Welcome To Tacna!!

Its been quite some time since I last updated, but thats only because I have been so busy!! Come to find out, Im actually staying with another host family, who lives in Lima, but were on vacation in Tacna, AND THEN GOING TO CUSCO!!!!!!!!!! This family is so great and the entire family is huge and so welcoming!! I left my other host family and met the mother of my new host family, Lorena. We took a taxi to their house, which was much, much smaller than the one before, but very homey and lived in. Which was automatically comforting for me. We then went out for Chifa, got our nails done, and went shopping!! Shes the mother of only one daughter, so shes obviously going to know how to start off me staying with them the right way!! ;) We were walking in the mall and stopped at this vender who sold stuffed animals. At random, she went to the side with the Monsters Inc. characters and out of all of them there, picked up Sully. Any of you reading this who really know me would understand why this was a huge deal. It not only freaked me out a bit, but it made me feel connected and like my guardian angel was letting me know hes with me, even in Peru! We then went to her nieces house in Miraflores, which was huge. We walked into the second level, I was thinking this was an apartment building and they lived on the second level. NOPE.. They lived on the second level alright, but the third level was her office, because shes a lawyer, and the fourth level was their patio roof.. which was amazing. The first level? Yeah, its where they have their cooking academy.. WTF AWESOME!! We sat around her table and ate a fabulous dinner, then Lorena and I left back to her house for the evening because we had a flight to Tacna early the next morning!
I arrived with the mother, Lorena to Tacna to meet her daughter, Zareth and the rest of their huge family. Zareth is 20 and is studying Dentistry at a University in Lima. This girl and I just clicked right away. She speaks English, thank the Lord, but the rest of the family doesnt, so its been a trip trying to communicate. When we arrived to the Grandmas house, I was welcomed with a huge hug and BIENVENIDOS!!!!! So great and warm to begin with. That night we all sat around a table and as we sat, the more people showed up. There ended up being a room full of family that was loud, crazy, and doing nothing but laughing and listening to the latin music in the background. Ohhhh how this is my kind of family.
The past couple days have been filled with laughing, dancing and going out! Im already having so much fun and Ive only been with them three days!! They are going to take me to show me what stuff is in Tacna, so should be a good time! And on the 5th, we go to CUSCO!! So excited! Matchu Pitchu here I comeeeeee.

NO ENGLISH! NO ENGLISH!

So, the real fun started on Thursday night. Marilu had a party for her university at a place called Sargento Pimienta (Sargent Pepper). It was insane, but I met an amazing girl named Tatiana who is one of Marilu's really good friends. Who knew I could make such a great friend in another country! This girl is so great, love her to death. All of us were dancing when all of a sudden some creepers came up behind us wanting to dance with us. Of course, they didn't understand English so all we had was "NO! NO NO NO NO!! ADIOS! NO!" They got the clue after a while, but boy were they annoying. A little while later while dancing, I spot the back of some guy's head who happens to be sandy blonde. Amanda and I look at each other and at the exact same time say; "He's from the US." So, we make our way towards him and I shout out.. "Hey! Are you from around here?" His response was, "maybe." With that response, obviously he wasn't, so I called his bluff and turns out he's from San Francisco and was here with two friends, just back packin' around Peru. His name was Peter, and he was with his friends Matt and Russ. Oddly enough, Russ's girlfriend is from Michigan, but she's from the U.P. So, Amanda and I automatically felt a little at ease not being the ONLY people from the U.S. in this place! Peter hung out with us for the rest of the night, danced the night away with us. He and I quickly became "BFF's" as Peter would say. He was quite the trip. The night ended too soon when 4 am hit and Rodrigo and I had to leave because we had a road trip at 7 am the next morning! What a car ride this would be... We woke up at 7, got in the car, and to sleep we went. Our road trip was going to take us to a place near the high lands called Oxapampa. To get there it took a good 4 or 5 hours through the curvy Andes mountains. For being someone who doesn't appreciate the outdoors as much as she should, this was amazing. I have never seen anything like this and what a once in a lifetime experience this was! Who can say they've just been in the Andes mountains? And had their car break down while at it, too! Yeah, let's talk about that. So, we're driving up these mountains, we're probably a good two hours into the mountains when the car starts to smoke. Alberto (my host dad) stopped the car to let it cool off. I'm half asleep at this point so I'm chill with everything that's going on when normally I wouldn't be. The car gets cool again and so we're off! Not thinking anything of it, we have to stop again about an hour later. Alberto has some freeze stuff to cool the car off, pours it into the engine or something, and the car starts smoking.. like it busted out like a fountain.. it was insane! The car finally cools down again and we're driving for quite some time when all of a sudden, we're driving up a mountain, when the car just shuts off! Like, WHAT IS GOING ON?! The car had just died. FANTASTIC. We are in the Andes mountains, 4 hours from Lima, and a half hour down the mountain from our destination and it dies. What luck I have. We have to push the car to get it out of the road, oh what a disaster this was. We finally get a jump, turn around, and coast back down the mountains, for 3 hours. We get to this little town, when the car finally decided that we weren't going to coast anymore, and it was just going to die and leave us hanging out. Annie and I weren't just gonna hang out, so we took a 45 minute ride back to Lima safe and sound. No Oxapampa for us!

