Hola Gringos.

Well, I made it to Lima (after only 3 hours of sleep and at 6 a.m. which is far too early to function). I have no idea how I made it through customs or how I found my taxi. I was probably still sleeping. On the way to my house I was given a full tour of the city by my taxi driver who pointed out all the best restaurants and promised he'd let me take him out to eat sometime. At the house I met the cook Maria and her two sons David and Gabriel. Gabriel is 5 years-old and gets to sit at his own table during dinner and color. Jealous! The food here is fantastic. Everything is fresh and there is always a new tropical fruit waiting for me when I wake up. The downside is I can't drink the water unless it's boiled. Brushing my teeth has become a challenge, since I usually forget about this until my mouth is full of toothpaste. Oops. Back to day one. For breakfast I had papaya and instant Peruvian coffee. I don't really understand how instant coffee works so I put three scoops into my mug. Three scoops was two and a half too many. Lesson learned. I did a little exploring with three people from my program who are staying in a hostel for a few blocks away: Joey, Raighne, and Chad. We walked around downtown Miraflores, which is extra fancy, in search of phones. We didn't find any that we liked so we gave up and napped the rest of the afternoon.

Today we decided to find a beach. Let me preface this story with: we never found the beach. The adventure began at their hostel which is only a few blocks from my house. We decided to first go to Chad's student housing so he could drop off his suitcase and then on our return trip we could walk along the coast. Each of us took a good look at Google Maps and memorized the route. I mean, really, why on earth would we write down the directions when the four of us are clearly capable of navigating in a foreign city of 8 million. We left the hostel confident and found Chad's house without any problems. While Chad debated which room to choose, Joey, Raighne, and I chatted with the landlord. My spanish is a little rusty, but here's what I got out of the conversation: cockroaches can survive nuclear war, China has as many multimillionaires as there are people in Peru, Attila the Hun destroyed a library in Alexandria, and the internet is the greatest gift to mankind. Also, the seafood here is delicious. After that stimulating chat we headed toward what we thought was the ocean. Thirty minutes, four ice cream sanwiches, and six olive, ham, and cheese rolls later we found ourselves deciding our direction based on which way the sun was setting.
It sets in the west.
Okay perfect the ocean should be west of us.
But there are mountains west of us.
No, no those are cliffs, remember there were cliffs by the ocean?
No.
Yes, there were cliffs by the ocean! And look, there's a tall building, I bet that's the direction we should go.
Long story short, we ended up roaming the streets of an obviously very poor part of town. Eventually a policeman pulled over and asked us some questions. While Joey answered, a woman walked up to me and told me not to listen to the cop because he was dangerous, the cop told us to leave this area as soon as possible because it was dangerous. Torn, we decided it best to take the taxi the policeman got for us since he had a gun and meant business. The taxi took us back to the safety of our ritzy neighborhood for a whole $3.00. The driver informed us that where we were is the sketchiest part of Barranco and anyone who is white will get mugged. I still haven't figured out what they would have taken from me. My cut-offs? Anyway, it was then agreed we should always ALWAYS have a map and never EVER follow Raighne's directions.

Maybe tomorrow we'll go to the beach.