Happy Birthday

Well, today Andy is 60. The day started with a yoga class. We have found a very nice place with warm, friendly people where we can practice yoga.
The Yoga Studio
The room has a lot of charm. It is in an older building in the center of town and there are several locks to get through before you enter the inner sanctum.

The class is small. We are five.
7:30AM Yoga Class
In the picture, besides myself, are Rossana Rodriguez, the teacher, Ruth, Jessica and Carlilí. The class is quite different from the postures class we are used to in New Paltz. There is a lot more breathing. Today we stood in meditation for almost 20 minutes. We also danced!! I do whatever I do but it felt good.

The teacher has a small shrub from India that she takes home with her. So here we are, the Birthday couple.
The Bush

We took another picture with Rossana

Andy, Olga, Roxana

And finally one with the other students.


The style of yoga is called Bhakti yoga I think. We chant something in each position of the Sun Salutation. Not so bad. We also do a lot of breathing on one foot. We are certainly strengthening our legs.

Rossana is a classical Indian dancer. We are waiting for an invitation to see her dance. She has every expectation of us that we will be doing full-lotus sooner rather than later. We'll see.

Rassana

Timeless Arequipa

Way back on August 1, I talked about the "Quality without a Name" that can be found everywhere here. Olga says that Arequipa is an "antique" city but since all the antiquities are still in use and functional and seem so right for the place I'm going to say Arequipa is timeless. Neither young or old.

I promised to show you all a small corner of Arequipa. This one is near our home in Yanahuara.

Yanahuara describes itself

You probably can't read this but it talks about our district, Yanahuara. If has grown up around a network of pre-columbian aquaducts and has about 25000 people living in 2 sq km.

The street I want to show you is called Leoncio Prado.
Leoncio Prado

It is not really a street, more a passage from now to then.

Looking into the Past

Everything on these stairs seems to have aged in a non-linear fashion.


Even the stone work around the tree has accommodated itself. It is hard to imagine that this door is still in use but the dog behind it certainly let us know he was there.

Did you notice the channel for getting water to the tree?

Nice Attention to Detail

We keep climbing and the stairs narrow.

Closer to the Top

It also gets a bit darker as it gets narrower.
At the Top
Here's that same door from the other side.
Quinta Leoncio Prado
A quinta is an enclosed place where possibly several families live. Where we live is called Quinta la Sevillana.

Finally we look down the street at the top. We found a very interesting restaurant just beside that car in the picture.
Looking towards Calle Misty

Heading back down we saw how thick the walls were. Almost medieval.


Finally down at he bottom again and pausing for a minute.

Sitting over Water from a Pre-Columbian Aquaduct

Fraternal Workshop for Professors of San Pablo

That's a poor translation of "Jornada Confraternidad Profesor San Pablo". Today all the faculty met at a local hotel to spend the day talking about what it should mean to be a professor working for the Universidad Catolica San Pablo.

The university is only 10 years old. It has 3000 students and a brand new campus. The Computer Science Dept is still in the old campus until they build a new floor onto the new campus building! Young though it is there are some remarkable statistics:

46 of the 50 Peruvian students doing graduate studies in Computer Science in Brasil come from Arequipa, a majority of those from San Pablo.

San Pablo ranks third in Peru in the number of refereed publications by its faculty and students last year (in year 9).



Why does a university need such a workshop? Well, for starters it is only 10 years old and as you can see from the pictures of the meeting, the faculty is very young. In some ways, nothing is being left to chance. They have started very well and want to avoid mis-steps I guess.

There were two interesting parts to the day for me. In the first of these we sat down as a small breakout groups (the 10 professors from CS in our case) and tried to describe the personal, professional and conduct aspects of the ideal profile of a professor at San Pablo. I was one of the oldest people there and I found it interesting that while others spoke in generalities - punctuality, rigor, etc - my take on these things came from my practical experience. I gave examples of what I thought was being a good professor on my part.

The second part I liked was a talk by the professor who is the faculty rep on the College Council. He gave a talk on Assertive Communication and he used as his vehicle, the events surrounding the shootings at Virginia Tech earlier this year. How did so many faculty fail to raise the alarm when so many felt intimidated by the student. His point was that it wasn't just the President's fault or the Chief of Police's fault but everyone's fault and he speculated that the environment at that college didn't encourage faculty and students to assert themselves. He went on to give a list of symptoms that indicate this lack of assertiveness, such as the over use of titles. Of course, he was trying to bring the topic closer to home and indirectly saying that the university here wouldn't be well served by a docile faculty. It was a great talk.

