Defended my prospectus...

...pretty happy to have that out of the way.

In other news:
1. I think I lost my baseball cap somewhere along the way. This means
that I'm stuck wearing my prof. Jones hat.
2. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. But only if by
"Christmas," you mean "plastic trees and lots of rain." And panetón,
which is like fruitcake, but fluffier.
3. I'm in the stage of the trip where I'm counting the days down until
I get to be home for a while. For some reason, it always seems like a
good idea to go away for Christmas in the middle of August, but I'm
really glad, at this point, that I'm going to be home in Colorado with
Emily for a couple of days at that time. Christmas here would be lame.
Plus, I'm really looking forward to getting a little bit of skiing in.
4. I'm continually bewildered by the amazing variety of knockoff
Peruvian Oreos of all shapes sizes, brands, and carcinogenic-chemical
content. At the moment, I'm munching on strawberry and vanilla
"rellenas" from "fenix."
5. Had a conversation with Lucy and Ricardo (Familiay Qoqopi--My Cusco
family) about the redecorating they plan to do in the house. Turns out
that they can get ceramic tile for about S/ 16 a square meter. This is
less than 1/10 the cost of ceramic tile in the states, if I'm doing my
math right. The Peruvians are all worried about how they're going to
compete with US firms as the new Peru-US free trade agreement goes into
effect, but I think they're going to do fine. I'm hoping that we start
to get some of this awesome puffed quinoa cereal that I eat every day
for breakfast.
6. I saw some street vendor today making what appeared to be a
waffle-salteña. She had a waffle iron-like thing and was grilling some
sort of veggie/meat stuff into it. Will the wonders never cease?