Because we didn't adventure off to Oxapampa for the weekend, Rodrigo and I met up with Amanda and Marilu for lunch. We went our for Chifa (so good) and then Rodrigo and I went to Jockey Plaza to get me some tennis shoes! Girl found out she's going to Matchu Pitchu and is by no means wearing the shoes she brought! After buying shoes, we had some down time, and then out we went! We met Amanda, Marilu, and Marilu's boyfriend Diego (who is probably the funniest person I have ever met, reminded me of my brother Jarrod) at a place called Rustico for a birthday party! Oh the fun we had here. Rodrigo and I got there before they did, but sadly, we didn't know the name of the girl's whose birthday it was, but Marilu got us on the VIP list, so not good! Finally we got the name and got in to have some fun! I met a few of Marilu's friends, one specifically named Francisco. While meeting him, the first thing he says to me is.. "I don't speak uh- spanish, no english, ONLY FRENCH!" Oh man, got a laugh out of me. Although his name was Francisco, this is not what we called him. People who have that name, have the nick name Pancho, but Amanda and I, nope, not what we called him. All night we called him Plancha as a joke. (Just to let everyone know.. plancha in Espanol, is to iron, so he got a kick out of it.)

On Monday at 3 am, Amanda, Marilu, and I left for a mini girls vacation to a city called Ica, 5 hours away by bus. Seriously, the fun we had on this trip. We arrived to our hotel around 9 am, went to sleep until noon, and to downtown we went! We got there, dressed in shorts, and looking completely foreign. I just love walking down the street and having people look at me like I'm crazy. Because Amanda is blonde, that completely blew our cover, even one security guy looked at us while walking by and said "hello!" Being in the area we were, these people didn't know English, so we got a kick out of it. We said "hola" back, he looked surprised and started talking to us REALLY fast in Spanish.. and we both looked at each other and laughed and said "No hablo Espanol, lo siento!" Oh man, it was the funniest thing ever. We got back to our hotel, hung out by the pool for a bit, and then off to the sand dunes!! I don't even know how to explain this experience. We were in a Dunbuggy type thing, with 8 other people, the driver took us into these sand dunes and literally that's all you saw for miles upon miles. It was gorgeous but, kind of scary seeing as OUR BUGGY BROKE!!! We're enjoying our little joy ride, when something pops in the buggy and we stop, have to get out and hang out in the damn dessert for 15 minutes! Luckily, another dunebuggy came by and picked us up, thank the Lord! The guy who picked us up, holy smokes, he was a trip. His name was Rolando and he was crazy. He was a triiiip. I sat in the front seat next to him and he would take us over these dunes and you couldn't see what was on the other side, and being someone who is afraid of heights, imagine the fun this was. I would look at him and be like you are crazy! what are you doing?! and he'd respond with "NO ENGLISH CHICA! NO ENGLISH!" and would laugh hysterically. We also went sand boarding! Sand boarding is just like snow boarding, but on sand! People are crazy who try to stand up and do it.. they just end up falling on their ass and get hurt, so I was smart and went on my stomach, still so fun! We got to watch the sunset from the dunes and what a view this was. This was one of the prettiest things I've ever seen, it was like out a movie! On our way back to the hotel in our SECOND dune buggy, the tire pops and we have to stop! We are literally 100 feet from the hotel and we get a flat tire. Dunebuggy numero tres, vamos! So funny. We finally got back to the hotel safe and sound, took showers, and all three of us passed out. Ica was really fun and I had so much fun experiencing everything, God forbid something go right with me involved!

