Friday, June 16
Catholic churches and religious art. Man, I was diggin it. We visited San Blas Church, the Cathedral, Santa Catalina Convent, and La Merced Monastery. The Spanish knew what was up when they built all of their churches on top of Inca temples. If I were in the business of converting, that is exactly what I would do too. We weren’t allowed to take pictures in any of the churches so my pics are a little lacking for this day. In the afternoon, we discussed Colonialism and reflected on what we saw at the churches.
Every one of the churches was amazingly beautiful. It reminded me of… what else, Spain (which would probably make sense since they were built by the Spanish). They were just gorgeous. You could have easily sat in each one for hours and still notice new details in the art. It was really interesting to see the Andean influences in the Christian art, for example Mary’s body in a triangular shape to represent the spirit of the mountains, or apus. I guess there are two schools of thought on this: the Andeans relating to Christianity in a way that they can understand, or disguising their Inca religion as Christianity.
This is misleading - we didn't even go to this church on Friday. But you get the idea. This is on the main square, and the roads are blocked off for a dance performance in the street.
Friday night, the craziest thing happened. Kathryn and I spotted a Patty’s Pub on the main plaza and we really wanted to go there so we could pretend we were in It’s Always Sunny. However, there wasn’t enough seating, so we all went to a different pub across the street.
We’re sitting down looking at the menus, and whom do I see out of the corner of my eye – why it’s Trevor Swink, Bishop McGuinness coach and teacher. El mundo es un pañuelo. Seriously, what a small world. Granted, I never had Coach Swink for class (or sport, obviously – like I’m actually athletic or something), but I still talked to him, and I introduced Kathryn as Doug Whitbeck’s girlfriend. Speaking of Kathryn, when we were ordering beers, Kathryn ordered a “grande,” which isn’t that unusual– more bang for your buck. But her grande turned out to be a little more grande than everyone else’s. But she had no problem downing that 1.2 liter cerveza… What a champ.
Everyone else went out afterwards, but I went home in an attempt to catch up on my blogito (which obviously worked out really well because I’m writing about this a week later), but Courtney had her Twilight book on her bed and I succumbed to temptation and read for like three hours. Oops.
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