The Wonderful World of Peru

Wow! What a busy five days I've had so far! Adjusting to Peru took no time at all, it has been nothing but amazing so far!! Not getting to bed until 2am (local time, which is Eastern Standard Time btw) after flying all day was exhausting. My host family asked if I wanted a welcome drink but I was too exhausted. :( ...don't worry we enjoyed some champagne the next night!
My room is pretty tiny, but I've been into that whole Tiny House phase lately so I'm actually enjoying it! The window is right next to my bed and is about the entire length, so the breeze is really nice at night.

 

View from my window...at an angle, the straight view is of that gray wall

As you can see in the picture it was cloudy the first few days and the Peruvians just thought it was awful and cold (this is their summer right now), they complain about the "rain" and I'm pretty sure they meant the mist drops haha, this ain't no Nebraska rain! Oh, air conditioning is not a thing here. Everywhere just opens their windows and doors, so my window is open all the time (no screens in them either). Luckily there aren't too many bugs here so I haven't had too many problems yet. My host family is really great and I only have a 2 minute walk to the school, so I'm pretty lucky with my set up compared to some other girls who have to walk around 20 minutes. My host mom is Giselle (who thankfully speaks great English or I don't think I would be able to make it all semester), the dad is Jaime (who speaks no English but is a super nice guy and tries to be so helpful even though I don't understand everything he tells me), and there are 3 kids:Jaime Jr., Andres, and Thalia. Jaime Jr. and Thalia speak English really well so that is nice that I can talk to them or ask them for help with some translations. My family has 2 maids/cooks, yes TWO! It is so crazy to me, they sweep in my room 3 days a week and make lunch for us and do my laundry. The food is delicious, I will definitely enjoy that part. Another odd thing is lunch here is the main meal of the day, most of the family comes home and eats lunch together and then have a small meal or snack for dinner- that is something I'm still trying to get used to.

On Friday, we had orientation, which my host parents forgot about but don't worry because I remembered. The campus is so beautiful and it is gated and beautiful (did I already say that?) and I love it. There is a (man-made) river going through the campus, they have beanbag chairs to lounge around outside on the greens and a waterfall and it is just amazing.

Some pictures of campus

 I was under the impression, for some reason, that our teachers don't speak any English but luckily they both do so if we run into problems it won't be too difficult to fix (PHEW!). We have class 3 hours a day Mon-Thur and then are free from about 1pm Thursday until 4pm Monday, I would say that's a pretty great sounding weekend. After orientation a few of us went shopping at a local grocery store for some items and explored a little bit.

For dinner most of the group met up and got dinner at a bigger "shopping shop" (as my host brother Jaime calls them), Jockey Plaza, which was a lot of fun to go out as a group, a few of us went to another restaurant to try a drink called Machu Picchu. Don't do it. We all had to coax each other to choke it down, it looks great (in the picture), but it is deceiving. Orange Juice, Grenadine, Pisco, and Creme de Menthe do not mix well at all. But I really am enjoying Pisco so far: the drink of Peru!

Saturday, we explored the part of the city called Miraflores with Stephen and Barbara (our UNK sponsoring professors) which was a lot of fun. Irish pubs where I almost ordered 9 chickens, parks littered with stray cats, expensive coastal views, Lomo Saltado which is a traditional Peruvian dish and is traditionally delicious, and some random guys talking to us about our school, UPC, made for a pretty eventful day!

Lomo Saltado, and Marki, Emi and I just being our cool selves

At night a few of us went out to Pizza Street to get dinner and get our Disco-tech on! When you walk down the street there are people yelling at you to come in their restaurant or club by offering free Pisco Sours- it's great. The clubs are extremely hot and packed but they were fun until we had sweat more than any person should. Once we learn a little more of the music our experiences will be a lot more fun. But I did meet some people from Idaho who were there on vacation and were a ton of fun to hang out with for a bit! What a small world!

