Juanita the Ice Maiden

The last few days in Arequipa have been great. The temperature has dropped a little (it was in the 80’s, not the 70’s like I thought, earlier in the week), and I have moved hotels to the one used by GVI.

On Wednesday I took a two and a half hour bus tour around Arequipa on a double decker, open top bus. I got a better idea of the layout of the city beyond the historical center that I had been focused on. The city is divided by the Rio Chile, flowing towards the Pacific Ocean. There is old pre-Incan terracing at places along the river which is still actively used. I got a couple of good pictures of the river, the terracing and Misti Volcano in the background. The tour guide was a young woman who did the whole tour in both Spanish and English. At one of the stops she came up to me and said she had been looking for me and had a tray with a few things on it. She explained each of the items: two different fruits that are popular here, the coca tea and a couple of other things. I thought it was really nice of her to find me to explain it all in English!

On Thursday I moved over to the Casa de Avila which is the headquarters for GVI here in Arequipa. This means that the Program Coordinator, Alton Germain (cousin?), and the interns and intern trainees all live here, the rest of the volunteers meet here for their pick-up to schools, and there is a classroom and a prep room for lesson planning. This is also a Spanish school, so all the Spanish classes are held out on the beautiful lawn. The owner of the hotel is a partner in the project and handles the Spanish classes (obviously), arranges the home stays, the transportation to the schools, and the weekend tour activities. Check out the photos on their website of the beautiful garden: http://www.casadeavila.com/ There are about 20 volunteers here right now! Again, most are from Europe, but there are still quite a few from the US. And again, I am the oldest, and there are also quite a few people under 20! There are about 7 more volunteers coming this week! – so many more than in Ecuador.

Right now is summer in Peru, so the schools are on vacation and GVI is providing summer school at three schools. I have been assigned to a school which is new to GVI this week. There are just over 50 kids and when I start there, there will be 6 of us working there! The community is of about 10,000 people and is about a half hour away on the eastern flanks of Mt. Misti. I will go up to the school for the first time on Monday.

There seems to be a real differentiation here between the volunteers, the intern trainees, and the interns. I am in the intern trainee program, and in Ecuador we were just considered the same as any of the other volunteers. So, I will begin with some of the training, and will have additional duties besides the work in the classroom, such as helping to mentor the new volunteers in lesson planning and coordination of activities at the school. I’m looking forward to learning more about the operations of a program that runs on volunteer service and how it is managed.

Yesterday Janine and I played tourist. We started by going to a museum that contains artifact and objects that were part of Inca human sacrifice offerings high up in the mountains. In the late 1990’s a number of bodies were discovered, including one that is named Juanita, the “frozen ice maiden”. Some of you may remember a cover photo and big article on this finding in the National Geographic, Time Magazine and others. (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,983667,00.html ) The bodies are just over 500 years old and there were 4 girls and 1 boy that were found. The museum display was very tastefully done: it started with a (rather dramatic) movie of the discoveries filmed by National G, and then a guided tour through the displays of the artifacts. The final display was of one of the frozen bodies – not Juanita, but another one that was found at the same time. They rotate the display so that DNA and other testing can be done on the bodies. After the museum we figured we need to talk about it, so we found a coffee shop and sat for awhile. I have to kind of wonder why “we” think we have the right to be grave robbers…..

After our deep thoughts, we headed off to wander around a bit as Janine hadn’t seen any of Arequipa yet. We found a poster for a weekend of Yoga classes and decided we would sign up for the beginner’s classes which are two hours each next Saturday and Sunday! We also headed to the market and found the clothing market, and then the fruit and veg and other things market. This was a big indoor market, which reminded me of the ones in Budapest. Apparently there are at least two more of these markets here, of which one is bigger than the one we went to. We got lots of veggies and made a huge salad for the weekly GVI Friday night BBQ.

So last night was fun, with a number of people in the communal kitchen getting their potluck dishes made and prepping for the bbq. Alton grills chicken each week and then who knows what else will be there. We had a huge spread and actually quite a bit of leftover food. Janine and I will be eating salad for a few more meals! There is another gal here, Meghan, whose birthday is the same day as mine, so we had a birthday cake as well. She also had her ipod with speakers on, so we had nice music. It was interesting that quite a bit of the music was older of my generation or before!

Tomorrow many of the volunteers are heading to Puno on Lake Titicaca, but most of the interns and trainees are staying here. We plan a day of shopping for pirate movies and books – apparently you can buy paperback books that have been copied! The movies run about 3 soles - $1 and the books are also quite cheap. In the bookstores, a paperback in English will run over $10! We are also planning a nice dinner at Zig Zag, an upscale restaurant that serves Alpaca meat, amongst many other things of course. I plan on trying the national drink, a Pisco Sour!

On Sunday, I will officially start on the project, with an orientation and then moving to my homestay around 5pm. All I know at this point about my homestay is that it is about a 5 minute walk from Casa de Avila, which will be very convenient.