school, beach, discoteca

Alrighty. So I always feel like I have so much to say! But here I go...(here's what's new, to answer your question on your letter today, jojo :D )

So last week I started an intensive Spanish class to boost my mad spanish skills. It's pretty nifty i guess. We are basically learning alot about the culture of Peru and the class is completely in Spanish. It's uber long...from 9 in the morning to 4 in the afternoon. How did I survive this kind of schedule in high school? Ick! Anywho, So last week was basically wake up, take an hour ride to school on the micro, school, come back on the micro, eat more food than i can handle, sleep. wow that doesn't sound too impressive. But there ware still nifty moments in between!! I live in Barranco which is an hour away from school. It sounds gross but I actually have come to like the rides a lot. The micros, as i talked about before, are crazy! I wish you guys could get on a virtual micro ride and see what i'm talking about. So hear is a typical micro ride:

Flag down my micro

hop on while the cobrador is shouting 'sube sube sube!' (get on...basically).

Either find a seat, or stand, or stand while being squished by 12 other people who are trying to not sling forward every time the driver stops and goes. which is alot.

Get stared at because I'm the only gringa in there. (although i think i got a tan at the beach today...maybe that will help :D ... nah )

people watch out the window, or read

hear the constant noise of beeping cars and taxis, cobradores continuously shouting things out the door to try to get more passengers, the radio on the micro playing various spanish tunes(btw they prefer to call the spanish language castellano, because technically spain has a lot of different languages), the wind coming in through the windows,

pay the cobrador

find my stop and tell the cobrador 'baja la catolica(the school)' and get off while he keeps shouting 'baja baja baja'

try to cross the street without dying

So yeah interesting stuff. I like them though :D They are different and interesting and adventurous. Although, not always a good adventure. The other day i got on the wrong micro and luckily i figured it out before it drove into some part of lima that i didn't know. scary!

Ok so onward with the week.
Last night my friend Teela, who is one of the girls in the CIEE group, had a night out for her birthday. a bunch of us met up at larcomar, which is this cool little mall thing on the beach. And then we saw Alice in wonderland. Trippy. THEN we went to a discoteca. Basically a club. It was in the district I live in, Barranco! people really like discotecas here. I guess people from the US do too. But yeah they really like them. We went in and it was so loud...it was basically just dancing, loud music, smoke, drinking, screaming in eachother's ear to try to communicate, watching drunk people get on stage and get all emotional when this song about rainbows came on. By the middle of it I realized that this was my first time in a club ever...other than midnight rodeo...ha. the drinking age here is 18 so yeah, that's why. It was an interesting experience.

Then this morning, we went to the playa!! (the beach :D) we drove down to a beach that was an hour south from here. It was neat! Whenever we got there and got off the bus, sellers automatically came up to us and tried to get us to eat at there little restaurant hut on the beach. After that we found a spot on the beach. There were a good amount of other people there. then we did the fun swimming stuff and ladeda, but the neat part was that the beach was a big place where sellers would come to sell there things. People selling ice cream, beautiful body wraps, beautiful clothing, beautiful jewelry(i got suckered into buying some earrings :D), movies...mostly pirated, books, cigarretes, gum, snacks, etc. All these people were walking along the beach and would come up to people to try to sell things. I thought it was so awesome because the things they were selling were beautiful and it was like going shopping without having to move. ha.
I'll post some pics


So overall I am slowly starting to get the rhythm of things. The rhythm of my family here, of the micros, of the food, of the language, of the people that I'm around. It hit me earlier this week that I don't have those people here that encourage me and love me well and that cheer me on and that i can share my heart with. At least not yet! I'm praying that i can find those people here. And I'm also praying for a heart to love people in general. To be genuinely interested in them, get to know them, and be with them.

Chao :D

(pics of my home, and the beach)