June 22th - Arequipa Settling in

Now that I'm in one place, the blog may skip a day or two. Our time has been almost wholly consumed with the textiles class. The first two days were almost entirely focused on practicing our weaving techniques. We each have a small wooden loom - about 24 x 16 inches, on which we strung our warp (vertical) threads, and have begun inserting additional structures to support the various techniques we'll be learning. Due to technical difficulties with the projector, very little archaeological information was shared in the first days, and I was getting concerned that this was a weaving class, rather than an archaeology or conservation course. After starting class today with yet another major weaving project, I decided that I'd rather address the issue than sit and stew, so I walked outside with the teacher and voiced my concerns. She reassured me that we would be spending ample time on conservation, archaeology, and ancient textiles, and promised to break up the day a bit more (the previous day we sat and wove for hours on end and we were all pretty bleary eyed by bedtime). As it turned out, she was true to her word, and by 11am we were viewing some very interesting slides (due to the miraculous resurrection of the projector) and learning about ancient cultures, and then we spent the time after lunch working with actual ancient textiles, recovered from the Tambo Viejo site, learning to document and analyze the materials and techniques. Hallelujah, it was finally the class that I thought I'd signed up for. After the conservation, we went back to weaving for a bit, but generally she seems to have eased up on the weaving time requirements, which is a huge relief.

The site of the class is a building about 5 blocks from the hotel. It's an older house, and there is a family living in one side of it, but the other side is being used as a storehouse for local archaeologists. There are boxes and boxes and boxes of artifacts upstairs. It's reaaaalllly intriguing. And, we're finally getting to see some of the contents. I'm hopeful about the class - much more so than I was for a little while there.

Well, I should get a little more weaving done by tomorrow, so I'll say goodnight.

Hasta luego,

Karen