Trip from Lima to Trujillo

Wow. It has been a pretty crazy couple of day. I'm goin on about 4-6 hours sleep, total over the past two day so if this post isn't quite coherent please forgive me. Yesterday, we left the district of Mira Flores in Lima for Trujillo by bus. We departed around 9:30pm and it was an 8.5 hour trip. When we arrived our host families picked us up at the bus station at a out 7:00am. All of our host families are super nice and basically awesome people. My host family is comprised of Aida and Javier, along with their two daughters and son, Aida, Lucia and Javier. I will post pics of them later.

After eating breakfast, we rendezvoused with the group and we preceded to go sand-surfing...oh btw, paragliding didn't happen yesterday because wind conditions didn't permit, so me and my buddy Jimmy just walked around the city and beach...Sand-surfing was quite a work out but fun. We also had lunch were we did the surfing, it was the best grilled chicken I've EVER had...seriously, it must have been fresh from the farm because where the dunes were it was very rural. I love all the food so far.

Trujillo is crazy. I've decided Peruvians drive even more insanely than the Mexicans. All you hear are horns cuz thats how they communicate, traffic lights and signs are optional, and taxis are everywhere. The best part is people, especially little kids, are always j-walking and basically weaving traffic, like "frogger" but to the ultimate level.

I'm getting to know the other students in the program and most of them are cool. A bunch of us are already trying to organize our New Year's plan....buuuut I don't wanna jynx it by saying it because you guys saw what happened with the paragliding. 

I would say one of the best parts about this trip so far is the rate at which I feel like my Spanish is improving. Having to speak to my host family for anything and everything, bartering with taxi drivers, and socializing with all the other host families at a little get together where we all met up tonight is giving me the most conversational practice in my life. I really enjoy it. I am looking forward to starting work in our clinics; it should be a really fun experience.

Oh, one last thing, I met this Peruvian guy, Nelson, who is into basketball and sad to say he knew more about the Phoenix Suns than me. He informed me that last week we attained Vince Carter….embarrassing when people from another continent know more about your own local team haha. 

Dragonfly Hostel

Here is just a couple of quick pics of the hostel and the street we're staying on. The hostel is actually pretty accommodating, hot breakfast, hot (warm) water, clean beds...better than I was expecting. 

Buenos Dias

So after getting like, I don't know, 3 hours sleep, I remembered that on the plane last night there was this strange German/American couple who ended up getting pretty belligerent off of a bunch of those airline size bottles of Sutter home. Right across from me was this little lady whom the drunk guy in front of her kept blaming for kneeing the back of his seat; she was so small her knees could not reach at all and I never once witnessed her do ANYTHING. The guy preceded to rock back, effectively slamming his back into his seat so hard that it nearly broke and the lady became frightened. He was dropping the F-bomb and flicking her off-thos of us awake to see this were pretty much in shock. I was thinkin' to myself, "am I really going to have to take down this fat American dude on this plane!?" Anyway, after a few more of his pissy fits and a few chime-in's by his non-english German-speaking wife, their daughter calmed them down....whew, didn't have to start my trip with a fight, thank god.

Well its time for breakfast and then I'm pretty sure it's off to the beach in Lima. So happy we get to spend a full day in the big city AND hit the beach for some paragliding before we head to our homestay locations in Trujillo or Otuzco....I will be in Trujillo (closer to the beach :D). I will try to get some pics.

Bienvenidos a Lima

So after we got to the hostel in Lima, it was first things first: food. We had to go get a torta and check out the nightlife. We walked around a bit and some of the clubs were goin pretty strong and it is about 3:30am here. Pretty tired from the long day of travel, gonna go to bed cuz we got a big day planed for tom; found out at our arrival that we are going paragliding tom! I'll let yall now how it goes! Buenas noches.