Arequipa sight seeing

This morning we went to Matteo’s school program. It was a lot of fun to see, even if we weren’t able to understand everything that was said. There was dancing and singing, and of course we all thought that Matteo was the star of the show!!!

Here we were waiting out in front of our Arequipa home waiting for our driver.

The school program lasted about 2.5 hours with a delayed start. The program consisted of an end of year performance for 2-4 year old children as well as a graduation for the 4 year old kids. It was all worth while once we were able to see Matteo dance and sing on stage. Below are some highlights from the performance

Here was Matteo’s solo part (to bad the microphone was in the way)

Matteo getting his dance moves on.

Matteo loves to get his photo taken.... And especially loves to look at himself on the camera.

After lunch we went down town. Here is the Basilica Cathedral of Arequipa which is located in the "Plaza de Armas" of the city of Arequipa.

We visited the "Monasterio D Santa Catalina" (Santa Catalina Convent) below are some photos we took of the inside. The one interesting thing we realized was that when women came to this convent they were not all equal as you would assume. Some of them paid more money to come as well as others could afford to bring servants along to cook and clean for them.

The following picture is the longest street in the convent.

The opening in the floor would have had running water in it. Here is where the servants and or nuns would dump their chamber pots aka toilet bowls (similar to what we would use at the G&R Christmas tree farm but much smaller).

Here is a picture of the wash basins. Water is flowing down the center channel. However, by using your hand to block the channel water will filter into one of the individual basins.

In the main kitchen of the convent they had their own well to get water.

Over the years in Arequipa many earthquakes have happened. This photo shows an area that was never replaced after one of them.

This narrow room was used for the nuns to speak to people in the outside world once a month. Only 5 nuns could have visitors at a time. However, each nun needed another nun present to make sure the conversation was appropriate. The visitors were on the other side of the left hand wall. Additionally, there was approximately a foot gap between the wall shown here and the wall on the visitors side to prevent anyone from touching each other.

Here is a photo of Jim, Madeleine, April, and Eric at the Santa Catalina Convent.

Out of all of the places to visit in a single day April ran into someone she knew from camp, Tom Peterson.  What a small world!!!

Well tomorrow we have an early morning as Rodrigo has his performance starting at 9:30 and we are getting picked up at 8:45.  So......

Buenos noches....