He Didn't Give Me My Tea!!

And let the dance classes begin! Monday started the beginning of the wonderful salsa dancing classes to become, as Annie would say, "sin" (thin). One would think these so called "classes" are for beginners, people trying to learn how to dance the salsa, but nope. One thought wrong, very, very wrong. Let me tell you, these dancing classes are one of the hardest things I've ever done. Girl can dance salsa, when you salsa slow, but these people are crazy fast! Steps all the time, hands waving in the air, hopping around, like what in the hell are you doing?! It looks cool when you do it right, but in my case, it's quite the disaster. My host mother, Annie, surprisingly wasn't the best at it either, so to make ourselves feel better we just made up our own moves to the music, otherwise we looked like fools (which I'm sure we managed anyhow). After dancing lessons, we went out to lunch and ate more traditional Peruvian food. Annie made me try the drink Pisco. Pisco is the country drink in Peru, very strong, very good! Too many of these, you'll be in bad shape.

Later Monday night, I met up with a girl named Carrie, (the girl I flew into Peru with) and her host sister Fiorella at a place called the Jazz Zone. This place on Monday night was for Jazz Improv. Anyone could go up on stage and play their instrument and play it well! I was so surprised at some of the talent these people have. Being someone who loves Jazz music, I thoroughly enjoyed my time there. Come to find out, sitting in the front row, we over heard the piano player talking, IN ENGLISH!! Carrie and I turned our heads so fast, you would think Johnny Depp had walked by. Lo and behold, it wasn't Johnny Depp, but his name was Eric and he's from San Francisco. I didn't get any more information, but that was enough to keep up staring at him playing the rest of the night. He was really into playing the piano, enough so that I had to get a video of it. So great.

On tuesday, the family took me out to another district called Miraflores. In distance from Surco (the district I'm living in), it's about the drive from Dexter to Ann Arbor, a good ten minutes or so. Miraflores is the more commercial side of Lima. Because it's right on the coast, it's very touristy and has a lot to do. That's actually where the Tennis Club is where I take my dance classes. By the way, my family is apart of a Tennis Club, no big deal or anything. But anyway, we went to Miraflores, walked around a park called Kennedy Park, an important park in Miraflores (not sure why, I forgot).. but it's important. They took me to this great authentic ice cream shop and we got the best ice cream. Yes Mom, it was better than Cold Stone, that good. We walked around the park some more and saw some really awesome paintings. I wanted to pick one up, but not sure how I'd bring it back to the states, so Rodrigo had to pull me away from all the bright, abstract paintings.

On wednesday, I had yet another dance class and yet another disaster. Absolutely no improvement since Monday, so once again, made up my own moves to dance. That night around 5:15, Rodrigo and I left to go to Miraflores to catch a Mirabus, to view Peru at Nite with some other Michigan girls named April and Amanda and their host sisters! Inconveniently not knowing we were there an hour early, we ended up walking around Kennedy Park again looking at a little market in the park. I dragged Rodrigo around with me looking at jewelry, I don't think he was too bored, seeing as he was helping me pick out rings! Such a good trooper. We finally hit 7 o'clock, walked back up to the ticket booth, only to find Amanda and April! I haven't seen these girls since one of the Lions Club meetings, so it was good to see a familiar face again! The tour of Lima ended up being a cold, windy 3 hours on the top of a huge red bus. It was really interesting, (what I could understand of it seeing as most of it was in Spanish), and I got quality pictures of buildings. We stopped half way through the tour at a fancy smancy hotel and we treated with tea and mini sandwiches! The waiter came around asking if our group of 6 wanted tea, orange juice, or coffee. Us girls wanted some good OJ and Rodrigo wanted coffee.. So we got our drinks, ate our sandwiches, and another waiter came around, not thinking we already got our drinks, and asked us if we wanted drinks! We were only allowed to have one drink per person, so we hid our glasses and asked for tea! What rule breakers we Americans are. The waiter gave me my steaming water and the other girls their coffee, spoke to me in Spanish.. I told him I didn't understand and he walked away without giving me my tea! I looked at the girls and Rodrigo and said "He didn't give me my tea!" They were all in the process of laughing hysterically while I told them because of my reaction to him speaking Spanish to me.. and Rodrigo had to politely tell me that what he told me in Spanish was that he would be right back with my teabag! Ohhh how embarrassing. So then, I wanted our picture taken at the table, but didn't know how to ask someone in Spanish. After having Marilu teach me, I asked a nice man, and he responds with "Sure, no problem!" I was like grrrreat, I'm glad I just made an ASS of myself to this Spanish guy! We all started laughing because he responded in English after hearing me ask my friends how to ask in Spanish! He couldn't just go with the flow, ohhhh too funny. It was really good seeing the girls, and I'll see them more this week and hopefully next week!

