Day 1: First Impressions

Hello from Peru!

So today was a really long day. My flight from San Francisco left at 12am for Houston. I arrived at Houston and had a lay over for about 3 hours. Spent most of the time talking to Ana for the last time until I get back(I´ll miss you!). Then flew from Houston to Panama City where I had a 5 hour lay over. I met up with Geo and Marie over at Panama. Thank goodness for Geo who can speak Spanish because 3 years of high school Spanish for me did nothing. At Panama I bought a hot dog and chocolate and almost lost my pillow. I really wish I knew Spanish because I already got duped. Some worker gave me a peso instead of a quarter haha. The flight to Lima from Panama city was pretty cool and I watched some movie with Jennifer Aniston. Someone stole my window seat but I didn´t want to make a big deal about it so I just sat in the aisle which wasn´t bad. They served dinner on the flight which was salad, a dinner roll, vegetables, and some sort of mashed potato with meat. Overall the meal was pretty good and I finished everything.

When we were about to land to Peru the attendants started handing out papers to fill out. Unfortunately it was all in Spanish so I had to guess what some parts were asking for. When we landed I found an English version of the papers and used that instead. The drive to the hostel was pretty interesting and again I´m so glad Geo speaks Spanish. We were able to get a cab driver who seemed pretty nice. My first impressions of Peru and Lima is that it´s a pretty clean place. The roads are pretty wide and there is barely any pollution on the streets or air. I was expecting to see something like Manila where the streets are filled with dirt and the sky is polluted but I didn´t. During the cab ride I kept thinking to myself that if Geo didn´t speak Spanish I would´ve been scared because the drive was around 25 min. and we were going through all these dark places far away from the airport. Eventually we arrived at the hostel and we said bye to our cab driver.

The hostel itself is pretty nice. We were able to get a room to ourselves and there is free internet and breakfast. The room has 8 beds for all of us and one bathroom. I´m pretty excited for these next couple of weeks and blessed with this opportunity to see how God is working in the other parts of the world. Tomorrow we plan to meet up with the rest of the group and figure out transportation to Cusco. I´ll do my best to try and blog everyday if given the opportunity. Leave a comment or note for me if you want!

-Jason