It really is winter...

I am very intimidated by the idea of updating my blog because so much has happened in just the past 48 hours!!! I arrived safely in Lima yesterday after a very long day of traveling. Everything went very smoothly, including getting a full 180 visa! The plane ride from Houston to Lima was the longest I have ever been on, though it was only just over 6 hours, which really is not so bad. Plus, we had personal screens with free movies on demand, so I watched 17 Again and Mulan. I was inexplicably excited to finally arrive at my destination and get my first glimpse at the city that will be my home for the next five months. My first impressions were that Lima is somewhat similar to San Salvador, except much larger and busier. Everywhere I looked there were shiny lights and cars everywhere, honking and driving crazy as per typical Latin American driving, and plenty of people out and about. And it was around 11 pm! On the taxi ride to the hotel, I talked with a girl named Anne from Minnesota who I discovered lives extremely close to Hennepin Tech. where my host brother goes to school! What an odd coincidence! We are staying at La Paz Apart Hotel, which is incredibly nice and we get to eat breakfast and have orientation talks on the roof! I am sharing a room with two girls from my program. One girl is named Sitra and she goes to George Washington University. The other girl is named Katrina and she goes to Eastern University in Philadelphia. She is engaged to another student on the trip. As thrilled as I was to finally be in Lima, I was very enthusiastic about going to bed last night because I was quite exhausted from traveling.

Today began with breakfast on the roof, which was quite a way to start off my first official day in Lima! After breakfast, everyone from my program gathered in the lobby to meet our program directors, Marion and Melvin, both of whom are great! After we all introduced ourselves to the group, we headed out on a sort of coach bus to the Pontificia Universidad Católica for our placement exam and tour. Having forgot that I even had to take a placement exam, it was definitely surprising to find that I was about to take it my very first morning without even having time to practice my Spanish. However, I soon discovered that I need not worry because the exam was not particularly difficult for me, and I actually thoroughly enjoyed the speaking interview portion. During this part, one of the teachers simply chatted with me and one other girl named Lauren, who goes to Gordon. I felt pretty good about my conversation skills during this "interview" - it definitely helped that our interviewee was very relaxed and mostly asked us questions such as why did we pick Perú for our semester abroad. Apparently I have an American accent, which is not particularly surprising, and the teacher seemed confident that I would quickly develop a Peruvian accent. I learned that a sweater is not suéter as we learned in Spanish class but rather is called a chompa in Peru. Once everyone finished all parts of the exam, we took a tour of the campus, which is rather different from Hope's campus. For one thing, it is much larger, and surprise surprise, none of the buildings have Dutch architecture. :-)

We ate lunch at a fancy restaurant called José Antonio, which had a fabulous buffet. I would love to describe the names of the food that I ate and what was in them, but I do not even know. I had some sort of french fry dish - yes it was a dish not just greasy American fries - that had onions and some sort of yummy sauce on it. The arroz con pollo (rice with chicken) was also muy delicioso. And of course I had to try some ceviche, which despite having fish in it may have been my favorite part of my meal. If you don't know, ceviche is a dish with raw white fish that is safe because it is marinated in a special sauce made with key lime juice so that the acid "cooks" the fish. The sauce is spicy and tangy, a great combination! We also had pisco sour, which is a population Peruvian alcoholic beverage. I think someone said pisco is the national liquor of Peru, and a pisco sour has lime and sugar in it as well as egg yolk to make the top frothy. This stuff is strong!!! I did not drink very much because it really was not too tasty to me.

For the rest of the afternoon, we had orientation on the roof of the hotel, of which my favorite part was learning about the unusual foods. In Peru, Chinese food is very popular, but it is very distinct from any other Chinese food. Know as Chifa (which literally means eats rice in Mandarin, I think) the dishes are similar but have a Peruvian flavor. I decided to try some of this for dinner and really the "arroz chaufa" tasted exactly like fried rice and was quite tasty. The chicken that I got had really weird dark sauce on it that was not so good. Our hotel is within walking distance of the ocean, so we went to a mall called Larco Mar, which is basically built into a cliff near the ocean. We were not actually able to walk along the beach. The mall had typical American fast food like KFC, Pizza Hut, and Peruvian hamburger places. I figured if I got food from the ChinaWok it would at least be more Peruvian, since it would be Chifa, which I was anxious to try. Although all 28 students on my trip walked to the mall together, we split into smaller groups for dinner, so I ate with my friends Laura, Sydney, Sarah, Candi, and Kendra. The picture below is Laura, Sydney and Sarah.

I should probably start wrapping this up because it is really long, but first I would just like to mention that it is definitely surprising cold. I wore jeans and a sweater today and brought a scarf with me, which I thought would be enough, but I was cold standing outside between test portions. When we went to dinner I wore my North Face! Secondly, I find myself fascinated with the diverse group of students that I have met. We are from all over the U.S. and it is very interesting to see cultural differences within us Americans and not just between us and the Peruvians. I have truly liked everyone I have met so far and I am looking forward to getting to know everyone better in the coming weeks. The following two pictures I took this evening during some group bonding. A girl named Rachel was singing some Mariachi songs for us and she was amazing!

Left to Right: Megan, Laura, Sydney, Jenna, Kendra

Chris, Rachel, Anne, Kevin, Ana

Kevin, Jenna, Kendra, Candi, Anne, Sarah, me, Sydney, Laura

Note: if you click on the pictures, they will open in a new window and be much bigger