people that I'm Jewish. A lot of people have told me that the people here are very racist, but at least not towards me.

So there aren't any synagogues here, but luckily Rosh HaShanah was on a Sunday so I spent the day preparing for a big dinner with my 'familia Peruana'. Early in the morning I went with Giovana and Milner to the big market just outside of town to buy a ton of food. We bought a whole chicken, lots of vegetables, lots of apples, other fruits, raisins and every thing else. We came home and Giovana helped me prepare everything from scratch.

First we made the dough for the challah so that we could let it rise and put it in the oven before the chicken. It's always fun teaching things like this to my friends in other countries because they're always so interested in other cultures. I taught her how to braid the challah and told her that we always make round challahs for the New Year with raisins. The challah turned out better than a lot of breads I've made here so far, but I still getting used to the oven because there's no temperature gauge so it's always too hot.

-We boiled a lot of peeled apples to make apple sauce. It's Micah's recipe. Yumm.
-We cut up cabbage and tossed it in homemade dressing for cole slaw. It came out tasting a little weird because there's something funny about the mayo here...Ok, whatever, you win some you lose some.
-We cut up a ton of carrots and cooked up some Tzimmes.
-For another cold dish we made Israeli couscous salad but substituted the couscous for quinoa. It turned out really good, especially with the real olive oil I splurged on.
-The main dish was the chicken. I taught Giovana how to make the bread dressing(all from scratch except missing celery) and stuff the chicken. Then we glazed it with a homemade apple sauce/ketchup/brown sugar sauce and crammed sliced onions and apples under the chicken before putting it in the oven. To my surprise it turned out really good.
In the end we ate at 5pm. Long but satisfying day :)
This was my first time making such a big meal completely from scratch. So pulling this off inspires me for Thanksgiving coming up. And Micah's going to be here so at least he can help me.
Even though I couldn't spend the day at home with my family and friends this still was a great day.
 L'Shana Tovah v'metukah! 

My poor Canon G10!

So, just before my trip to Colca Canyon my camera died. It was having trouble turning on sometimes and now it won't turn on at all. I don't know what happened to it. It's only 3 years only and I spent $500 on it in China, so I wouldn't think that it should have died already. I hope it can be fixed...so it's on a little adventure of it's own right now. I sent it to the US with Amanda, because she flew into Chicago and was going to meet up with Micah and give it to him to send in to be looked at But for some reason that didn't work and now it's in Amanda's sister's basement. Hmm... what's next?

Canyon Del Colca

The best thing about teaching here (and the reason I chose this school in the first place) is that we only teach 18 days a month and then get 4-7 days off until the next month of classes begins. So for the break at the end of August I took 2 trips; first to Colca Canyon and then to Camana, a small coastal town. This was a much needed break after my first month of classes and the hectic and disorganized test days.

Pedestrian street in Chivay 

I went with Hannah and Preston, 2 other teachers from Extreme, to Colca. On our way, we had to go through Chivay, a small town. We went into the town for a couple hours while waiting for our next bus. After China, the market was interesting to see how similar it was to China except only selling different things. I guess there are some universal similarities between developing countries.

Alpaca is the main meat around here, so I guess it shouldn't have been surprising to see alpacas running around. But it was super cute to see little 3 and 5 year-old kids pulling baby alpaca through the market.
One thing these markets have in common with Chinese markets is the herb merchants. I feel like I've seen this table of herbs being sold out of plastic bags before in China.

And I don't know what it was about this cemetery, but I really like it. I want to be buried in a place like this. It's all personalized, and didn't feel lonely at all like all the families are still together enjoying the afterlife just like they had here on earth.

Then we took a bus to Cabanaconde, a desert village next to Colca. In the Plaza de Armas they have a condor statue on top of the fountain because Colca is known for their giant condors. We had a good alpaca soup and chicken and rice for our menu lunch.

You can almost feel what it was like to live in the desert here hundreds of years ago.

Me, Hannah and Preston

We took the road out of town and wandered our way over to the rim of the canyon and this is the view we found.


















With a view this great you can't help but sit on top of this rock to enjoy it.

It is pretty incredible how these people can farm here in the desert next to the second deepest canyon in the world. The only water they have is from a small stream of mountain runoff.