Almost Two Weeks Out

     Today marked our second day of spanish classes.
      After class we met up at a vegetarian restaurant near the Plaza de Armas, and it ended up being very good.  It is really hard to find vegetarian food here, and even harder to find good vegetarian food.  Even in the grocery store there is a limited selection of food.  There are few varieties of cheese, no fresh lettuce, no unsweetened yogurt, no tortillas or tortilla chips, no decent vegetables in the supermarket (you need to go to the regular market), but a whole double-aisle of cookie.  
     This evening we went to the Qorikancha Musem in the basement of the Qorikancha temple.  IT was a musem of Incan and pre-Incan artifacts.  There were a couple of textiles preserved for hundreds of years, but the Incan pottery was in general more beat-up than the Mochican pottery, which predates it by several hundred years.
     There was also a room that spoke about the brain-surgery techinques of the time (65% rate), and a few skulls where you could see the places that had holes drilled in them.
     There were also skulls of important Incans that had been deformed by tying cloth bandages and boards around the head of a child from an early age, and a couple of mummies.  
     Incan mummies are preserved in a seated position, with the knees tucked into the chest.  This is so they could be stored and carried in urns.  On important festivals, people would take out the mummies and serve them food and drink, and also seat them near other mummies so that they could visit.
      After visiting the museum we went to a folk-dancing an music performance.  This was very interesting, but it seemed that there were a lot of colonial influences in it.  We only stayed for about half,because we had the time wrong and arrived early and so had been sitting for a long time.  I have some pictures, but they will have to wait until tomorrow.