It's like America...but South! (and an address!)

These past couple weeks have just flown.

I spent my time in Lima eating sandwiches from a restaurant called La Lucha (roasted meat with onion-lime salsa, ají pepper sauce, and fresh fruit juice on the side, sooooo good), and generally wandering all over the city discovering churches, parks, and shopping areas.





Most days I just walked around Lima alone because Chris spent the days at his medical examinations. I think my favorite day in Lima was spent walking to El Bosque Olivar, a beautiful little nature area in the San Isidro district. Chris, some other Peace Corps volunteers and I also were there just in time for Mistura, a yearly food festival held in Lima showcasing all the different foods from all over Perú. We stayed there for a solid 5 hours trying all the different foods!

Afterwards, we took a night bus (12 hours long) to Chiclayo, the biggest city close to Cutervo. We spent the day in Chiclayo just hanging out with our friend Rob, and even went to see Planet of the Apes. Then we boarded another night bus to Cutervo, for another solid 11 hours. I finally arrived in Cutervo at 6 in the morning, and we both went to Chris' host family's house and collapsed

Chris has been keeping me busy from the start, I've already taught my first English class to the kiddos (in Spanish! I didn't think I had it in me...), Chris now has a space for his youth center that I've been working on with him, and once vacations this week are over, I'll begin teaching my English classes daily. The kids are the most well behaved I've ever worked with, they answer my requests, work hard, and are in general peaceful...! It's a little strange, but welcome.



Other than that, I've just been running around meeting & greeting and hanging out with Chris' host family. I have an apartment as a part of my English teaching job, but Chris' host family made their house available for me to stay in as well, so we've worked out a way for me to stay with the family. They are truly such kind, warm, and welcoming people that I already feel like part of the family. So, rather than furnishing my own barren apartment, I'll get to learn more language and culture from a host family, which is always better.

Also, today we climbed up to the white sand beach in the mountain Ilucan just above the city and got to see part of enormous span of Andes mountains that we're living in. It's been raining a lot, so we haven't made it to the top yet, but I'm sure that it's breathtaking. And we had 43 kids show up for Chris' first youth center activity, a movie night where we ate popcorn, drank soda, and watched Finding Nemo :)

FOR YOUR INFORMATION:
If you'd like to send me a postcard, letter, package or watermelons with postage (which I would like very much!), please send it to...

Pasaje Yoyo Flores 180
A la familia Espejo Sanchez
Cutervo, Cajamarca, Perú

Please keep in mind that packages must be under 2 lbs and in an envelope for them to come to Cutervo! Otherwise they'll go to Chiclayo ELEVEN HOURS AWAY to go through customs!

Now to leave you, here's a picture of a cute alpaca!

9 Days in Perú

Up to today I've been to and through 4 Peruvian cities and towns--

My lovely Chris showed me around Lima for the first two days; we stayed in Miraflores (the really, expensive tourist part of town), where we saw the main square, a museum on food (knowing me and Chris, how could we not?), and the coast.





Then we took a 16-hour bus from Lima to Arequipa (it was an overnight bus so I was knocked out for most of it thank god), then went straight to our hostel...where we had the room at the very height of all the churches, so we had one of the best views of downtown and the mountains and Volcán Misti (part of the Andes range).

In Arequipa we tried all sorts of foods (amazing ceviche, anticuchos (grilled cow's heart), queso helado (don't know what it is but it's like reeally tasty ice cream). We also got to see "Juanita the Ice Princess", the most intact mummy they've found in this part of the Andes range. She was a child sacrificed to appease the gods after a volcano had erupted. The exhibit was really interesting, though they were so set on preserving the mummy by keeping the lights low that you could barely see her. You could see all the artifacts they found with her though, which were fascinating. We also found some tremendous Peruvian chocolate and Argentinian wine (a little under $5 a bottle), and some new Peruvian friends who we met in their alpaca clothing store, which one of them showed us where to buy tamales and told us some fantastic stories about Peruvian culture and history.

From Arequipa, we left for Colca Cañon, where the deepest cañon in the world, Cotahuasi, is. We passed through Chivay, where we got to try alpaca meat and see the beautiful embroidered clothing that the women there wear, then stayed the night on the edge of the cañon in a town called Cabaconde. We woke at 6am and started out with our packs on our backs for the cañon. It was a very odd experience for me, since when I'm going climbing, I'm used to going up first, not down then up. So the second day was a little more difficult since we were already sore from walking 8 hours the day before and had to go up the length of a very, very steep cañon. But, proud to say it, we made it to the top in 2.5 hours, passing others who left an hour before us. There were places for us to stay in the cañon, so we walked in the first day and out the next. Fortunately, we just barely made the 9am bus, which was the only one we could have caught to make it back to Arequipa in time for our bus to Lima...luck is on our side!






Now Chris just has medical examinations and training in Lima, so I'll be hanging out here for 4 days, then we'll head up to where I'll be staying put--Cutervo.

Till then, hasta luego!