Arequipa

Hello Everyone! Sorry this is late getting up, like all of our blogs have been. Let´s rewind a little bit to our week in Arequipa, which started 2 wednesday´s ago.
We were in another language school for a week, this time in a hostal called the Casa de Avila. It was run by a man named Armando, who was on top of it allt he time. He was great at his job, and we all appreciated his help and a cooking class he set up for us on Sunday of traditional Arequipan food! In general, classes were informative, and the feeling was that they were better than the ones in Cusco.
We stayed in homestays again here, and everyone was happily within wakling distance! My family, Ceresa´s, Carters, and Meghans were really close together, and we could all walk to school together! Me and Ceresa were "cousins" and were excited our families were super close. It was also neat to see the difference between the Cusco families, and the Arequipan families. The general sentiment was that the Arequipans were prouder of the Western influence in their city, and took great pride in the region.
On Saturday, we got a chance to do some white water rafting only about 20 minutes in a bus outside of the city. It was SO fun! We had to wear these silly wetsuits, red jackets, and life jakcets on top of that, but it was so worth the humiliation as the water was FREEZING. There were a few moments of craziness on some of the class 3 and 4 rapids, but all in all, everything went smoothly!
That night, we celebrated Carter´s birthday with a delicious dinner, a surprise afterwards from Brit and Nick! and a discoteca! Not all of us went to the discoteca, but apparently it was quite an experience, and really fun!
Other activities around the city we did, just in a list-- the old Catalina monestary, walking down San Fransico street (the hub of all things hoppin´in Arequipa), visiting the Cathedral in the Plaza de Armas, shopping, the food market, the clothes market, cake with homestays, an INCREDIBLE cake place near the plaza (that I´ve been to 3 times now!), good turkish food at El Turko.
The general feeling on Arequipa was mixed...some liked the big city feel, others didn´t. It was definitely way different than cusco, and there were significantly less tourists. Us blondies felt a little exposed here. In general though, it was a good week! Went extremely fast, but was fun!
Talk to you from Ecuador,
Kate