So on to some pictures.

Graciela and Gina

Graciela did her grad studies in Brasil so falamos um pouco. Gaciela teaches Software Engineering. There are four Software Engineering courses in the program here, New Paltz has one. Gina is my assistant in Data Base II. She'll end up learning more than the students themselves.

Maria Alejandra

Maria Alejandra is in the CS department because her name tag is the same colour as ours. But when I asked her what she teaches she said "Artes Plasticas" which we call Fine Arts. So I'm not exactly sure just what she teaches to our students. I don't know the other people's names.


Wilbur and Edward

Wilbur lives near me. Edward is almost the twin of Forest Whittaker, the actor, although it doesn't appear so here.


Nicolas and Wilbur

Nicolas is a member of the department who has taken a job in the Department of Education for a year (or so he says). He has degrees in law, business and computer science and can't make up his mind about things. He is Giuliana's husband. She showed up in a much earlier posting, our first day in Arequipa.


Did you notice how many female faculty members there are in Computer Science?

No Earthquake in Arequipa

Well, the earthquake passed us by and left us in blissful ignorance. We didn't feel a thing and were just sitting around. A few people in Arequipa claimed to have felt a "wave" that lasted quite a while. But after 7 hours of all-day parades and parties one has to ask to what extent their senses were alcoholically enhanced?

The phone lines were down across the country but the internet functioned perfectly. In fact, it was via the internet, on a blog set up by the major national newspaper, that first reports came in. Our connection to the world was similarly undisturbed. We have a DSL modem so are using the same telephone wires, at least locally. My guess is that the difference is one of capacity. There is lots of bandwidth for the internet but the traditional (and cellular) phone services are much more limited and so when inundated with calls, they freeze up.

By the way, Arequipa has had an even stronger earthquake, over 8.0, in its recent past and the building we are in showed no signs of any stress. We live on the 5th floor and the stairwell is completely glass-encased so, in event of an earthquake, we are likely to not want to walk down just in case the glass implodes. We have already asked where we should stand and the owner, and architect, of the building stood on a spot and said "this is the strongest point in the building, stand here".

Arequipa Day

Today is Arequipa Day and there is a big parade in town. Andy's back is still too weak to stand for hours so we'll stay home. In fact you don't have to stand. You can go the day before and find someone who has placed a chair beside the parade route and rent the chair for the day. It costs about $5, which is a lot of money. The problem is that the place is so crowded that unless you get there early you won't be able to make your way to the chair and once there, you're stuck for the day; it takes 6 hours for the parade to pass and there is no escape; the crowds are so thick. Andy's back is not up to that either. The man putting in the kitchen cabinets, Pedro (whose picture is in another posting), is working the parade. He makes small boxes he sells to people so they can stand on them and get a few inches higher. You pay according to the height of the box.

In honour of Arequipa Day we tried a typical dish suggested to us by the young woman who comes and cleans once a week. It is called "kapchi de habas". The woman's name is Juanita and she has a child of 11 months called Daniel. Her husband's name is Edwin.

Back to the habas. Habas are Lima beans. Or should I say "Leema beans". The name in English probably came from the fact that the beans came from Peru.

Here goes.

Ingredients:

• 1 medium onion chopped small
  
• 1 medium tomato chopped small
  
• 2 Tbspns vegetable oil
  
• 3 garlic cloves crushed
  
• 1 cup hot water
  
• 3 cups of lima beans
  
• 2 cups of potatoes, cubed
  
• 1/2 cup of evaporated milk
  
• 3/4 cups of fresh cheese cut in cubes (mozzarella will do)
  
• 2 Tbspns of wacatai finely chopped. For those of you in New Paltz you can buy wacatai in the Associated Supermarket in Newburgh; otherwise use fresh mint. You can get the fresh cheese there too.
  
• 1 fresh egg
  
• salt and pepper
  

Preparation:

• Fry the onion and garlic in the oil for 5 minutes and add the tomato and continue to cook until the tomato disintegrates.
  
