Lima!

The buildings here are so colorful, this is Dave and I in front of one of the houses; bright red!


Sea Urchin!


sun and the sea!


Cerbiche! Yum!


Beautiful tile wall in Miraflores


First day in Lima, overlooking the sea!


Hello all!
I am writing this post from our hostel in Miraflores, which is the tourist district in Lima Peru. We arrived here on the 17th at about 2 am, and the whole process; NYC to Mexico city, Mexico City to Lima, and the airport to our hostel went without a hitch. On our 2nd flight, from Mexico City to Lima, we met a man named Sergio, who was a very fiendly missionary who decided that our 5 hour flight to Lima would be a good chance for us to learn some Spanish. Dave spent the greater portion of 3 hours speaking to him in Spanish, while I listened and tried to follow along. By the end of our flight, Sergio had flipped through an entire magazine and taught us the names of the objects on the pages in Spanish. I think I retained about 3 words.

Yesterday, Dave and I spent the majority of the day getting aqainted with Miraflores, exchanging our money, walking the boardwalk by the sea and fumbling through spanish phrases in an attempt to order food, use the bathroom, and ask for directions. Dave took 4 years of Spanish in high school, and it is coming back to him very quickly. Most people in Miraflores speak a little bit of english, but Dave knows more Spanish than they know english, so it is more effective to fumble through the wording in Spanish and use excessive gesturing than to try and speak english. Peruvians are very friendly and it seems that the harder we try to speak their language, the more apt they are to help us.

Last night we went out for drinks with a wonderful woman we met at our hostel named Karen, who is from Norway. Karen speaks fluent Spanish, so she was especially helpful in ordering drinks and helping us some more with our spanish. Today we went out for Cerbiche with Karen as well; Cerbiche is a traditional Peruvian dish which is cooked in lime and hot chili peppers. Amazing!
We ended the day with a dip in the ocean and frying ourselves in the hot sun...even though we wore sunscreen we burnt the hell out of ourselves..hmmm, I guess we need to cover up a bit more if we don´t want to get torched.

Tomorrow we will leave for Ecuador to attend our spanish school, it takes 2 buses and over 24 hours to get there, but I hear they have food and drinks on the bus, so we should be happy campers. More to come soon!