1st Week Down Here

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So I thought it would be kind of cool to start up a blog, for whoever wants to stop on by and see whats happening on the other side of the world with my life. I rolled on into Lima late Sunday night and was pretty excited to see what all was going to happen for the next ten months of my life and where I was going to live. I met up with Joe and Daniel and he took us to the place that I was staying. It was pretty much a 180 degree turn of everything that I thought about Lima. It was more of the slum life than I thought it would be. It might not be the prettiest place in Lima, but things could be worse about where we stay. The neighborhood pretty much knows all about us, so we have to be careful with a few things that we do down here.

After I unpacked my total of 1.5 bags that will assist me in my survival down here, aka my clothes, I called it a night because I was gassed. The next morning we were already at the school and learning about our classes and what we were going to teach. Natahly, pretty much our boss at the colegio, gave us the tour and let us sit in on a class or two of her's. The kids were all sorts of rowdy, straight up hooligans, that can run their mouths like runaway slaves. From that point, I figured it would be a full on battle in the classroom to get the kids to pay attention. We just finished up that day after we saw her class and grabbed some food. We eat like royalty at Daniel's house, who is the head honcho of all the school. There is no doubt I am going to return a little bit more girthy..

The next few days we just taught about 20 classes through the 4 days. I was hitting the children with codigos, like violations, like I was Denzel Washington and it was my job. The kids snapped into shape after about two days. I'm telling you, though, these little people have all sorts of devious ways to them. They purposely put glue on their hands so they can leave the room, which is hilarious because I just make them sit and get glue all over their other stuff because they can't wash their hands. The kids seem to think that the teacher's are more their friends than their actual teachers. The first couple of days were transitioning from that and Thursday and Friday went smoothly. I only seem to have to do about an hour of lesson planning before class the next day so it is pretty sweet. I just wish their was something to do at night, maybe we will start hitting up the pool that we can use that is about a block away in one of the buildings for the school.

As the week drew to a close, there wasn't a chance we were going to stick around this area when there was a lot better area that existed further south. We booked a hostel that we hoped would be full of some Americans, but we picked the wrong hostel. Oh yeah, we headed to Miraflores, which we heard had been a pretty cool spot for travelers. The hostel was super nice though, 10 bucks for a free drink, a room to sleep, and a breakfast in the morning. We talked to some French lady about her travels and she seemed like she picked up on the language pretty quick here after her 6 or 7 months. It was foreigner central in our hostel though, plus it took us 30 minutes to actually find the place. We walked around in circles until some police officers felt compassion on our hopeless American souls. We got there about 9 and just dropped off our stuff and headed to some places in Miraflores to grab a drink. There was this sweet burger joint, called hamburgers, go figure, and we grabbed a bite there. We headed to some little party avenue and grabbed a few drinks. There was this wedding party that tried to get us to buy a condom from them for a challenge or something, something new about the culture I didn't know.

We checked out Barranco after, headed to a bar named Wicks that was really German. We met some cool guys named Jesus and Sergio, they told us a little about the area and grabbed a few drinks with us. They told us about some international shindig next weekend so I am guessing we will end up down there. After we headed to Picas, which was a little bit more dance bar, but the prices were pretty high..like 4$ for a beer, which is cheap in the US, but expensive down here. We embarrassed ourselves pretty good as we danced and we showed the Peruvians that Americans can hang with them when it comes time to rip up the rug. We recessed to our respected hostel after meeting a few more people and crashed.

Miraflores the next day was pretty cool, it's this trendy little spot that sits right on the big blue. There's this outdoor mall that is in the cliffs next to the ocean. I think visiting there is going to become pretty consistent. There isn't a whole lot that we have going for us, night life wise, when it comes to Carmen de la Legua. It is just like a 45 combi ride, which is basically a mini-bus made out of old 15 passenger vans. I think I could drive a bicycle and outdo the public transportation here. It is chaos, but at least its cheap. But back to Miraflores, we checked out a couple of parks, the park of love and larcomar. Being right next to beach is definitely the place to be. There were about 150 surfers out surfing, they all use wet suits, pretty nippy with the ocean breeze. I think in the next few months I will get to doing that. There is this park, Kennedy park, so many cats everywhere. There has to be about 150 cats in a little 2 by 2 block area. I would get so annoyed if I went there all the time, I would probably start kicking cats. When you think about the weekend and the places you can go, it makes the weeks pass by a whole lot easier and you have something to look forward too.

Even when we had some people who were down here, the prior teachers from the US, it made a world of difference. Slowly as we get settled in we can make this place a little more homely and try not to get too homesick. Aka whoever is reading, come down and visit!!! Almost forgot, there is this crazy dude who broke two of our little window panels. He drops the weirdest stuff in the window, baby monitors, remotes, snapple bottles, it is pretty funny. I imagine that dude just talks to a cactus as the highlight of his day or something like that. So far, so good!

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