Same ol' same ol'

We've already settled into a quick groove here, so there is not much new to report in the way of logistics.  Friday & Saturday consisted of work with our consultant Amelia in the morning, more work on our own in the afternoon, and dinner.  Friday night was some quick fried chicken take-out from a local place around the corner, Kikiriki -- all they do is either quarter, half or full chickens with either rice, plantains or french fries.  Saturday was an "Italian" pizzeria named Antica -- imagine a faux brawny wooden theme a la Splash Mountain at Disneyland and Italian dishes with exotic Amazonian fish, and you've got it.  I don't even know what I ate.  The house wines are good everywhere in Peru, and they come in liters.

Our lodgings, Hostal La Casona, house a variety of interesting people -- visitors range from German tourists (always a lot of Germans here); U Colorado, Boulder, grad students doing survey work on home sanitation facilities in Iquitos slums (as they put it they study shitters); a haggard old white woman who speaks Spanish with an atrocious accent, and is always followed around by this Peruvian mother and daughter; an old Spanish couple (the husband takes pictures of the wife sitting posed in various places around the hostal); and my favorite, a perennial group of deaf Americans here to partake of local ayahuasca ceremonies with "shamen" -- perhaps one of the biggest rip-offs in white man's tourism.  Of course, the linguists are the coolest of the bunch.

Tomorrow we pick work back up (people don't like to work on Sunday -- Catholicism) for three hours per day instead of two.  This week will prove to be a very hectic one as we do as much as we can here before we head off to the village a week from Monday.