The good, the bad, and the ugly

        It was really nice to have the first weekend to explore Jesus Maria and Miraflores. It was especially nice after waking up on Monday to rush hour traffic. I guess the city is much calmer during the weekends because everyone is at church. However, I haven’t seen as many churches as I thought I would. After reading about how scary the microbuses were I found them to be not so bad. However, we are all traveling together as a group and so it seemed safer since we could watch out for one another. I wish I had reviewed my Spanish more before the trip because it's much harder to hold a conversation with the natives since they speak so fast. Just after a few days though I am starting to catch on to some key phrases. I have also found that if you just smile and nod that they don't get frustrated as quickly as Americans would if they were dealing with foreigners. I have not once felt that they did not accept us being in their neighborhoods. 

I have picked up on some interesting qualities of the different neighborhoods. First off, I love that they have so many parks and at they are all so well kept. Also in the parks there is usually some sort of religious icon or statue. Good luck finding that in America. The parks and squares get a lot of use because most of the residents live in apartments or they have a front yard and no backyard. The buildings here are very different from what I am use to Georgia. Most of the buildings don't look like they were built at the same time but, they all share exterior walls and some of the higher floors look as though they were added later. I think the general layout of the city is similar to Chicago but the feeling within the city seems much different. They seem to have a lot of government employees trying to keep the streets and sidewalks clean. Sadly however, they often don't sweep with much effort and so there is still a lot of trash in and under the bushes. Even though it may not be the prettiest or cleanest city I've ever been to there is something about Lima that makes me love it more than all the others. 

Starting the class on Monday was nice to get my mind back on school because, during the weekend I was only thinking about what to do and where to eat next. In the Museum of Archeology and Anthropology we were able to see replicas of some ancient artifacts. The large panel, above the landing in the staircase, featured the number seven a couple of times; seven farmers and seven boxes. The boxes all varied is style but they all were symmetrical in some way. Some had vertical symmetry while others horizontal. There were two that were reflexive upon the diagonal. Another example of reflectivity was on the panel at the top of the staircase where each square within the checkerboard was reflected on the edges and the vertices.