Hola

I realized I didn't really talk much about my living situation! I'm living in a house (sort of more like a condo) with an older couple, Carlos (who is super super nice) and Chela (I've actually yet to meet my "mom"). Upstairs, I have my own room, and Meghan lives next door in the same house. There is also a great girl from Cusco, Raysa, who lives across from us, and she really knows what's up so we are lucky to have her. I'm posting a few pictures of the house (i.e. the bathroom haha), as well as a few pics from our tour of downtown Lima. We get to practice Spanish with our family and with Raysa, and Meghan and I have started to speak Spanish to each other as much as possible so we can practice speaking.

Lima itself is crazy in that there is a lot of traffic, cars don't stop for pedestrians (or sometimes traffic lights!), and it's kind of dirty. But, I honestly loooove the city. It has a lot of character, and there are some parts that are sooooo gorgeous, like Miraflores which opens up to the ocean. We live in Pueblo Libre, which is where la Catolica is, and it's very quiet and mostly residential. Lima (well, the parts I've been to) is a lot safer feeling than I expected. The guidebooks and such made it seem like I wouldn't be able to walk outside my house, but it's not like that. We are very careful, though.

It's also pretty cold here (plus no one has heaters) and always cloudy, which really doesn't bother me that much because I don't looove the sun like most people do. It's cloudy from March to December, so I probably won't see the sun in Lima while I'm here. It sounds depressing but I really don't mind it!

I haven't talked about the bus system here. It's kind of insane. There are a ton of buses (called micros or combis) that are privately run and compete for business. They stand in the door of the bus (while it's still moving) and scream where the bus will take you, trying to get you to use their bus and not someone else's. The awesome thing is that in the mornings it never takes more than a minute to get a bus, and the micros will stop for you at any point on the road, not just at the bus stops. Anyway, it's crazy but efficient. Almost no one has a car here. You either take micros or taxis, I guess sort of like many big cities in the U.S.

We've been out dancing a couple of nights which has been really fun. We've met some great people from la Catolica that we're getting to know pretty well. The school sets us up with "companeros," or people who help us get to know the school and the city. Our companeros are fantastic. Today we went to one of our friends, Edson's, play. It was a children's play, Pinocho (Pinocchio), and he played Pinocho. It was really really fun. We laughed a lot, and the little kids were so adorable.

I hope this entry made sense because I'm pretty tired.

:)
S