Bang! Bang!

Monday June 3rd, 2013

After waking up in the middle of the night to what I believed to be gunshots, the group ventured to a new breakfast place a few blocks away. I have started to realize that every morning consists of loud birds, a wide array of horns, and the lingering scent of a delicious soup.

Nosotros vamos al a museo de archelogia y antropologia. We saw an abundance of artwork, sculptures, and archeology. I have noticed lots of patterns within paintings that contained curvy, circular shapes and lines next to more angular and sharp edged lines. The paintings typically consisted of a few colors which were muted and held low contrast. I didn’t see many paintings containing a vast array of colors. A repetitive theme in the paintings was humans working or committing an action. People were busy in the fields or dealing with their daily life, but I didn’t see any depictions of people in leisurely act or relaxing. Lots of repetition of shapes in rotational and reflection patterns were common in the paintings.

(Bad Picture...I know. The Painting in subject is at the bottom.)

Despues nosotros vamous al Plaza de Mayor! The main square was very busy with various people. I was surprised again by the city of Peru because of the amount of workers cleaning the city. We have witnessed an abundance of service workers within Lima that wash busy sidewalks, pick up litter, and paint old lamp posts. Next to the square was the Palacio Arzobispal De Lima (www.palacioarzobispaldelima.com/‎), an old Cathedral and the Archbishop’s palace. Both were filled with ancient paintings that dulled and lost their vibrancy over the years. The elaborate woodwork required my eyes to follow a maze of notches and curvatures. The wood was mostly dark and rich with no visible knots. We also viewed old crypts that contained the remains of past church officials. The cathedral itself contained tall ceilings with rounded ribbed ceiling braces. Each reliquary within the cathedral contained its own style of architecture and material. There was a large absence of sunlight due to the aged nature of the wood and paintings that filled the church.

After splitting for lunch, we headed towards a towards a touristy vista. We were beleaguered by an abundance of servers attempting to get business. They all told us of lunch specials in broken English. We paced through the cloud of Peruvians until the group split with the guys going to restaurant and the girls going to the one next door. I decided to hold back on the food due to a full belly consisting of several varieties of bread. The waiter brought us a round of Pisco Sours on the house for our decision to dine at his café. The bitter lemonade went down fine for me, yet for my comrades it was a different story.

 Following lunch we checked out the house of the Arch-Bishop. A shiny reflective slab of marble refracted sun light up three flights of stairs onto a golden altar. The altar had infinite angles, curves, and lines which allowed the reflected light to illuminate the altar. The room contained framed pictures of the Stations of the Cross. Amanda pointed out that the layout of the pictures was set in a symmetrical pattern. Walking down the flights of steps can be a hassle upon realization of the blinding light coming from the entrance floor. The architecture involved to illuminate the altar was a pure work of mathematical art. It leaves me to wonder if on one particular day, possibly a holy day, that the sun is perfectly in line to illuminate the altar at full potential.

Viva Peru!

~JH