Getting accustomed

Hello all,
My apologies for the delay in the blog postings. I have been having such an amazing time exploring the city of Lima and getting to know my new friends. Let me sum it up for you by the days:
Day 1-
TRAVEL TRAVEL TRAVEL. I was lucky enough to have some travel buddies so it made the 16 hour day much more bearable. The flight from Phx to Houston went smoothly then after a three hour layover our flight was delayed for another hour or so. Eventually we boarded the plane to Lima. It was a huge plane! I was amazed by how many people were on this flight to Peru. There were people from all sorts of backgrounds. My favorite was the group of Japanese travelers that were all in their 60s. They were all just so cute with their fanny packs and floral bucket hats. The girls and I joked before the flight that they better play a good movie on the plane and none of this sappy stuff for example the movie The Vow. And come to find out the movie they ended up playing on the plane was The Vow. We all shared a giggle at that one. Thank goodness for movies on planes and the new John Mayer CD, it made the time go by much faster. All in all we made it into Lima safely and we were picked up by a very nice driver from the hostel. Once we arrived at The Dragonfly hostel in Mirasflores we were greeted by two studly imaginations coordiantors, Michael and Tyler. The nice guys waited up until 2 am to greet us.

Day 2-
We all took our time this morning. We slept in and decided to just roam the city for a little bit. There was a park that we ended up exploring. There were the cutest cats roaming all over the place. All of us girls were obsessing over taking pictures of these fancy felines. Mirasflores is right on the shore so we took a straight shot right towards the ocean. There is this very large shopping mall right on the ocean. It was a very fancy shopping mall at that too. After walking around the shopping mall for a while I learned some things about my fellow volunteers. 1. Kayla is obsessed with Hello Kitty. We came across a Sanrio store and she screamed unlike anything I have ever seen. 2. Michael is obsessed with arcades. He ended up playing this Gorilla game where you have to hold on for as long as you can while the machine vibrates uncontrollably. We had to leave him there for a while as he enjoyed all of the fun games. We ended up at a cafe over looking the beach and ordered some Pisco Sours, which is the national drink of Peru. So we obviously had to cheers to that. The rest of the night consisted of attempting to go to a salsa dancing lesson (which i was kind of glad the place ended up being closed, shhh),  eating some pizza at a place called ECO pizza that played some very interesting american music, and sitting on the rooftop of the hostel enjoying some drinks and playing spoons. Everyone was able to witness how competitive I can become over a silly card game... sorry!

Day 3-
Today we woke up early and took a tour of Lima. We added two new friends into our group the night before. Slowly but surely our little group is growing into a nice little family. One of the workers from the hostel named Fernando joined us on the tour so he would be able to help translate. He could not stop saying all day how another volunteer, Madeline, and I look like we are sisters. Which is ironic because my real sister's name is Madelyn . We took a bus into the city of Lima. Their bus system is more like an above ground subway system. It has its own lane parallel to the highway and goes super fast. Once we arrived we were able to see many historical sites and I tried to keep up with the spanish as our tour guide introduced us to all the different areas. Today was the five year anniversary of an earthquake occurred in Lima five years ago. So today just so happened to be the day that they "commemorated" this day. They did this by simulating what would happen in the event of another earthquake happening. There were ambulances everywhere and medics that were carrying around fake injured people on stretchers. It was quite the show with the main event being that they tethered a rope from the top of a building and had a few police officers holding it down to the ground. Then people at the top of the building slid down this rope as a way of an evacuation route. Its kind of confusing to explain but it was quite the site to see and we were lucky to experience it.
All in all it has been a great experience so far. I cant believe I am going to be here for six whole weeks. I am so lucky that I have been given this opportunity. Tomorrow night we will be leaving for Huancayo which will be our home base for the rest of the trip. Thanks for reading :)