Profile of a Place: Galena, IL

Galena, Illinois, is a picturesque place serving tourists searching for a taste of clean fun and nostalgia. The town boasts of its historic ties to the thriving trade on the Mississippi, well before Chicago became the gateway to the West, with lovely streets filled with lovely stores selling lovely things. Tourists thrive in Galena, where nostalgia rules pocketbooks. Unlike many tourist traps, however, Galena does not rely on the young and reckless to fund their service economy. Families, groups of mature women, and motorcyclists make up the majority of the visitors. Confectioneries, wineries, house tours, jewelery stores, antique houses, museums, parks, art galleries, and restaurants cater to the well to do searching for a taste of Midwestern refined living. Grant's Home is a mandatory stop on the Galena circuit and is the cheapest find of all as it is run by the State of Illinois. A mere $3 donation gets you to see quite a few original pieces of the Grant family, including one of the most famous portraits of our 18th president. The tour was small, but the historical associations of the house made it well worth the trip. This is in contrast to another historical house and tourist attraction, the Belvedere House. The impressive mansion has seen a variety of owners and uses, and the current owners have opened the House to the public to showcase their impressive collection of period furniture, art, and MGM salehouse finds such as The Curtains from the famous film "Gone with the Wind". Although the history of the house has been recorded quite well, only the largest pieces of furniture are original to the house. The pieces are incredible, however, including a priceless Tiffany chandelier (no pictures in the house, unfortunately) with matching sconces.

I cannot speak to the quality of the food and spirits this jewel of Jo Daviess County as I am too poor to indulge in such things. Food and housing is quite expansive in the area; we ended up staying in Dubuque, Iowa to defray the cost of our own get-away. But to put things in perspective, the Belvedere Tour puts you back $9 a person and a milkshake is $4 a pop (and you can get a real float in traditional flavors such as Green River for $5).

Galena brings some rustic charm to the weekend vacation however constructed for the vacationer.

Post-Peru

Well, I promised another post before leaving the country, something that I failed to do. *isorryface* I spent the last few days in Arequipa picking up gifts and relishing the availability of cake slices for $1. I'll probably bore y'all with the details of the archaeological investigations at the site in another post.

I intend to keep this blog up, with some more useful posts on travel and (possibly) my cooking adventures. I'll be travelling to Washington D.C. (OMG THE SMITHSONIAN) before heading over to India, so there will be more stories (probably mostly about the food). With these assurances, here are some more pictures for your perusing (full pun intended) of the wonderful country of Peru. I am sad that I did not get to do more travelling, especially to see some of the great archaeological sites of the country- Cuzco, Machu Picchu, Caral and the cultural ones- Lima and Puno for instance. But I am young still, and much of this world is left to be explored. I will get to it one day. Hopefully while the exchange rate is so amenable. Again, for your viewing pleasure...


View of the Vitor Valley, taken from a Middle Horizon site in Millo II. The mountain set called Chichani is in the distance on the left, and the single volcano in the center is Misti. Architectural rubble covers the site in what used to be structures and terracing.
Palta Rellena con Pollo- one of my favorite Peruano dishes. It's basically a chicken salad over avocado. Simple and delicious!

View from our lab in Vitor.

This is a video taken from a scenic point in the district of Sachaca, and if you turn your head you can get the full view of Arequipa, however sun-washed and fuzzy. This was my first attempt at using the video function on my camera, and apparently I thought the only way to make it function was by verbally willing it to "Panorama". My apologies.

Meet my new best friend, Pepto

The bathrooms at the field house.


As all travelers must, I did too. I fell sick on Tuesday and stayed back from the field. Luckily (unfortunately?) another one of my peers was also sick, so I had a buddy to stay back with. Somehow I had gotten through this much of my life without taking Pepto or Immodium or Tums, so this week has been experiments in the three. I am feeling much better today and hopefully it all will have passed. I only have one more week in Peru, so my next post will be my last from the country. I forgot my camera in Vitor this weekend, so I don´t have any more recent pictures, though I will probably post more with pictures once I´m back in the States and don´t have to pay for my internet.

We are coming up to the end of our trench as we are preparing to excavate the most exciting features, hopefully some in-situ burials. We have already opened one that has been heavily looted, but much of the human remains are intact.

Today I will try ceviche and do a bit of shopping (and send those postcards like I´ve been meaning to). I´ll be back again with more updates later. :D

PS- One word in Spanish that I´ve comfortably learned while here- galletas...cookies. :D

Ketchup

Hello All !

So it´s been awhile since a real substantial post, so I´ll try and include some details that I left out before. Two weekends ago we had a splendid time in Moquegua where we all climbed Cerro Baul and ate cuy (yum yum guinea pig). Cerro Baul is a ridge on which the Wari elite lived and ruled from in the Moquegua basin. There have been more than 10 field seasons at the site, to varying degrees and results. One of the most interesting aspects of Cerro Baul to me is that it remains an Apu- a sacred place- of the region that local people still pay their respects to in accordance to the agricultural season. These ¨Pagos¨ or ¨payments¨fuse Catholic and local traditions and supply the site with a steady stream of visitors to construct little houses of stones with burning tobacco and fake money payment. There was a pago going on even as our tour of the site blistered on.

Me on top of Cerro Baul.

And, secondly, the other big thing for the past weekends- Cuy. Yes, that´s a whole, deep-fried guinea pig. You can still see the claws and the hair is stuck on in many places still. Overall, it tasted...well...like chicken. But, to me, it just took wayy too much effort to actually get a substantial amount of meat off for it to be worth getting over the strange sensation that you are actively dissecting a pet.

So, that´s it for the past weekends. More recent update to follow.

The Field Season Starts

I only have a short time, so this will be a short post.

In short:
The field season has started at Millo 2, a probable Middle Horizon site in the Vitor Valley. I am working on the Mortuary Team, hoping to find a cemetary. Our accomodations are rustic, no hot water, 3 room house, ect. But the food is quite excellent and I´ve been keeping healthy thus far. The preservation is excellent at the site and in this climate in general; we found the hyoid of one subadult- a tiny bone that almost never survives in the archaeological context. I´ll post pictures soon. :D

I´m not Dead Part III

In Moquegua. Still alive after climbing Cerro Baul and eating guinea pig and buying new memory card. Will update more completely later. Field wonderful. On Mortuary team! No hot water in field. Showers not fun. Ect.

<3!

I'm Not Dead: Part II - using iPod on hotel wireless in moquegua can't write post now