I finally caught up on my sleep on Sunday morning, which was much needed after a busy week or traveling. Marki and I headed to, again, try to figure out to get our local phones which took what seemed like 3 hours. Every Claro phone place we went to in Jockey Plaza sent us to another Claro store or little booth, eventually we got lost and were walking outside when this guy selling Brownies stopped us asking where we were from. Brownie Franco grew up in Georgia so we talked a little bit and asked him for his help, he walked us to the right place and got us all set up. I swear, Jockey Plaza has more turns than the movie Labyrinth. The phone my host family is letting me borrow is one from the stone ages (aka early 2000s), my host brother even laughed at it! Looks like all those texting skills I learned in Middle School will come in handy, once again.

So we went back and bought one of the brownies since he went out of his way to help us, such a nice guy. Our journey afterwards to find flip flops was a whole other journey that seemed never ending, apparently people don't really wear them based on how scarce they are. Finally we got to relax next to Claire's rooftop pool after a long day and enjoy the view of the mountains and ocean (at the same time- so cool).

FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL, FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL: My very last first day of school was the best and most beautiful yet. It began with me sleeping in as much as I could (not too possible since it's so loud here), watching a bit of Netflix, having a (half-understood) conversation with my host dad...considering our first class isn't until 4pm, there is the whole day to fill before it starts! It doesn't seem like the classes will be too bad, but 3 straight hours of class is hard enough, let alone having to translate for 3 straight hours- ugh. But our teachers are really nice and there isn't too many things to for classes. After class a few of us walked to El Polo, a shopping center, then went to a small grocery store here and I attempted to find the closest thing to bagels...unsuccessfully by the way. The bread things I chose were not right, I'll just have to try again next time. After that, I got home and Jaime Jr. was just about to heat up some dinner so I plated the food and he made the drinks (he's a fitness buff so he doesn't like the sugary juice that we usually have so he just blended some papaya and ice...not my favorite but oh well). We had a really good conversation about our lives, his time working in the US, how we don't know how to dance in each others' countries (it's veryy different) and what not.

Tuesday's class was...interesting. It's a literature class (in spanish) so we began talking about the most awkward poem ever for a first day, I'll spare you all the details, but just know it made for an interesting dinner conversation laughing about it. Some of us stayed on campus for an extra movie watching thing so we all hung out on the greens on their bean bags...UNK doesn't have that.

Yes, we're Big and Little and we share bean bags

So this movie viewing that we had to go to was basically another 3 hour class of translating- let's just say by the end of the day the entire group was exhausted. Watching 3 short films (only one with English subtitles and watching one twice) and an in depth conversation after each one was more than my little brain could handle. A not-so-quick dinner with Stephen and Barbara and the whole group back at El Polo and I am now home ready to pass out and get some rest for our day of shopping and class tomorrow. Especially since I didn't sleep well last night because apparently in Peru construction in residential areas does not cease during the night.

Don't worry mom and dad (and grandma and grandpa) I am still alive, doing well and have not gotten too lost yet, so if anyone is ready to visit I am scouting out places to go and things to do ;) *hint hint*


Some interesting things I've noticed thus far:

• Gordo(a)/gordito (fatty) is used as a loving term
• There are a ton of casinos
• And there are even more Mcdonalds and Chili's
• A small sunscreen bottle costs $30, so good thing I packed a ton
• Cab drivers will do their best to rip you off. Ex: paid 10 soles to get to Jockey Plaza, on the way back asked a driver how much and he said 30 soles, his friend next to him said 28-pshh nah, we found a guy who took us for 8 soles :)
• Servers take forever and you have to wave them down when you want to order or pay or need anything, expect dinner to take at least an hour and a half
• Servers don't know how to split bills, this makes for a difficult time for us when 9 people eat together
• Teachers and other people who know both languages translate the easiest words for us. Explanation: all our classes are in spanish and sometimes when our teachers are speaking they have a habit of translating random nouns, but they are the ones we all learned in Spanish 1! So instead of translating the difficult verbs that we don't know, they translate película to movie, et