First Impressions

Aquí estamos al fin del primer día.

As I'm writing this, I realize that the only time I've spoken English today is when I called my mom on Skype. Surprisingly and thankfully, my Spanish is returning to me a lot quicker than I anticipated. I can understand most everything people say (except mumbling...but that's difficult in any language) and when I'm not tired, I can speak pretty well. (As the day wore on, my Spanish speaking skills plummeted. See graph.)

Anyways, I'm going to try to make this not boring, but include some interesting things and lots of pictures. Pictures are good. Enjoy!

View from my window

First, I'm just going to list out my first impressions of Lima/Perú. Maybe at the end of my trip I'll look back and see if anything's changed, but probably not. I'll probably have forgotten I have a blog by that time.

Impressions:

1. Lima is very cloudy in the winter. Herman Melville said it is "the strangest saddest city thou can'st see. For Lima has taken the white veil; and there is a higher horror in this whiteness of her woe." Mario Vargas Llosa (famous Peruvian author) also had some depressing things to say about it, but I kinda like it. It's cool and breezy and without the sun shining, I don't have to squint. (Bye-bye, future crow's feet!) In fact, minus the humidity, the weather is awesome. Taking into consideration the humidity, it's still 100,000 times better than Central Texas' weather right now. (Sorry, friends.)

View from the rooftop of my hospedaje

And another

2. It's so clean! I swear the streets are just as clean as the (clean) streets of Austin and San Antonio. I think I had really low sanitation expectations, courtesy of la República Dominicana.

...Which brings me to 3. It's not a ton like the DR. Other than the same bathroom tiles and the speaking of Spanish, so far Perú is quite a bit different. It's cleaner, as I mentioned, and I am not getting cat calls all day. (As in professions of love, not calls from actual cats.) At first I was offended, and then I realized they just don't do that here. Machismo is alive and well in this Latin American country, but PTL it doesn't (hasn't) manifested like it does in the DR.

Looks just like a Dominican bathroom

View from my window

4. Food = yummy! Ate lunch for S7 (seven soles, roughly $3) and had enough left over for dinner. So, food also = cheap. Yay!

5. Peruvians are as short as rumored.

6. Except for the dueña of the hospedaje in which I'm staying. She is about my height and, more importantly, is wonderful. I am staying in a room just like an American hotel room; it has a phone, cable, bathroom with hot water (!!), and someone cleans my room during the day. And I get breakfast. (I haven't tried it yet; a little nervous. She said that a sandwich con mantequilla is involved. Google translate that.) It's locked and attended 24 hrs/day and the neighborhood is really nice; I'm seven blocks away from my office in Lima and four blocks away from a supermercado. Anyways, it's definitely more than I wanted to spend (S65/night, roughly $25/night), but the staff (Mar y Sol [Marisol] Latorre, her son who is about my age, and an older gentleman) is wonderful and I feel really comfortable and safe here. Mar y Sol took me to a restaurant around the corner for lunch and then to the supermercado so I'd know how to get to it. She even helped me find my work site :) (Special thanks to Kim Smith and Cedar Valley for the donation so I didn't have to stay in a legit hostel like in the movie Hostel.)

My temporary diggs

7. Oh, and the fruit here is super small! I found what look like mini strawberries (or, as I hear from my G, what strawberries used to/are supposed to look like) and some other mystery fruits at the supermercado, all of which I hope to try before I leave. Below are some pictures from the supermercado...

Peru grows lots of types of potatoes. The potato originated near Puno!

Giant carrots

Mini apples!

Mystery fruit. I tried to ask a woman if it's sweet, but she just told me that they eat it finely chopped on top of a salad.

Dark maize

I think some kind of mango?

These rotisserie chickens were SO much smaller than American chickens. (No added hormones...)

Fresh cheese :)

Fresh tilapia, anyone?

Near my hospedaje:

Oops?

And guess what was playing on the speakers of the supermercado when I first got there? Justin Bieber's 'Baby'. Peruvians love them some Estadounidense Pop!

I'm gonna stop here, because I could keep going on and on. I really hope my maleta gets here soon because, though Whisps are awesome (the disposable toothbrush--thank goodness I brought four!), I really want to brush my teeth with my real toothbrush, and my toothpaste is in my suitcase. (Continental left it in Orlando. Not sure how, because the layover wasn't that short...They also lost my bags last summer on the way to the DR...and bumped me off of two flights returning home from New Jersey this January. Moral of the story: Continental stinks, and fool me three times, I'm an idiot.)

Oh, and on that note, Copa Airlines totally rocks. I got a meal on both of my flights with them, and was able to sit in an Exit row by myself...for free. No extra charges. Yay Copa!

Saludos!
Audrey