Truijllo
This past weekend I made a trip to northern Peru to celebrate the coming of spring. Truijllo is about 9-10 hrs up north in a bus and was left thurs. night to arrive on friday morning. In general the city of Truijllo wasn´t that spectacular, but the festival was amazing and made the trip. We went to the Huacas del sol y luna that are outside of the city. They were pretty amazing and had a lot of history, but what I really enjoyed was the largest mud city in the americas. It was so easy to imagine people actually living there as we moved about what seemed like a giant maze which was the ruins of a city.
Sunday there was a parade that was pretty fantastic. The people got so involved and the costumes were so elaborate. It was great to get to see some cultural dancing and just people having fun in general.
My favorite part of the whole weekend though had to be the bull fight. Upon entering the stadium I had no idea what to expect. I knew that they were going to kill 4 bulls but I had no idea what kind of process that would be and what would happen. The first bull was really hard to watch because I just didn´t understand, but as I watched more and saw the people in the crowd´s reaction I started to understand. It is the ultimate machismo ceremony. The matadors dress in bright colored outfits and ´dance´ with the bulls. They show their power as men by allowing this dangerous creature so close to their bodies. They test fate. At the end the main matador slays the bull with a sword and if done right the bull dies instantaneously. Afterwards the meat is sold and put to good use. The crowd gets so into it yelling encouragements to the matadors and clapping when the matador has given them a good show. The whole experience was so different than anything that I have ever seen or participated in.
I am loving my experience here and am overjoyed that i chose this path for my life. I am continually growing and learning here and am very thankful that I still have 2 more months to go. I can´t imagine if i was to leave now after only 2 months. My trip would seem so incomplete.
Huacachina y Paracas
So Megan Julia and I went to Huacachina and Paracas this weekend. We were intending to go to the Nasca Lines but the plane ride over the lines was soo expensive so instead we optioned to stay in Huacachina and go sand boarding and go on a dune buggie tour, then to Paracas so see the Ballestas islands. The sand boarding was amazing. It´s basically like snow boarding but I think it goes a lot faster because you wax the bottom of the board and just slide down these huge sand dunes. Our guide for the buggie tour was so funny and went crazy driving and ramping over these giant sand dunes. We met a nice german boy while we were sand boarding and then while we were on a wine tour met some nice americans that we ended up hanging out with for the night.
Then we went to Paracas early in the day and out on a boat tour to the islands. They were amazing. They had sea lions and penguins in their natural habitats. it was an incredible site. It was kinda gross though because there were millions of birds and they pooped all over the back side of the islands so it kinda smelled bad.
Then it was back to Lima. We stopped in a city called Pisco and it had just been distroyed like 3 years earlier by an earthquake… so it was really hard for me to see the distruction that is still evident today. There were parts where there weren´t any roads and a lot of the buildings had crumbled to the ground. It was a really different experience from when we were in huacachina or in paracas.
Lunahuana plan sin plan
So I went on my first trip of Peru this weekend. A few of the house mates and some Peruvian friends decided on a whim to go to Lunahuana because we had a long weekend since today was a holiday for Santa Rosa de Lima. Lunahuana is the exact opposite of Lima. It is a tiny town where life is slow paced and everything can get done tomorrow. 
We went ATVing and also white water rafting while we were there. The rafting was amazing. It was only a 1 to 1 1/2 level but it gave me the itch to try harder ones. Going down the river though was just such a peaceful experience. One of those moments when you realize how tiny you are in the scheme of things. The town was adorable and I felt really safe there. Since it’s kind of a tourist town I didn’t feel like people stared at us as much and everyone was super nice and chill. 
The only downside of the trip was that I have probably never stayed in such a gross rooms in my life. I have never slept in a hostel in general… let alone a hostel in south america. They did give me a whole new outlook though. I have never in my life really been confronted with poverty. Yeah in cities there is the occasional homeless man but to see an entire population of people just living in shacks with hardly even running water and by no means hot water… it’s moving. I will never again look at poverty the same way and the saying there is starving kid in Africa has a whole new meaning for me.