My host family has a trip planned for this weekend! We leave early Friday morning and don't come back until late Sunday night. Off to some place near the Jungle.. I'll be sure to come back and write about how it goes. Lord help me.

Aprender: to learn.

aprender: to learn.

Something I'm doing a lot of during my stay in Peru.

One would never think there could be so much history in a place like this, but you'd be surprised. Every place, every corner, every building, every park, has some historical meaning behind it, making it all the more interesting.

My very first day in Lima was a pretty easy going one. Gonzalo took me out to a popular mall in the Costa Verde (green coast). It was an outside mall filled with designer stores and regular stores and a popular club within it. After, we met the family to eat Chifa. (Chifa: chinese food with a peruvian twist. SO good). For being someone who doesn't like to experiment outside of her Taco Bell box, this was one of the most tasty things I've ever consumed. Come to find out, Starbucks is one of the most popular places for Peruvian people. Whodathunk Peru would have a Starbucks?! Along with Dunken Donuts, Chili's, TGI Friday's, KFC, and McDonalds! Ohhh how the United States has corrupted other countries.

My trip has been very lax so far. I've been doing a lot of getting to know my family and their friends. Rodrigo, one of the sons of the family I'm living with is 18 years old. He just finished his first term at his university. He took me around his university his last day of testing to show me what it's like. VERY different than in the United States. The campus is much, much smaller, but they have the same amount of people. It's strange, but it works for them. He took me around some buildings and showed me classes, very similar to ones in the U.S. There were two things that definitely got my attention. There was a place for people to just charge their phones or iPods! Because Peru doesn't get much rain, they can have things like that outside without it being a hazard. How convenient is that? I'm thinking that'd be a good thing to invest in. After the shock of seeing that, we went inside one of the buildings and found a sucker vending machine! How interesting. Gonzalo was nice enough to buy me one.. but it took his money. I guess not much different than the vending machines in the U.S.! After we left Rodrigo's university, Gonzalo took me to his university. His was a little bigger and had a lot more good looking people! Hard to not notice all the smart, ATTRACTIVE men. Gonzalo made fun of me because he saw me spotting out some eye candy.

I was also taken to downtown Lima to see some los museos y las iglesias. This trip was definitely filled with so much history. Gonzalo knew so much about the city, it was crazy. I saw the house of the Peruvian president and the very first church built in Lima! While walking next to the church, some representatives from the jungle passed us. Apparently, the jungle's economy is not doing too well and those were the representatives who came to Lima to have a meeting about it. I've never actually experienced anything like that before in my life, but there they were in front of me, almost out of a book or movie!!

We were driving back to the house one night and we passed a Peru army base. Gonzalo told me that around 20 years ago, if a car had stopped on the street in front of the army base, the soldier in one of the security houses would shoot everyone in the car because they had a problem with terrorists. How scary is that?! Even at a red light, everyone in the car would get shot. I was sadly sitting behind the passenger seat, so Gonzalo told me I would be the first to go. FANTASTIC...

Saturday night, Rodrigo took me to a club with some of his friends I had met on Thursday night. He had friends over on Thursday to celebrate the fact that they were told with their first term. Luckily, some of them spoke English so I could communicate. Only three of the friends, out of the nine I had met prior, came to the club. We had such a good time. While waiting in line, us girls were offered a VIP pass, so we took it and got into the club as a VIP! The VIP part of the club was separate and we had to have a wrist band to enter. The poor boys, Rodrigo y Andree were what Rodrigo calls the RTP (Regular Type People). Us girls had great treatment all night, free drinks, nice couches, obviously making us feel way important. We got there around 10:30 P.M. and didn't end up getting home until 3 A.M. The music was extremely fun to dance to and it's really different than the clubs back in the States. There was a lot of latin electronica (por supuesto) and a ot of salsa! Rodrigo's friend Katty (amazing at speaking English) taught me some good salsa moves and had me dance with one of the guys who came named Andree. He was a fantastic dancer, even if he couldn't really talk to me. ;)

On Monday, I start my dancing classes with Annie! I'm excited to learn some new moves and come back to the States with a few Latin moves under my belt!

