"The bread eats Juan"

Classes have officially begun at La Catolica. Though the classes I attended have been interesting, I am technically not registered for any courses yet as I am a foreign student. Registration for us is not until tomorrow, and in order to get the classes that I want I will have to wake up before 5 and make my way to campus. Fortunately, the group of students that I am with have set up several small sleepovers at the houses of students who live within walking distance from La Catolica. I'm not going to get much sleep tonight.

On my list of possible classes I am looking at taking Quechua (the most widely spoken indigenous language in all of South America), Film, and Theater Analysis. The last class will be a lot of reading, but I am already familiar with most of the authors we will be covering, so it shouldn't be impossible for me. Naturally, all of these classes will be taught in Spanish.

Quechua is easily the most interesting class I am hoping to take. In the last class we discussed all of the suffixes that are used in the language and how changing the suffix that indicates the subject being acted upon to another word can change a relatively normal sentence like "Juan eats bread" into "The bread eats Juan".

I am also setting up my schedule so that I do not have class on Fridays. Most of the other students are doing the same which will make weekend traveling easier. This Friday, a group of us went down to the beach to hang out. It's still a little cold to swim in the Pacific at this time of year, but the fresh air was a nice change to the typical dustiness of the city.

We also went to Parque Kennedy (aka. The Cat Park), which is one of the most amazingly magical places in the entire city for me.

For those unfamiliar with Parque Kennedy, it is a church owned park that a while back took care of a few stray cats that hung around the area. Soon the population grew and now the church feeds and cares for a few hundred furry residents. The majority are very friendly and will approach park visitors and invade your lap whether you want them to or not. Cat lovers, this is the place to be in Lima.

I also discovered that the oven in my host family's kitchen is not broken. It's just that no one uses it. We'll have to see how my baking turns out.