flogging strikes

heyo so there is a new slide show with comments and everything.

things are going well here. I move tomorrow into a new place. It isn´t as nice but it´s in the house of the family of a friend and i have my own door to the street so that will be really helpful.

last week was holy week so there were processions every night for various reasons and I walked a few of them. I also climbed up one of the mountains at 4:30 in the morning Friday as part of a procession. I was surprised to find when I got up there that part of the whole reason for the walk was that the priest was flogging people on the cross. Apparently the logic is that since Jesus bothered to die on the cross for our sins, the least we can do is share some of his pain. Like helping him, if you get flogged it´s less for him. Anyway, I did not get in that line. But it was lovely to climb the mountain during dawn. I suspected that I would never bother to climb all they way up there on my own so I was glad to go with the rest of town.

I finally made it to a futbol match yesterday which was pretty fun. I was with futbol players so they were really loud and exciting and it was great.

This morning I went to get a cup of coffee and was a little confused because every business was closed including the municipal building where I was supposed to give classes and the market where I was going to get some food. Ghost town, nobody around, not even the dogs which was eerie and creepy then a friend pulled me into his restaurant and shut the door again. There was a strike on today and in a few more minutes there came the parading crowd yelling and such. Nothing happened but he said that sometimes they will get mob-like and if anywhere is open they might go in and wreck it. I spent a couple of hours with them just to be sure but there didn´t end up being any bad stuff happening so eventually I went out the back door and headed home for the day. I guess there is another one tomorrow but at least now I know what´s going on and can stay out of the way. It´s kind of hard to tell what it´s about, some people said that the farmers don´t want to pay for water, and then something about the railroads and that in some places they destroyed some rail lines. I tried to find some news about it but don´t know yet. Strikes are pretty common in Peru so it wasn´t too big of a deal, just interesting to walk into the plaze expecting lots of activity and finding none.

hasta soon,
em