I am finally settled in my own room with my host family. All our flights were perfect. No delays or any type of problem. We landed in Lima, Peru at about 1:30 am and then spent the night in a hotel. After some orientation the next morning we hopped on a plane to our final destination of Arequipa, Peru. An hour and a half flight landed us in Arequipa at about 6:00pm. We drove to La Universidad San Pablo to meet our host families. It was a precious ceremony because the families were extremely excited to meet us and we were aching to meet them as well. I am staying with a mother (44) and two sisters, Tania (22) and Valeria (10). They were friendly and very kind from the start. Tania is also a student at La Universidad San Pablo, so I will be walking to school with her. She is also an education major so that's also exciting. Valeria is very curious and not shy at all to ask me many questions. The mom is very kind and incredibly accommodating. I think we will get along fabulously and I am very happy to be living with them. They know the drill because they also had a student last year. I gave them their gifts and they really liked them. After the greetings, the band of the University gave us a concert to give us a taste of traditional Peruvian music. Overall, I have been filled with three feelings: exhaustion, excitement and anticipation. Thankfully the excitement and anticipation have a way of overruling the exhaustion. It is insane to think that just friday morning I said my good byes, because so much has happened since then and my life has been turned upside down. Despite the change, it is all good and I can't wait to see what's next!
A couple funny cultural things I've noticed:
1. ham seems to be a common meat to eat because it's been in practically everything I've eaten so far (eggs, dunkin donuts airport sandwich that was supposed to only have cheese and chicken, sandwich at University, and the pizza with my host family)
2. Linoleum floors seem to be the thing here as well. The entire hotel we stayed in was completely linoleum which made it extremely loud, so it sounded like a basketball court. Also the school is mostly linoleum and absolutely every part of my host families apartment is linoleum/tile.
3. I was about to start eating my pizza tonight with my fingers like I usually do, but then I realized that my entire host family was actually using the fork and knife next to their plate. Of course I conformed, but I couldn't help but question in my head why.
(p.s. the title is just for Grandma DeBoer :))
pak en zak= "baggage and all" (a rough translation from the Dutch phrase)
Here are some photos of good byes:
Our first glimpse of Lima out of the airport!
Our hotel with 100% tile flooring
The bathroom, and a reminder that the toilet paper does not go in the toilet in Peru.
We were extremely excited to be in LIMA, PERU
My first view of the Andes
This is a terrible picture, but it shows that we got to walk down off the plane and into a garage to collect our luggage. (Arequipa's airport)
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