PERU - Day 1 / Day 2

Day 1

Day 1 was yesterday. It was also the day I traveled to Lima, Peru from LAX.

So I had to wake up at 4:30 in the morning so I could be at the airport at 6 for my flight which was at 8. Usually I'm an early packer and pack at least 2 days before the flight for a trip this big but this time I pretty much waited till the night before to pack all my things. I don't know why I've been so lazy lately!!! I guess its because I just graduated from 4 years of non-stop education and get to finally have a summer without school. IDK.

Anyways....let me tell you a little about the plane ride. 1 connection; 9 hours total!! geez. I hate planes too. On the last connection I was able to have all three seats in my row but that still wasn't enough room. No matter how much room there is I never seem to be comfortable, or maybe it was the gay couple that was sitting right in front of me who made out like every 10 sec or every time they happened to look at each other :P I don't know if they were just trying to annoy me cuz they knew I was uncomfortable or they were on their honeymoon but they could not stop putting their tounges in each other's mouths...Anyways, enough about that....

I landed in Peru at 8pm local time (Peru is two hours ahead of Pacific Time) to find my Grandpa Herbert and my Grandma Ormi waiting for me. They were soo cute. Ormi is getting sick and is a little slow and it was awesome to see how much my Grandpa cares for this woman and how much he takes care of her in every way. As we were walking outside the airport we entered my grandpa's truck. His truck looked like a 20 year old Nissan pickup 4 wheel drive. Hahah, it was so cool to see him in his manual suspension pickups driving to their house. If you know anything about my grandpa he is a real down-to-earth guy. He doesn't care about fancy things (even though he could afford it), he is so content with the bare minimum. He is a man who is more interested in giving than recieving. Wow, I hope that I can be as giving as this man someday :)

Before I go on let me remind you that the last time I was in Lima was when I was 8; over ten years ago so there were alot of things that I did not remember about this place and one of those things was the driving! HOLY COW. Are there even any driving laws in this country! WOW! I have to give major props to my grandpa for living in a place were people drive so recklessly. I don't even know why there are lane markers on the road because people drive all over the road! They will seriously find any way to get past the next car even if it means going into opposite traffic or onto the curb! LOL. After about 10 seconds of waiting at a red light people will start honking at the light to see if their honking will make the light turn green faster, either that or they'll just go!! haha anyways..enough about the driving.

As we reached my grandpas's house memories started coming back into my head of the neighborhood such as the park near his house and the Pollos A La Brasa (Rotisserie Chicken :)!!) restaurant near his house. My grandpa lives in the city of Callao.

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Peru is a third-world county so the cities are not as clean and "wealthy" as they are in SoCal. My grandpa lives in a mediocre city that is very old. I'm guessing his house is at least 100 years old but its a well taken care of place. His house is huge!! It has 4 bedrooms and a bathroom on the seond floor along with an office/computer room (which I am in right now) Downstairs, is the living room, dining room, kitchen, backyard, and another room which seems to be detatched from the house which is where my Grandpa and Grandma sleep. In there, my grandpa has his office and right outside in the patio he has 2 dogs and alot of birds!

Once I arrived I met the whole family. Andrea, Alicia, and Camucha are like family who live in my Grandpa's house. My father adopted them about 20 years ago (Andrea is 13 so not that long ago for her) and they've been with the family ever since. Once I arrived and put all my stuff in my room and greeted everyone, Grandpa and I went arround the corner to get some Pollos A La Brasa. The currency here is in soles (sole-les) which is 3 to 1 to the dollar. So un pollo con papas fritas y ensalada cuesta 27 soles which in dollars would be 9 dollars. After eating with the family it was already 10 o'clock but I was eager to see some of the city so we went out to the beach area where there were some restaurants and clubs were still open. We didn't go to any but I was able to see some of the night life of Sunday night which was a little more crowded than usual because Monday was a holiday. We went to Miraflores too and I went into my first casino LOL. I played a couple of slot machines then went to go look around the rest of the city.

I took a cool picture of one of the views from the beach:

(will add soon!)

So my Spanish has been week while in SoCal so it was challenging to talk to my family in Peru who didn't know English hardly at all. Plus I forgot to download an offline translator on my iphone!! dangit. Well I seem to be getting my words accross so far LOL. After going out we came back at around 2:30 and then I called Mi Amor and my Mom to tell them I landed safely then I went to bed forever!!!

Day 2

As you could probably guess I was exausted from waking up the day before at 4:30am to going to bed at 3:30am the next day. Kinda wish I would have slept on that plane. So today was a great second day to my trip and I was also able to take about 50 pictures so that's cool. I woke up at 1pm local time and went downstairs to have breakfast. In Latin America countries, breakfast is usually the lightest meal of the day and usually consist of a tosted sandwich or a piece of toast with juice. Today I went for the piece of toast with freshly sqeezed oranje juice. A couple hours later after getting ready and such, we went out to lunch, which was good considering I only had a piece of toast and juice for breakfast!!! We went to this restaurant (I wish I remembered the name sorry) that was famous for their cebiche. Cebiche is a peruvian dish which is sautade in onions and a lemon juice which is called el leche tigre (tiger milk..sounds disgusting but its really good).

After eating my large portion of cebiche we drove and stopped at a couple of parks and then in the city of Barranco. Barranco had a nice church that seemed to be a couple hundred years old and had some nice modern elegant looking restaurants there. After taking some pictures there we went to a big mall in Lima where I met my cousins Carlos, Alberto, and Carolina (Carolina lives in SoCal near me and landed in Peru a day before I did; she is staying for 2 months!). We went bowling and then walked through the mall to eat Bembos which is a famous burger place in Peru. Its amazing how Peru has alot of the same shops and restaurants that the United States has. Some restaurants I've noticed Peru has that are also in the United States are Chili's, Tony Romas, TGI Fridays, KFC, Burger King, McDonalds, Starbucks (YES!), and Hooters. My cousins and I then took a taxi to their father's house where we stayed for a little bit and played some playstation. There I saw their dad's mom or my second grandma who hadn't seen me since I came to Peru on my first trip which was 19 years ago! After staying there for about an hour my grandpa picked me up and we went home. That was pretty much the day but I hope to do more exciting thing tomorrow!! :D