Adios Estados Unidos, Hola Peru!

And the adventure begins!! The day started bright and early at 7 o'clock and out the door by 8 to be at the airport by 9! Thankfully, while checking in, my bag weighed exactly one pound under what it had to for checking. Definitely wiped the sweat off my forehead. My poor mother said Goodbye, tears were shed, por supuesto. My flight was easy peasy, thank the Lord. The 5 hour layover in HOTLANTA, Georgia wasn't too bad either. Got my picture taken by the sign that said the flight destination was to Lima, Peru. And who took my picture? No one other than this gorgeous Peruvian man. Obviously, this piece of eye candy was the pure beginning of my trip! Carrie and I made a friend named John, who happened to be a sophomore at Alma college, he plays the trumpet in the college band, and is going to be a lawyer. We were informed of all this within the first two minutes of meeting him. He was pretty adamant about telling us his entire life story. Ohhh, how I love meeting interestingly odd people.

While boarding the plane to go to Peru, Carrie and I are sitting in our seats when all of a sudden a couple men from Souther Georgia ask us if we want to switch seats for 30 dollars a piece! Of course I wasn't going to turn down 30 dollars, sooooo we gave them our seats and sat in theirs! Actually turned out to be better because then Carrie and I had a lot of room to ourselves and we could sprawl out in the seats. A good 2 hour nap, Dear John, and Leap Year, got me through the 6 hour flight to the wonderful fast pace city, Lima, Peru. Getting off the plane wasn't too bad. We had to wait in line to get our passports checked and go to baggage claim. We had to squeeze through about a bazillion people to get our bags, but because people are so nice, they helped us out and we got outta there quickly. Now, off to customs. (GREAT). Of course, Carrie just walks up and pushes the button and the light flashes a bright green saying she's free to go. But, God forbid I walk up there and hope the light turns green, it flashes RED and I have to go get ALL of my luggage searched. Oh how wonderfully fun and invasive this was. Luckily, these guys were really nice to me and let me go so I could meet my family!!

Once I walk passed the gate, there was a sea of people waiting for others to come out. Nervously searching the crowd for my family, I hear my name being shouted, I look around to see my host mother, Annie rockin' jeans and a huge winter jacket! (Mind you, this is Winter for them so they are freezing and I'm walkin' around in shorts and a T-shirt completely comfortable. I walk outside and all of a sudden Gonzalo is right there with his arms wide open offering a huge hug, kiss on the cheek, and a proper welcome to Peru! Hugs all around automatically making me feel welcome and then we were off to the car. Gonzalo seriously should consider being a tour guide for Lima. This guy was FULL of information the entire car ride home. Chatted my ear off, making me feel extremely comfortable. We then get home after a good 25 minutes of non-stop information on Lima and the family (they are apart of a country club, he wants to go surfing with me, and they have favorite restaurants I have got to experience), Rodrigo runs out of the house greeting me the same way the rest of the family did, huge hug, kiss on the cheek, and a "WELCOME HOME!". We walk into a beautiful home, nice hard wood floors, spacious rooms, beautiful furniture, everything I could want for the next six weeks. I got a nice family tour of the house, such a nice house, with a great cute square backyard. Then we go upstairs and they show me my room, which is this cute, homey bedroom with pastel yellow walls reminding me of home where my own walls are yellow.

Once I'm all settled in, we all just kinda stood around and chatted for a bit. I had to call mi mamacita to keep her sane and let her know her baby girl was all safe and sound. Being the emotional woman she is, she broke down as soon as she heard my voice. So cute, going to miss her. ;) After I got off the phone, the Mr. and Mrs. hit the sack, Rodrigo; to study for his exams, and Gonzalo and I; to the TV room to watch some World Cup and then Sex in the Cit-ay!

The next six weeks of this country is probably going to be the best six weeks of my life. I can't wait to experience everything this country and this family has to offer. Adios.