Feliz día de Independencia!

Happy (late) Fourth of July, everyone!

Getting punny in the airport (llama means "pay attention" as well as the animal)

After 3,785 miles and 12 hours of travel on Tuesday, I celebrated the Fourth in true Peruvian style... not doing anything related to the US's Independence day! The 8 girls on the program (yes, we're all girls) spent the night in a hotel before going to La Pontífica Universidad Católica de Peru, where we're taking classes for the next 3 weeks. As we pulled up to the entrance, we were greeted by one of the many semi-tame deer that roam around the campus (!!!), as well as Professor Eduardo Hopkins, who'll be teaching my class on Contemporary Peruvian Literature.

Un venado de PUPC

Eduardo brought us to a classroom and gave us a crash course in Lima's transportation, food, money, weather, and history before bringing us to meet our "compañeros" from la Católica. These Peruvian students volunteer through the university to show us international students around and generally act as a resource. They're absolute sweeties - two of them studied abroad at Boston University last year! Ironically, they start their winter vacation this Friday, so we won't have any classes with them, but I guess that means they'll be free to hang out with us! 

After chatting with our new amigos, we were sent off once again to meet our host families. My mamá's name is Mónica, and she's been hosting international students for the past nine years. Right now, in addition to me and two other girls from my program, she's hosting two really lovely Belgian girls who've been here for about a year. Between all the international students, Mónica and her two children (Rafael, a 22 year old boy who invited me to jam with his punk band, and Camila, an adorable but wild 9 year old girl) and a bunch of friends who are in and out of the house all day, I have met more people and learned more names in the past 38 hours than I can possibly remember!

Today was our first real class, and the rest of my day was spent buying a cheap cell phone and organizing the teeny tiny room that I'm sharing with Heather and Kristen, the two girls from BU. It's very cozy: like, the 5-inches-between-each-bed-and-a-foot-from-the-bed-to-the-wall kind of cozy. But the apartment really is very nice, and I'm so glad to have such a nice family, who are used to dealing with exchange students like me  =)

Camila y yo  =D

I've keep having to hit backspace, because I'm listening to Camila (as she ricochets all over our room) and accidentally write in Spanish. And now, I'm going to kick her out of the room so I can do my readings for class tomorrow.

Hasta pronto, amigos americanos!