Well my first week out of two in Lima is almost over already, time goes so much faster here because unlike Sámara which was a small beach town, this is a huge city with so much to do, in addition, the school here seems a lot more like a small close family unlike Samara where the staff were there during the day but went their separate ways at night. I’ve been happy with how things have gone so far, I thought perhaps that because it was the city that students would be more a bit more snobby or a bit more like they would want to do their own thing, but it hasn’t been like that at all, everyone’s really friendly and we always are going out somewhere together. That doesn’t leave much time for updating my blog!

On Tuesday, after sleeping almost all of Monday, I was feeling a bit better. I went out with Paul (my housemate) and a student called Jenny to a bar to watch one of the world cup matches and have lunch. It’s world cup fever here at the moment of course. In the afternoon I went with some of the students to a museum which housed a lot of Inca ceramics and gold and silver pieces which was really interesting, I took photos of this and other things that happened in the week and will put them on facebook hopefully this weekend.

Even though I slept all of Monday, I still was feeling tired Tuesday so I went to bed early again. Paul and Vicky (my other housemate) were trying to get me to go out to a Salsa club but that sounded a bit scary because it combines dancing and clubs, two things I don’t particularly like much! Oh yes, it turned out that my other housemate is Vicky, not Yolanda, I got two of the names of the girls at school mixed up.

Wednesday I hung out with Paul again, we explored the area and did our homework and both slept a bit in the afternoon, because we both went to karaoke that night along with 8 or 9 others. I really didn’t think I would end up singing anything, but I did, after two beers, three pisco sours and two “multiple orgasms” I was singing Y M C A extremely loud into the microphone, along with Doris Day’s “Que Sera Sera”. I was awesome, of course. There’s photos of that night too but I’m too scared to go through them just yet. Paul sung Rollin’ by Limp Biskit which was absolutely hilarious and together we sung I Want It That Way by Backstreet Boys.

Today (Thursday) after class I bought a Peruvian sim-card, because they were only 15 soles (£3.50) so I thought why not. Although I haven’t the faintest idea how to top it up or what the woman says to me in Spanish when I dial a number or what it costs to do anything. Oh well. Later on we went to a market in the centre of Peru and I bought some clothes, I bought a jacket, two t-shirts, some trackpants and two dvds for a grand total of 193 soles (£47). The DVDs were 4 soles (£1) each because they were copies, the kind of dvds you see being sold in East London on the street, however here, they’re sold in shops as copies (there’s masses of them, catalogued and everything), and nobody seems to care. Salespeople weren’t pushy in the markets at first, but after I started to buy things, the more bags I was holding, the pushier the salespeople seemed to be.

Up until today we haven’t ventured too far from the school and our house, which are both in Miraflores which is the nicest part of Lima and the main tourist area. The centre of Lima was interesting, it didn’t feel too unsafe but we were told to keep our bags in front of us, keep nothing in our back pockets and check that the change we receive is not counterfeit. At every intersection there are people trying to sell you things but they’re not pushy. The taxi ride to the market was a bit scary, none of the taxis have seatbelts, nobody respects the lanes and we seem to drive straight through intersections with nothing more than a toot to signify “coming through”!

The actual spanish classes have been going okay, Wednesday and Thursday we just spent most of the 4 hour classes chatting, and not doing any actual formal learning. Just chatting is still a good way to practice Spanish but it’s not personally how I would prefer to learn because you can chat on the street and in shops if you want to just chat. Plus we were talking about topics that don’t interest me in the slightest, like university funding from the government, politics, and terrorists. Also, we’re right next door to some place that plays the world cup games at full volume, and that coupled with the car alarms, everyone coughing and sneezing, constant tooting of the traffic and general city noise, makes it very hard to concentrate. I have to say that I definitely preferred the way of learning in Costa Rica, even though I prefer the frendliness of the Lima school.

As I said, photos will come in the weekend or sometime soon!