Pictorial update

This post is neither meant to be very deep nor informative. But now that I have managed to figure out how to shrink pictures to a manageable size I wanted to give you a pictorial update of my life here so far. I must say I understand why I stopped blogging from Japan, because editing this entry with pictures has been a nightmare. Enjoy!

This first picture (right) is becoming a familiar one: Me at the airport of Copenhagen messing around with my stuff before checking in. This time I am travelling without my bogu (kendo armor) which was a great relief when packing because all of a sudden I had no problem fitting all I wanted to bring into my bag. I must say I really start to miss kendo now, but since there is no club in town

there is not a lot to do about it.

This (left) is a little shot of the very first home cooked dinner, that I made the day after I arrived. Even on the day I arrived I was impressively energetic and cheerful, despite a 30 hour-long trip and a jet-lag. My flat mate, Ida, was very surprised that I didn't drop dead as soon as I arrived and that I managed to stay awake until 21:30.

At first I didn't like my room so much, but I think the problem was that it seemed too empty. After I had unpacked, made the bed and hung up some curtains with the assistance of Ida it felt a lot homier.

Plaza de armas, the main square of Arequipa, is about two blocks from our home. It is dominated by a huge cathedral along one side which is not in the picture. In front of the cathedral there is some greenery, a fountain and a lot of pigeons that get fed by tourists.

A street view of a rainy afternoon (left).

Ida and I have spent an awful lot of work on getting our home in order (see picture below). Our freezer was so full of frost that you couldn't even shut the door, so we had to defrost it so that we could fill it with cooked beans (oh so convenient). If you wonder about the knife we tried to speed things along a bit by helping the ice out.

We also tried to vacuum clean our flat. However, when I tried I noticed it wouldn't suck anything up. Ida suggested that it was probably because the bag was full. It was. Very full.

Apparently it is a reusable bag, and that's great, but it was so full we could hardly even get the dirt out of it. In the picture you can see a small bag and a massive amount of dirt. Well, that explains it pretty good.

After emptying the bag, the vacuum cleaner still didn't work, so we had to use a broom and a mop.

Below: Our next door 5822 m volcano, el Misti, as seen an early morning from our dirty living room window. It would be such a thrill to be up there!