Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Peru, I´m getting to know you

Sooo, I arrived in Lima, Peru about 2 1/2 weeks ago (August 10 to be exact). I arrived in the middle of the night, thanks to an unexpected delay in New York, Newark Airport. We were on the runway, ready to leave when the pilot comes on and says that there´s a storm in Jersey, so we couldn´t leave until it settled down. They turned off the plane and we sat on the runway for more than two hours. Just before we left, we decided to quickly try and call home to have them inform Abby´s host family to send a taxi at a later time than originally planned. Since we only thought of that literally 30 seconds before we were finally taking off, there wasn´t time to tell them my email address, etc to contact the people who were sending a taxi for me. Which, unfortunately, resulted in me paying double the amount that Abby paid and still about twice as much as a Peruvian would have paid at any given time. I had to pay 100 soles, which is about 33 dollars which, for a 20 minute taxi ride, still isn´t bad, but for Lima standards, was out of this world. Oh well, that´s the way it goes I guess.

Anyhow, arrived in Lima, got to our respective new homes, and got some much needed rest. The next day, I spent organizing my room and getting ready to explore Lima. After being here for a couple of days, I had met all of the 20?? people that live in the same hostel as I and had also gotten a small map of the blocks around my, what I will now refer to as my house. Grocery shopping, exploring and all the normal things followed. I also met Abby´s family and told them that I was going to begin searching for a job. That night, they gave Abby a jobs listings paper with a few interesting options circled. I emailed those places and got a response back that day from one located in the city center. They wanted to interview me the next day bright and early! Ahhh! I don´t know my way around the city!!! So, I found my way, clumsily, to the interview, they hired me on the spot and I began training that day. My job is to train people on English comprehension and how to use a specific software program utilized in the job. So, basically they have to go through me and my three co-trainers in order to be hired on for the job. The business works with transcribing voice mail messages into text messages so that you can recieve your voicemails without having to take the time to check your voicemail. It comes as a text, nice and easy, to your cell phone and you can quickly read it. It´s a simple idea, but one that´s taking flight all over the US, Europe, Canada, and South Africa. Interesting, eh?

So, I´ve been working in the job now for about two weeks and I really like it. Besides that, I´ve been working at finding flights back to Brazil to visit, with no luck so far. The flights I´ve found are not only extremely expensive, but they fly first to Miami, Florida, and then back down to Brazil! Yeah right, I´m not flying for 15 hours just to get to Brazil. I might as well take a bus and take in some scenery for that kind of travel time. Yuuuck. I´m still looking though.

This past weekend, Abby and I, along with about 58 other people, went with this hostel in another part of the city and drove to a city called Ica. From Ica, we took vans to this small lake called Huacachina, which is surrounded by restaurants, hostels, and desert!! We took dune buggy rides through the desert and stopped three times to go sandboarding. We went, head first on our stomachs down huge sand dunes, while laying on a smaller version of a snowboard. It was soooo much fun!! In total, I think I spent about $65-70 US. It was really cheap! That included the excursion, the hostel, all our food and a club + drinks on Saturday night. Not too shabby, huh?















Hopefully, our next trip will be the Amazon. We´re trying to get there before their rainy season hits, which will be starting before too long. Yikes!!! Keep the mosquitos away!

Soo, until next time...

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