We arrived in Lima, Peru around 5 AM their time, and we had a 7+ hour layover from hell. We all pretty much passed out in the terminal on the chairs and periodically checked to see if our flight had a gate yet. As we all woke up, we passed some time by reading Cosmo out loud and finding food. Sorry, I'm not sorry, but I had a chicken caesar wrap at 7:30 in the morning. I've never been so bored waiting for something to happen. A few of us decided around 10:30 that we would go to the little restaurant near the gate and have some empanadas to get a little food in our system. However, the chicken empanada I ordered was also filled with olives, raisins, and god only knows what else... I guess I'll stick to the seriously delicious empanadas here in Buenos Aires. Once we boarded our second flight to Buenos Aires, I pretty much immediately passed out, but I did get to catch all but the last 20 minutes of the Hunger Games before we landed. LAN Airlines has EXCELLENT choice in movies and television.
Once we danced our way through security and customs and got all of our bags, we met our director, Alfredo, where he had a van waiting for us. Alfredo is possibly one of the nicest guys I've ever met and I have a feeling this group will have a lot of fun with him. It took pretty much forever to get to the Universidad de Belgrano because of traffic, but when we got there all of our host mothers were waiting on the sidewalk with hugs and kisses. My roommate Jenn and I took a taxi with our host mom to our apartment, where we were pleasantly surprised to find we each had our own room. It's small, but it absolutely gets the job done!
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| My room! |
Our host mother made us a pretty big dinner, but by the time we were done eating we were ready to pass out. The next morning we had some orientation with Alfredo, and then it was off to the Exposición Rural. Basically it was a giant agricultural expo with animals and foods and anything you could imagine. But before I get to that, I'd like to make a comment on the sidewalks. I don't know what crazy person is in charge of them here, but there has to be 500 different kinds of sidewalks... and none of them are good. They're either made of tile and complete uneven, or they were paved but people or dogs stepped in them when they were wet. I can now see why they told us not to bring high heels...
But back to the expo. There were real life gauchos dressed in traditional attire and we got to interact with them, which was awesome. We also met two other students from California who are on our trip, and we all meshed as a group really well. We got to try lots of different foods and drinks and it was all around an awesome day.
But back to the expo. There were real life gauchos dressed in traditional attire and we got to interact with them, which was awesome. We also met two other students from California who are on our trip, and we all meshed as a group really well. We got to try lots of different foods and drinks and it was all around an awesome day.
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| Los gauchos |
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| We tried a lot of food... and it was all delicious! |
We ended up at the fanciest McDonalds I've ever been in my life for some coffee and snacks before heading off to a ridiculous all you can eat buffet dinner with a fresh pasta station. The food here is excellent, and I really can't speak any more highly of it. On a funny note related to the McDonalds, we also discovered that my cell phone given to me by my program has a "sexy" mode... We're all kind of afraid to find out what it does.
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| My motorola piece of crap is bringing sexy back. |
It's going to be an interesting week... ¡hasta luego!
- Meagan
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