Santa Catalina

This morning, our whole group went to Santa Catalina. It is a convent that was founded in 1579. We took a tour, and it was fascinating. The place is huge--it is like a whole other city within Arequipa. When women went there to live, they were not allowed to ever leave.

We had fun!

These are slatted windows. If the women who lived here had visitor, they got to speak with them through these windows.

There were paintings like this all over, depicting the life of Jesus. The women there could not read, so the paintings were a way for them to "read" the Bible.

This is a bedroom.

Oh! This was cool! This is how they purified water! They put a bunch of water in this cone shaped rock, and it slowly dripped out the bottom. The water that dripped out the bottom was clean!!! I don't quite get the science behind this... but it worked!

This is a street within Santa Catalina.

And here are some houses!

And another street!!

This is where they did laundry!!

Here's the view from the top of a high place in Santa Catalina.

This is inside Santa Catalina.