• Add the hot water and lima beans (if fresh) and cook for 10 minutes at medium heat. Skip this step if the lima beans are frozen and add them with the potatoes.
  
• Add the potatoes (and lima beans if frozen) and cook until potatoes and lima beans are cooked.
  
• Add the evaporated milk, cheese, wacatai/mint, break the egg into the pot and mix well.
  
• Cover and cook for another couple of minutes.
  
• Add salt and pepper to taste at some point.
  

The dish should not be too dry.

This dish can be served with fresh rice or if you want a complete Peruvian experience go to the health food store and buy some quinoa. It's preparation is a bit like couscous.

Edwin and Juanita

A View of Arequipa

So far, we've only showed you the view of the mountains from our patio. The picture below is of the city itself. Since there are a lot of earthquakes here, Arequipa has very few tall buildings. Ours is one of the tallest in this area of the city and I know of two 14 story apartment buildings and these are the tallest.

In any event, here is a view of the city with the cathedral spires in the middle. You really can't see too much.

Arequipa from our apartment

Our First Dinner Guests

Earlier in the week we were in the cafeteria of a local clinic where we met a couple of Irish college students - Cilliam and Kate. They were on their way to Colca - a two-day excursion gets you 1 hour an 20 minutes at the precipice, not much. We invited them for dinner on Sunday night and they came, leaving our home for the bus station and an overnight bus to Cuzco before continuing on to Bolivia, the Road of Death (by bicycle) and finally surfing in Salvador, Brasil.

The Two Intrepids
Cilliam and Kate with Olga

The meal was papa a la Huancaina, sopa de verduras, caihua rellena and helado de lucuma for desert. It is easy to make mistakes here with wine. We bought a wine that was made from two different grapes. One of these was malbec, one of Andy's favourites, and yet the wine was super sweet. From now on we'll have to ask and not suppose.

Hey, the Kitchen Cabinets

Today, the kitchen cabinets arrived, along with the closets for the both bedrooms. They are looking mighty nice.
Pedro, planning his work

Olga and Andy went to get his x-rays and when we came back there had been some progress.
Edwin, and his handiwork

Speaking of x-rays. Four x-rays of various parts of Andy's spine cost $18.50. I'm pretty sure this includes the radiologist's report, which we get at 3PM today. After that we are off to an chiropractor. We've found two in Arequipa - one American and the other Quebecois.

Recovering and yet...

We are slowly getting over the colds we picked up in Lima. Lima is a distant nightmare. Olga is still bothered by a dry cough and thinks it might be an allergy to pigeon feathers but Andy thinks it is the dryness of this place and perhaps an adjustment to the dust. Yes, there is lots of dust. We go over the patio floor every day or so just to pick up the dust. There are also many pigeons who roost on the tops of various buildings near us. As we are above everyone else we can follow their activities. Before we moved here there was a fair amount of pigeon shit around the place but it looks fairly clean now.

Olga was our first casualty, when she fell. She is almost recovered now. Just a small bruise on the side of her chin. Andy came home from work early on Friday. His back had given out and he has been laid up for the weekend. Normally this happens when he lifts something he shouldn't but his back performed perfectly during all the house cleaning we did in leaving New Paltz and here he has lifted nothing. We think it is the furniture we are sitting on here in our apartment. We will look for a good work desk. At the moment he's a pretzel.

It is now Monday morning and after three days of pain Andy is getting xrays and seeing a chiropractor.

After listening to Andy complain for 3 days Olga said this morning, "I wish you could have a baby".

The Street Where We Live

We live on a street named after a famous Peruvian patriot - Colonel Bolgnesi. He fought in a war with Chile. The result of that war was that Chile grew in size and Peru shrunk. Col Bolognesi left Peruvians with an expression that is now part of their language - "hasta el ultimo cartucho" ("until the last cartridge"). It was the distance he was willing to go against Chile. Well you can see by the photo that he carried his gun at the ready.

Colonel Bolognesi

The kids ahead of us were off to school. The older brother watching over his kid brother and sister. The two youngest looked to be about 4, it is hard to believe they were school age.
Kids Off to School

Arequipa is full of pleasant little parks like this one about three blocks from our apartment.

A Pleasant Park

This is a look down the avenue towards our apartment - about 4 or 5 blocks away. The sun is so strong it washed the picture in white light. We need to learn to use the camera better.

