Peru Summer 2018

View of the Plaza de Armas from the restaurant we ate lunch at May 19, 2018 We started out our day walking around the city, mainly exploring los mercados artesanales. There's some pretty cool stuff, and it's pretty cheap. You have to bargain here, though. Usually you can get the sellers to bring the price down quite a few soles. For lunch, we ate at this great restaurant in the Plaza de Armas. They seated us on the balcony with a view of the whole square. View from the balcony Me, Jess, Kylee, and Hannah After lunch, we did a bus tour of the outskirts of the city. We got to get a quick glimpse of some of the archaeological sites, which we're going to actually visit and go inside tomorrow. It was pretty cold, but so worth it. Una cancha de fútbol! Coca leaves. We participated in a wishing and good luck ceremony that included blowing into the leaves, rubbing some kind of perfume all over us, and getting whacked with a branch. ...

View from the Plaza de Armas May 18, 2018 Altitude sickness is real, but fortunately my only symptoms have been a bad headache and some difficulty breathing after going upstairs or talking a lot. I don't know if it was the water, the ibuprofen, or the coca tea, but an hour after waking up I felt perfectly fine. Coca(ine) tea is the best thing ever but it's illegal in the US because coca leaves are used to make cocaine. People here swear that it helps with altitude sickness and I must say I do believe them now. So far we've had potatoes for almost every meal of the day, including breakfast. And tea. We had to get up early today for a Spanish placement exam so we could enroll in classes for next week. The exam had a written and speaking part, but it wasn't bad. After finishing, we had a few hours until orientation so all of the students hung out for a while and walked around the city. There was a parade going on in the Plaza de Armas, so we could hardly walk...

May 16-17, 2018 My first flight was scheduled for 6:15 PM on Wednesday, so my mom and dad drove me down to the airport. When the airline guy weighed my bag, the number kept jumping up higher and higher, eventually past 50 pounds. You have to understand, I weighed my bag like 20 times and the highest it ever read was 27 pounds. Then the guy took his foot off the scale and it jumped down to 27. I just about had a heart attack, but it was a joke much needed because I was starting to freak out about flying for the first time. So, thanks Mr. United Airlines Man. You are awesome. By the way, while going through security, do not attempt to collect your bag if they put it to the side, or else they will yell at you. And possibly attack you. Whoops. (Each airport stopped me for a candle I had in my bag). My first flight was to Houston and it was swell. Smoother than my dad's driving on the way down to Nashville at least. Houston's airport was huge. Like, it could h...

Cusco, Perú I leave for Peru in a week, I have 3 finals left that I don't want to study for, and I still don't really know the specifics of my trip, so here I am. What I do know: I will be studying for one month at la Universidad San Ignacio de Loyola in Cusco. I am leaving on May 16. I am returning on June 24. I will be staying with a family. The program includes an excursion to Machu Picchu and the Sacred Valley. That's about it. But that's all well and good because I have the internet to help me plan where to go in my free time (to some degree). So, I shall make a list of all the places I want to go and try to visit as many of them as possible before I come home. If you're interested, you can read about it here (hi, mom). Regions of Peru Number one: Machu Picchu I will do an overnight trip here with CISabroad. Located in the Cusco region. We'll see how my own pictures compare with these photos, complement of Google Images. Hint: th...