Day 68

I think I said the word cansada at least 10 times in one day. We had to leave the house by 7 for the 8:00 bus to Tarma, so I got up early because (of course) I hadn't packed. The bus ride was about 6 hours, and Bethany and I had a good chat before we both fell asleep. We're actually freakishly similar -- not only physically, but also in the way we think and express ourselves. We were asked if we were sisters a few times, and Meredith called us gemelas because we were dressed very similar. We stopped for lunch and just had some soup. We rolled into Tarma around 3 p.m., took at taxi to Hotel Vargas and checked in. We grabbed lunch and some coca tea (tea made from the leaves that make cocaine), which is supposed to help with altitude sickness. The afternoon was made up of meeting people, kind of making the rounds to greet everyone that Meredith knew in town, and Meredith conducting demographic surveys. The surveys were actually really interesting -- they asked questions like, "How do people here perceive God?" or "How do people express themselves?" While the answers to those questions were quite fascinating, Bethany and I were just struggling to stay awake. We ended up getting home about 9 p.m. and she was probably in bed and asleep within 5 minutes. I stayed up a little later in Meredith's room working on translating my testimony into Spanish. The picture is with Bethany in the Plaza de Armas or the Plaza Principal in Tarma.