Avenida Bolognesi


It is hard to believe how dry it is here. Olga says that Andy has stopped snoring and now makes a sound like an animal in rut. Then no sound at all and she has to check if he's breathing.

Hey, we have curtains!! A new fridge. A telephone. A shower curtain rod (and curtains to boot). There is only one or two places in Arequipa where you can buy a shower curtain rod. It is made to order () and one of the few aluminum window businesses. The people who sold shower curtains had no idea where you could buy the curtain rod. We had to ask in a dozen places before we finally found the place we needed. It was one block from the university. We wait on the kitchen cabinets and counter and internet access. Our phone number is 51-54-255850.

Today Andy went to get one of Olga's favourite pictures framed. It is a photo of the Dalai Lama holding a big golf umbrella. Under the picture is the following quote:

"In Buddhism, you should not mind those who make you angry. You should love those people who irritate you, because they are your gurus. In that sense, the Chinese are my gurus."

Olga has one of those "What would Jesus do?" (W-W-J-D) bracelets that says "T-C-A-M-G".

It cost $1.35 to frame the picture. The man cut the frame parts, cut the glass, put cardboard in the back and taped it well and added a string for hanging.


One final picture. It is of the house on the hill behind our apartment. What a place to live!!

Mirador/Lookout

We Live in Hope But Eat Well

Last night was our fourth night in our apartment. Still no hot water, still no fridge, still no kitchen cabinets - we live in hope. The upside of this is that we are discovering some really good restaurants. Last night we ate in a chinese restaurant that advertised itself as "gourmet" and with great justification. But "gourmet" doesn't mean expensive. A plate of 12 small spring rolls (freshly made and perfect) with a tamarind sauce cost less than $3.00.

Traffic in Arequipa

Arequipa is a city of 1,000,000 people. It has 1 Sears-like department store and over 4000 taxis (officially, unofficially who knows). A taxi ride costs about $1.00. That's how Andy goes to and from work.

If you imagine traffic in New Paltz where two cars come to an intersection and one is turning left across the path of the other, the car that is not turning will keep its distance. In Arequipa, and in Peru in general, this is not the case. The driver waiting for someone to turn across his path will allow 1 to 2 inches of space for the other car to get by.

Near our home is a major intersection of two boulevards. There is traffic in all four directions but left turns allowed in only two of the directions (imagine traffic coming from the east and traffic coming from the south are both allowed to turn left. Now imagine that there is lots and lots of traffic. Got it? Now imagine that there are no traffic lights and no policemen directing traffic. Now imagine that the traffic is running smoothly and people are getting where they want to go; there is very little use of the car horn and no one is getting too excited. Sounds impossible doesn't it. Impossible, but true.

For those of you who are technically minded, the network utilization of the streets of the center of Arequipa is on the order of 95%. Most intersections do not have stop signs or traffic lights and so manage to function by having drivers put themselves into the middle of the intersection and wait for their turn to pass. The intersections are like 4-way stops with no stopping. I haven't seen an accident yet and when people do use their horn it is to advise people coming from a side street that they (the ones blowing their horns) don't plan to stop as they come through the intersection so watch out.

Of course, Arequipa has the advantage that a huge portion of the drivers are taxi drivers and know what they are doing. I suppose that a plodder like myself would cause an accident almost immediately.

Eating out, Rustically

We went to eat at a restaurant across the street for our apartment. It is called "Los Rosales". A lot of Arequipanean restaurants are in a garden. It rains so infrequently that no one worries about it.

We ate a combo plate: chicharon (you saw a picture of that earlier), rocoto relleno (imagine an incredibly hot red pepper that has been deseeded and stuffed with something nice), and salsa con patas (picked pigs' feet salsa).

Olga was in her element. She's been looking forward to pigs' feet since we arrived two weeks ago.

Later we went to the central market and did a lot of shopping for the kitchen. Olga grew up in and around the central market of Callao so once again she was in her element. She and the woman attending us carried on a friendly banter of "this costs too much", "what, only 50 little cents". They obviously both enjoyed themselves.

Did any of you know that Arequipa is a republic? They are very independent-minded here and some just tolerate being called Peruvian. It is just civic pride but in the Peruvian scheme of things they have a lot to be proud of.

