Mi Primera Semana en Perú

So I have officially been in Perú for a week now, but it's crazy because it feels like much longer for how much I have done so far! One of the largest things that has recently started is school.

Like I said before I am attending PUCP which stands for Pontificia Universidad Católica de Perú. It is apparently the best school in the country! Classes started this Monday and all of the sudden campus has gotten insanely crowded... During orientation I guess I took for granted how easy it was to stop in the middle of the sidewalk and pull a map out without being run over! But I am becoming more orientated with campus by the minute. A few Peruvian friends that I have meet have been gracious enough to show me the ropes too.

The university paired me up with my "Compañero de PUCP"... essentially a peruvian friend who will help me with anything I need on campus. Here name is María Fernando, but she goes by Mafer. She is really nice and helped me in my class selections. Luckily, we get the first week of school to try classes out because my schedule keeps on changing mostly based on which professors I can understand the best. Most of the classes last at least two hours as well. So not only am I   constantly working to comprehend the lecture, but it feels like the classes never end! It is totally exhausting!

My current schedule looks like I'll have classes on Monday- Thursday. Hopefully by not having class on Friday I will have more time on the weekends to travel! This weekend we are going to go to explore the ancient ruins of Pachacamac, which was a major city inhabited by the Incas when the Spanish arrived in Peru. 

This past week we went to Central Lima to check out the changing of the guards in the Plaza de Armas. It's such a beautiful area, because there are a ton of ornate buildings from the early days of the Spanish colony. And the building range in colors from standard white, to orange to even pink! It is really a beautiful area of the city!

This building is just a store, but it is still painted to perfection!

One of many ornately decorated churches in Lima!

I'm not sure what the yellow building is, but the building on the right is the Palacio de Gobierno. 

I wish I would have taken a picture of the orange university building downtown... It was pretty sweet!

After seeing a few sights and walking around Central Lima we decided to stop at a place called Walley's for lunch. The great thing about Walley's (and may other restaurants in Lima) is that they offer "Menus" which are essentially a meal deal. Our menú included soup, a main dish of chicken and rice, and soda (Inca Kola of course) for only 8.50 soles or about 3 dollars! I was about to dig into my soup when I realized that there was something in there... Under closer inspection I realized there were two chicken feet in my soup! I usually consider myself pretty adventurous when it comes to trying new food, but I was not ready to take on chicken feet quite yet. It took all I had in my to eat the rest of the soup and just try and avoid the chicken feet. Here's a picture I took of a few of my housemates at lunch sipping on Inca Kola.

I forgot to explain before that the toxic looking yellow drink happens to be Inca Kola and EVERYONE drinks it in Perú. I've tried it a few times and it without a doubt tastes like bubblegum. However, the flavor has started to grow on me. I've been trying to eat and drink the typical things that I have encountered in Perú and I have actually surprised myself a bit. For those of you who don't know, I absolutely hate eggs. The texture is just all wrong for me, but I made a resolution to at least try every thing that is served to me. (And eggs happen to be served here quite a lot!) I'm not sure why, but I actually like the hard-boiled eggs here. And get this, the other day I actually enjoyed an egg salad sandwich! I'm not sure what they do to their eggs here, but they're definitely doing something right. I actually asked my house mom about the little eggs we had the in a salad other day. If I understood correctly the eggs were from the birds that live on our roof. I have to do some more investigating, but I think those birds are pigeons... Only in Perú...

Well, I have so much more to tell you all, but I'm really tired! I'll have to save the rest for another day! But quick I'll share a phrase that may come in handy to anyone ordering soup in the future...

las  patas de pollo = chicken feet

Hasta luego,

Katie