Funny story, when I met up with our group the Tuesday morning for classes they all asked if we had felt the tremor the night before. I guess it wasn’t a truck, it was the earth shaking.
Tuesday I started classes. I had intermediate Spanish from 9:30 to 12. I will have that class everyday. In the afternoon I had international negotiations class from 2-5. Generally this class is three days a week on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, but we have such an irregular schedule that it doesn’t always work that way. I think both classes will be good. I’m pretty advanced for the intermediate class, due to a mix up when I signed up for classes, but it’s a good review for me. My afternoon class will be good, we decided to do the class mostly in Spanish and there are a lot of terms I don’t quite understand in English, so it makes it a little more difficult to do the class in Spanish. It will be ok. My teacher in the afternoon is 25; he’s really laid-back and nice. Since the students and he are so close in age it’s weird to set boundaries as far as what you tell him has your teacher or as a peer.
Since we worked so hard on Tuesday we had off school on Wednesday. It was actually a holiday, I’m not entirely sure what it celebrated, but we didn’t have to go to school, so that’s cool.
I decided to dry my hair on Saturday morning. This was not going to be an issue until I plugged it in. I plugged it in and POOF! There was a spark and black smoke that came out and stained my hand. It didn’t shock me and it didn’t hurt. It was like when things blow up in cartoons and no one is hurt they just have black stuff on their faces. That’s what it was like.
The black stuff.
Lima is a lot cooler than I expected and I did not bring the appropriate clothing for this weather. I was under the impression that the weather would be warmer for all three locations. As it turns out, it’s pretty chilly! Austry, the woman with whom I live, offered to take Jessie, Emily, and me shopping. She took us to a really poor part of Lima where things are pretty cheap but good. My first order of business was to get a pair of tennis shoes. The shoes I brought are pretty pathetic. I have a pair of Vans polka-dotted shoes and tennis shoes, both of which I’ve had since the summer before my senior year of high school (July 2005). I bought a pair of tennis shoes for 30 soles ($10 USD) and let me tell you, they feel like $10 shoes. But they will get me through the rest of the semester (hopefully with no blisters!). I also needed a sweatshirt or a long sleeved shirt. I didn’t get exactly what I wanted, but I found this wool sweater for about $6 USD.
Afterwards, we went back to my house to eat lunch and then headed to the mall to see what we could find there. I found a few things and went to buy them with my credit card and they asked for my passport. I didn’t have it with me and so they wouldn’t let me buy it.
Thursday and Friday I had classes (both classes, both days). Friday night I went out with some of my friends. We went to the Calle de las pizzas (Street of pizzas) where there are a lot of pizza restaurants and discos. We went in and out of several.
Saturday we went on an ISA trip to a small town named Callao. It was a 30-minute taxi ride. Right now, there’s a lot of street construction going on because in November there is a very important meeting and very important people are coming to Lima, so they are grooming. The air is very polluted with construction stuff. In Callao we took a tour of the city and went to the port. Interesting things I saw on the tour.
1. A pirate talking on a pay phone.
2. Barney the purple dinosaur.
3. A child in a school van who was flipping us off, blowing kisses, and mooning us at the same time. It was confusing.
4. Four dogs sitting on four different steps wearing t-shirts.
Me in front of the Port of Callao.
After our little excursion and a 30-minute taxi ride back to the house, I was tired. My friends Emily and Mary Beth came back to the house with me. Emily because she needed to pick up her things from the night before and then she was going to go home and take a nap and Mary Beth because she lives an hour from my house by bus and we were meeting by my house to go out at night. So she decided to stay in town. We got up to my room and Emily laid down on my bed and said she was tired so I laid down and then Mary Beth. We had three people on my twin bed. Impressive, I think!
At night we went out on a Pisco tour. Pisco is the national drink of Peru. I had a sip of a drink and didn’t really like it. So I didn’t get my own. I did, however, go next door from the bar with a group of girls from my group to KFC to get dinner/dessert. It was delicious. I had chocolate mousse ice cream and a fountain Pepsi with ice. Why is this so special? Fountain pop is not common here, nor is Pepsi, nor is ice. I love all three. It was a good night for me.
On Sunday Jessie and I went to a place where they sell lots of handmade goods from Peru. It was a lot of the same things over and over and over again and you had to bargain everything. It was interesting. After that we went back to the mall so I could purchase some warmer clothing. We made a stop at Starbucks first. Some brewed coffee was needed since instant coffee is the only thing I can seem to find around here.
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