Limes, Llamas, Lima & Life Beyond!: Mirabus

Friday was my last day of intensive Spanish, thank goodness! I did not like having 6 hours of one class everyday. . . it was torture! Except not completely because I learned a lot and it was interesting, but still I will be glad to go back to a normal college schedule starting this week. I am planning on taking geography, music appreciation, and historia of the ancient world as my direct enrollment courses. These will all be in the general studies facultad, which hopefully means they won't be overtaxing. Tomorrow I have class from 9-1 and then I am done for the day! Yes! And now for more exciting news, I shall describe my weekend.

Friday my program had its second cultural event, which was the Mirabus tour through all of Lima. This extremely touristy excursion begins in Miraflores at Parque Kennedy (remember this park because I go there a lot since it is a bustling area in the middle of Miraflores) and goes to the central district of Lima and back. The bus is a giant red doubledecker and our group was on the second level of the bus out in the open, which equals cold but totally worthwhile! Since I love the other students on my program, it was fun to be with all of them outside of the university! I did not really pay too much attention to where the bus was going because I was chatting so much with my friends. We stopped at an attraction called Parque de las Aguas, which is aptly named because it is a park full of fountains (agua = water), which are lit up at night. One fountain consists of a several rings that are flat on the ground and the water shoots up in spurts, so you can go in between the rings and stay dry if you jump across when the water lowers. I knew that if I tried this I would probably get wet and be super cold for the rest of the night, but my friend Sarah convinced me that I would only get my feet wet and I believed her, so we went in together. Had we been skilled we very well could have only gotten our feet wet, but every time we tried to cross a ring of water it spurted up at the same moment we were jumping and we got SOAKED!!!! I was screaming like crazy, but it was incredibly fun and I felt that it was a worthy enough adventure to warrant being wet for the rest of the ride. Among the other fountains was a sweet tunnel-like one that glowed red (see pic below) and they have a super long fountain where they put on a light/music/fountain show. From Parque de la Aguas, we went to the central district of Lima and circled around the Plaza Mayor, which is the main plaza surrounded by important buildings, although I can't really tell you what. I think one of the them is the called the Municipality and another is the big cathedral. We stopped at the Sheraton for café and snacks, and I think it was the biggest hotel I have ever been in! Maybe not, but it was super fancy and seemed quite out of place in Lima (not someplace I'm dying to go again). On the way back to Miraflores I chatted a lot with Laura (my friend from Hope) and Marion (the resident coordinator of my program), which was most excellent. Once we got back to Miraflores, Sarah, Caroline, Kallee, Lauren and I went to Café Café, a lovely café (imagine that) near parque kennedy, for some hot chocolate to warm our cold soaked bones. Overall a magnificent evening!

Yesterday was quite the chill day, which basically means that I had nothing to do all day and literally did nothing. In the morning I uploaded all the pictures I have taken so far to facebook and then I just sat around. In the late afternoon, I went to the central district with my host mother (Rosa) and my sister Blanca. Blanca is the one whose daughter is having a her special 1-year-old birthday party the weekend after next so she needed to buy balloon and other such decorations for the party. What a cultural experience. The center district of Lima is very very crowded; I could not believe the enormous quantity of people milling about the streets! And I cannot even tell you how many stores we went to that were crammed full of party supplies! Cultural fact: when you want to buy something in Peru, you don't just go to one store . . . you go to a specific area where there are any number of stores selling what you seek and you go to all of them until you find what you want at the right price. In the case of party decorations, we went to about 4 different stores before we found the one with the appropriate balloons, and we went to one store for party gift boxes, another for party poppers, another for hello kitty balloon, another for hello kitty cups, etc. etc. etc. The whole time I was just in shock that so many party decorations even exist in the world, much less in one small area. During our shopping, we passed through Calle Capon, which is the Chinese neighborhood in Lima. There is actually a sizeable Chinese population here in Lima, although I think they use the term Chinese to refer to anyone with East Asian facial features. Anyhow, I think I already mentioned that Chinese food here is called Chifa and it has special Peruvian flavors in it. I saw many a Chifa restaurant during the long hours of shopping. Last night I was supposed to go to the movies with Juan Carlos and Blanca, but they decided not to go and didn't tell me and by the time I found out my friends were already in a movie and they didn't doing anything afterward so I went to bed early for the first time since I have been here. Sleep is good, although I think I would have preferred to go out.

Today I went with Joe, Evelyn, and Diego to Joe's parents house to spend the day with his family, which at first was a little awkward but ended up being a great time. His family lives in the district of Surco which is somewhere between 30 minutes and an hour away. We listened to a LOT of music, mostly salsa and criolla I think and we danced a lot too. I have been wanting to dance since I arrived here because much of the music has such great dancing rhythms so I very much enjoyed the dancing. After all the family partying, I met up with Alix (my friend who has been living here for awhile) and we went to a restaurant called Crépes and Waffles where I consumed a Chocolate Fondue crépe of a most delicious nature. Alix took a cab back to my house with me because she was convinced that I was going to get lost or robbed, which was very thoughtful of her because getting lost or robbed is always a possibility here. Actually I am confident that I could have made it home fine on my own, but I was definitely glad for the company and more time with Alix before she leaves to go back to the states. And now, as I have class at 9:00 tomorrow morning, I must be off to bed. Tomorrow I will need to be awake so that I can actually concentrate in class. :-)