My flight was pretty nondescript... i didn't lose any luggage and i slept most of the way... had a short stop in San Jose, Costa Rica...
at the airport i was greeted by the driver of a hostal i was staying at that night... this is where i began using a little bit of spanish and feeling incredibly overwhelmed.... the hostal was pretty nice.. had internet... nice owners.. was in miraflores, a nice part of Lima.. i managed to change some money at the western union (believe me this was a bit of a feat and i was proud of myself!).. finally managed to figure out the phone system enough to call a friend of a's to hang out with for the one evening in Lima...
i can't tell you how nice it was to hang out with someone the first afternoon... she spoke a bit of english and she, her husband, and her mom showed me around lima.. some fountains, squares (like central areas with statues), and they took me to some restaurants to introduce me to some foods... including chicharones (warning, spelling may be horrible), yukitas, antichukos, and pisco sours (apprently THE drink of peru)... this decreased my overwhelmed scale from 20 (out of 10 heh) to a 10 =)
on sunday, i managed to think it was saturday all day and was very confused why none of the stores were open... blah!!!
got a ride from a taxi to the bus station (alot of the arrangements were made by the language program i signed up with for 2 weeks.. will have a diff post on that).. the taxi guy pretty much ripped me off, but on the other hand it wasn't that costly.. basically you can get pretty much anywhere in town for about 4 soles, 8 if it's quite a drive.. well we didn't go that far and the guy charged me 15 soles.. i didn't know the going rate at the time, so i just paid him.. by the way 15 soles is only like $5... so i didn't mind...
at the bus station, an employee chatted me up... just the usual.. where are you from (which incidentally, i keep forgetting that i dont look like i'm from the states)... he knew a few words in english adn at one point he said something that I thought was 'give your buttox' we finally managed to figure out that he was trying to say 'baggage' heh.. but that was weird for a few seconds LOL... (i'll have another funny language story later so stay tuned!!)
in the bus, i had a first class sort of seat... the ride cost about $35 USD... it was like being on an airplane.. you were served food.. there was a movie... there was even a bingo game hah.. the guy next to me was very chatty... nice guy.. he stayed with me for a few minutes while i was waiting for the language program staff to get me from the airport... i was a bit panic'ed because they got there late and i just kept reading how dangerous it is at night...
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