What a View

Two of the Three Mountains we see from our Patio

View From Outside

It is always bright and sunny here. Almost too sunny to take pictures. We'll have to wait until later in the day to show a panaramic view from the patio but in the meantime ...

Our yoga spot

There are 4 apartments on the top floor but only two have patios like this. When we first saw the apartment we didn't particularly like the outside colour but upon our return we were pleasantly surprised to find they had painted it a much more agreeable colour.

The next picture shows the other half of the patio, facing the mountains. The sun needs to be to my back to get a better picture and we'll do so later.
Facing the Mountains

I haven't shown it here but Misty is just off to the right, in the east. So we have perhaps the best unobstructed views of these two mountains in Arequipa.

The apartment building is right up against a large sports complex. The boys were there at 6:30AM today playing football. It has no night lighting so I suppose it will be quiet in the evening.


Sports Complex Magnopata

Home At Last

One month to day since we left New Paltz and today at 5PM we got the keys to our new apartment. We really got to talk to the landlord and his wife for the first time and like everyone else we have met here in Arequipa, they were very nice. They told the person in charge of security and maintenance that we were family from New York so they would look after us a little better. It was a nice gesture.

Anyway here is a picture of the living room. The glass is smoked glass with one sliding door.

living room looking south

The next picture is taken from the side but still in the living room. Notice the step up to the kitchen on the left.

living room looking east

Finally, one picture of the kitchen. You will notice that we do have a fridge, stove and sink but no counter and no cabinets.
kitchen and dining room


We are expecting those on Monday. We are the first people to live in this apartment. The kitchen is three steps up from the living room. Any suggestions what we can put at the edge of the kitchen to keep from falling into the living room would be welcome.

Tomorrow we will get up with the sun and take pictures of outside.

New Colleagues

Yesterday we ate in a small restaurant across the street from where we will live. Here is a picture of the snack food they put on the table.
Snack Food
I forgot to take the picture until we had eaten most of it but here's what's on the menu. That is a fried yucca stick, the last one. Much better than a french fry. The purple stuff is an olive-mayonnaise mix. Very nice. The corn is why I took the picture. IT just looked so colourful.

Later that day Andy went to his first departmental meeting. Not the same as New Paltz where we all sit around a table as equals. The chair of the department went to the head of the class and held the floor for the duration. Did I tell you that he is the only full-time faculty member in the department? There is always a reason why things are the way they are.

Afterwards some of us went out for pizza Not bad, very thin crust and like most Peruvian food, very tasty.
Definitely the Oldest There
The woman who has her fingers sticking out of Andy's head is Regina, the assistant for the course he'll be teaching. The others are Juan Carlos, Ernesto, Wilburt, Regina, Graciela and Andy. A lot of Peruvians go to Brazil for grad work. Juan Carlos and Graciela both studied there.

Our First Days in Arequipa

It is Wednesday and we've been here 5 days. We'll add some pictures later.

Our first news is that we found an apartment near our hotel.

Avenida Bolognesi, the street where we will live
Our house is at the end of the street. That gate you see is to a large public sports complex. The next picture is of the entrance to where we will live. There are several houses and one apartment building behind this big gate. The gate keeper didn't want me to take any pictures until I was living there. So I didn't.

Apartment Entrance
Our Apartment is on the 5th floor so we will have to walk up. The view is spectacular. We'll never have such a view again in our lives.

The apartment has two bedrooms, is furnished and costs very little in New Paltz dollars.

This city is incredibly beautiful. A real antique. All the pictures you have perhaps seen of Arequipa only show you the most well-known buildings but everywhere you turn there are little passages and alleyways that are just what Christopher Alexander talked about in "The Timeless Way of Building". Small, intimate spaces that exhibit that "quality without a name".

The university is moving to its new campus and we haven't seen it yet. Computer Science is in the old campus building - a refurbished brewery. The Comp Sci department is right next to the Rectoria (more or less, the 9th floor of Haggerty) and Andy is the only person not wearing a shirt and tie. We can only imagine what people would have thought if he had turned up here with his ponytail of last year.

We went shopping today for bed clothing. We bought a couple of wool blankets, pillows and a pair of slippers for Andy. We need to buy everything for the apartment, which we will do little by little.