she must and shall go free.: ...and so's the weather

the weather here has been hot... well, not unbearably unbearable hot.. but hot enough that you sweat then you can't get rid of it all day. put on the sun screen before you walk across the street or you will come back with a sun burn. okay maybe its not that extreme.. at least for everyone. the past week or so it has been a little cooler in the evenings... but not anywhere near the weather in Cajamarca. Two weekends ago I took my first trip within Peru since I came here in August. Usually at the end of a month of classes there is an extended weekend of a break. And, usually interns take that time to travel to different places in Peru. It's very interesting that there are so many different kinds of places within the boundaries of one country. We live on the coast, but there is also the mountain region, and a jungle. When we have those breaks usually I stay in Trujillo, but a couple weekends ago two of the girls that I live with, and I went to Cajamarca. It's a town in the mountains on what should have been a six hour bus trip there (which actually took us 10). It's a smaller city than Trujillo, and soooo much more relaxed. We had a lot of fun, relaxing fun, for the weekend. We ate lots of fresh cheese and bread... manjar blanco (which... is kind of like caramel but not..) along with little cookies called rosquitas, fresh blueberry jam (on fresh bread) blueberry juice (who knew there was such a thing?) yogurt.. okay so maybe all we did was eat. maybe. haha we also traveled to Celendin one day which is a town outside of Cajamarca, it took us about five hours to travel there... we spent the day there, visited with a pastor and his family then made the five hour trip back. also, one day we went to visit the Inka baths, the Inka discovered these natural hot springs which they turned into baths, and its popular still to go there and 'take a bath' and.. thats exactly what we did. it sounds a little strange, but its very interesting, especially to see the pool of water in the middle of the grounds... that has steam rising out of it, and you notice to be a little bubbly when you get close. Later that same day we visited something like a farm right outside of Cajamarca where they have the calling of the cows. they have cows, that they have named... which answer by their names, so the guy calls the cows names and they come in to eat in the order that they are called. i don't want to knock tradition.... but it seemed a little shady. As we were watching we noticed that the cows were lining up before they were being called... so... well either the cows knew their order, and they were excited to be in the spotlight ... or well.. well either way it was just a little strange. But the weekend was really so much fun, even the long bus trip, exploring the city, trying out the food, and visiting the towns nearby.

This is one view of Cajamarca (unfortunately, photos don't do mountains justice):

Another view (from a top the stairs we climbed fighting the different altitude to see it...actually the design of the stairs was fun within itself) :

One of the markets that we visited, you can see the ladies with their traditional clothing, the skirts and the hat, and what looks like a bag is actually an open cloth acting like a bag that she has tied around herself.

A church...

A church from the inside...

While in Cajamarca we found this awesome lady that had a shop of nothing but bags... okay and other items.. but mostly bags and fabrics... every kind of fabric that you can imagine. When we were looking around she offered to make us any kind of bag we wanted out of the fabric we chose... so... who can turn down that kind of offer? We picked out fabric and discussed a design and she sewed a bag in about thirty minutes right there in front of us!