weekend fun

So I´ve had a very professionally succesful past couple of days, woo-hoo!

Friday: Went to Huacho and met with Mario (member of PANC) and the dirctor of the museum. I was only there a couple of hours, and only talked to the director for maybe 30 mins, but I think it was really important to do it. Face-to-face meetings are key here. They were very excited to hear what I had to say, about both the Embassy grant (current thing I´m sponsored on, can bring in students and money for a few materials) and the Getty grant (can pay anywhere between $25,000-$250,000 for shelving, archival quality materials, etc). That´s the type of money we´re talking about, and that they need, but just didn´t know the places to apply. I brought them the info and gave them some names of people they can email directly to start these application processes. I also gave them info so they can email the director of Yachaywasi to ask her how she applied for these grants, so they can get advice on the process for Peruvians. So hopefully, they´ll take this and run with it! I´m excited.


I don´t have the time right now to put up all the pics I took of their storage; I need to sort through them to pick out the good ones. Expect them later tonight. Mainly, because the pics say more than I could about how badly they need the help. Remember, this situation is because they only have enough money to stay open. And this is the dpeartment´s REGIONAL museum, the government hard supports anything. They lack space, resources, and manpower. The boxes are from former excavations, and there are other ones that were transferred over from another museum´s storage because it closed. A lot of this stuff is also from people just finding the stuff in their fields, etc and just turning it into the museum. It is a wealth of info! ´

First is the front of the museum, recent graffiti. Second is a general shot of part of the storage room.

Saturday and Sunday: Classes taught by Giacomo Chiari, Chief Scientist at the Getty. He´s been giving a lecture about the process and difficulties of preserving adobe structures around the world. Simply awesome, great info. And this past week, I´ve been getting along much better withmy coworkers, all the problems have smoothed out (probably because they weren´t happy with the work, and now the work is over). They came over after classes yesterday to the hostel with me and I taught them how to make psuedo rice krispy treats; they loved it. :) In retunr, they taught me how to cook little pigeon eggs (popular, sold in the supermarket--much less cholesterol than normal chicken eggs, high in omegas).

So here´s a mix of other pics of textile-related stuff, for the knitters out there. :)

This is a textile that Yachaywasi worked on cleaning and mounting. The darker cloth is new, a backing to support the textile and visually fill in the gaps with a similar color for display purposes.

More yummy yarn pics, with the guy tinting it, too! I´m going to get the recipies for this.

Ciao for now!