So all of the sudden it's my last weekend in Lima, and I don't know where all the time went. But like all the weekends here, this one was quite eventful.
We'll pick things up Friday at UNIFE. We sat in discussion groups for two hours. At first I was nervous to sit and talk for that long, but my group was great and we had plenty to talk about. We did an hour in Spanish and an hour in English. Although the English hour was more like Span-glish. Afterwards we had an hour of "sports." We played volleyball for a bit and then soccer. Don't know where I got my competitive genes from, but obviously I took these activities very seriously and lost my voice a little bit in the process.
Friday night, we planned on going out. But I did get sick, which is kind of funny now, not so much when it happened. My host mama took care of me and I was ready for action the following day.
Saturday, we headed back to central Lima for a fun-filled day of culture and history! (Yes, that's a cheesy sentence and I did it on purpose) We started at the Governor's Palace. Well actually we started outside the palace where 10-ish people from my program (not me) were denied access because their outfits were not appropriate for the palace. Eventually we made it inside and the palace was beautiful. The rooms we saw were very extravagant.
The next stop was La Catedral de Lima. It's a church in the main plaza (Plaza Mayor) of central Lima. This building was also massive and incredibly intricately designed. They have different rooms dedicated to the saints of Peru. Plus a lot of people were buried under the church, so they have an exhibit featuring that. I did learn how Lima got it's name. When the Spaniards came, there was a river in Peru called the Rímac river. Rímac is a Quechuan (language of the Incas) word and the Spanish couldn't pronounce it. So they called the people the Limac people who lived by the Limac river. Eventually Limac became Lima.
The next activity was watching the changing of the guard. I'm not gonna lie, this activity was a little boring. I've seen the changing of the guard (guards?) in Canada and Sweden and it's all pretty much the same. So some friends and I dipped out early to have lunch at a restaurant which fortunately for me had some real vegetarian options.
Lunch was followed by some shopping and then a visit to the Iglesia San Francisco. That tour was fascinating. The best/eeriest part, was heading underneath the building to the catacombs. Over 36,000 people were buried below the church because they believed it would help their soul reach heaven by being closer to the lord. It's been about 500 years, but there are a lot of bone remains that have been dug up. It was mostly femurs and skulls, and it was quite interesting.
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