All in all it was a crazy experience. I can’t believe I have been I have almost been here a month! I am realizing I need to travel more and I have no idea what to feel about school. Hopefully everything works out. Ciao!
bbq
This weekend has been crazy. I have been running around non stop! It has been really fun and I’ve met a lot of really cool people which has made my exhaustion worth it.
Today we had a day to relax a little. Mary Lou and Luis came over with the kids to cook us a BBQ. It was amazing food and just a good time sitting around shooting the breeze. I really feel like we have formed a giant family here. We eat together, we go to school together, we are experiencing all of this together. It has been a great 2 weeks and I can’t imagine having a better group to spend it with! 
figuring how how to use the @ sign has never been so hard.
First day of classes went pretty well. I´m pretty stoked about my Quetchua class, but the Peruvian cultural class did not go so well… I am not a huge fan of history in the first place, although I would love to learn more about the Inca´s, but this class was more modern history and was basically… terrible. I have now attended two different sessions of this class because this is the week for the exchange students to try out different professors, and both of them were horrible. At first I though it was because the classes are like 2 hours long here… but in reality I just don´t like the topic material. Luckily I have the rest of the week to pick out a few more classes that I really like, and professors that I can actually understand. lol
Currently I am passing the day wondering around campus with Julia which has so far been anoher adventure. It took us a bit to find someone we knew to ask where a computer lab was and then another little bit to ask if we could use it because there were signs talking about some class being in here… now that we are here it took me I kid you not like 10 min to figure out how to make the @ sign because these keyboards are so different. I kept having to get up and go across the entire room to have Julia help me. If I learn nothing else from this trip , which I hope I learn a lot more, I will have learned to truely laugh at myself.
muy linda
Today was a really good day. We went out to Miraflores (a very nice part of town) to eat and I swear I had the best service of my life. We ate this amazing pizza and our server was the nicest man ever! He was so attentive and kept giving us really nice compliments. Here people always kiss you on the cheek but it was really funny because this guy… kissed me on my forehead… pretty hilarious especially since he was like in his 40’s. It’s really funny because after that the other girls from the house and I were talking about how different it’s going to be when we return to the states and we don’t have like 30 men whistling at us everyday and telling us how beautiful we are. We are going to get a complex! lol
After that we went to a really great cafe and got coffee with Julia’s compañera. She was really nice and showed us around Miraflores some more. I am starting to get my ear for spanish and I am really excited about the fact that I am actually remembering words that I am learning!!! Today was definitely a new day and a better day for my spanish than yesterday. I feel like because we are gringas a lot of funny things end up happening to us and everyday is interesting and different.
mis amigas muy lindas :D
el zoolólogico
Today is kinda the last day we had before starting school so we went out to the zoo. I was really excited at first and we used the busses fine (which is an achievement here) but when we got there and really started to walk through all of it I got kinda sad…. the animals didn’t have very good habitats and at times there was trash in the cages with them. me duele en mi corazon. (it hurt my heart) Some of the animals didn’t even seem all there. The lion that I saw just seemed to look right through us and didn’t seem aware at all of where it was. 
They had no room to run or be even remotely free. I didn’t really like it… There was an upside though. I didn’t realize when I first walked into the zoo that the ruinlooking things that I saw were actually ruins. I thought that they were just a part of the zoo but it turns out that they are actual ruins. They had a little museum about the huacas del Maranga and the tomb of Sipán. I really liked that part of the trip. 
I am also constantly surprised at the things that people here choose to bring from the states, such as McDonalds. It was really surprising to see a Ronald McDonald here. First because I have never seen a man dressed up like Ronald in my life and didn’t know that this was practiced in the states let alone here, but it was also weird because he was talking in spanish. I laughed a lot about that, BUT the funniest thing I have seen yet is Barney at the zoo with a spanish version of old McDonald had a farm playing in the background! 
After we went to eat chifa. Chifa is what you would get if chinese food and peruvian food had a baby. It is really popular here. I think that you can probably see a Chifa restaurant on almost every street. It’s really really good though and was defiantly an experience. I am starting to understand the city a little more finally and I can get to the University pretty easily now. Tomorrow we have orientation and start finally learning more about the University and what classes we might be taking. I’m really excited to start my classes and start really improving my spanish even more.
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