Oddly enough, it caught me off guard that I was supposed to be speaking Spanish in public. I'm still too used to being in Korea where I use Konglish and gestures in all formal situations. I typically (and truthfully) act like I don't know what's going on. My body and language have had to readjust; a few days after getting to Peru, I ran into a girl in the street and the first thing I did was say "sorry" (I guess I adjusted back to the US in the past month) but that obviously wasn't right. Immediately afterwards I bowed. Korea. Wrong again. By the time my brain was ready with "disculpa" the girl was already gone. It's coming back more and more each day though.
As our trip is no more planned than rough ideas of cities we want see, we decided the day before our trip to send out some couch surfing requests. None of us had ever done it before and it was a long shot being less than 24 hours away from needing a couch but we did it anyway. Best idea ever!
The first girl I wrote said yes even though she only had one twin bed to offer. We didn't care because it was free so as soon as we all (Lizzy, Andrea - my friend from Mexico who I met salsa dancing in Seoul - and I) got to the airport, another friend from Korea came for us and we headed outside to find our way to our hostess's house.
As soon as we walked outside the airport, we were swarmed by about 15 different taxistas all trying to win the competition. Luis and his cousin were doing most of the talking (though it sounded more like arguing) but Andrea and one of the taxistas calmly made a deal on the side. Good thing, too, because it was the only guy that seemed to have enough space to fit five passengers (three with giant backpacks) in a five-person car. We stuffed ourselves in and headed out.
Andrea and I were ridiculously giddy on our way to Jessy's-excited to finally be together and traveling and curious to see what couch surfing would be like. The windows were down and the air instantly reminded me of Mexico. I can't quite put my finger on it but something about the fresh air and whatever the smells are here seemed exactly the same to me (although I hadn't been to Mexico in four years). I looked around a bit as we drove, although I was more interested in the people IN the car rather than what was outside of it as usual. I remarked on how similar it was to Mexico and how excited I was to be there but we mostly played catch-up the whole way there.
It was a short trip, although we had to turn around a number of times because no one knew exactly where the house was. Luis's cousin was up front with the driver and Lizzy, Andrea and Luis sat in the back with me on top of all of them. There was a wire cage between the back seat and the driver's seat to protect him, I supposed, and I began to think about what would happen if we crashed (since obviously I couldn't be wearing a seat belt and no one else either because - let's face it - back seats of cabs in Peru don't usually have working seat belts. I started, "If we choked...," too excited to think straight but just enough to create an excellent new Spanglish word. We all had a laugh and, when I finally got out the word "crashed," Lizzy finished my sentence with, "you'd be a waffle."
We had to turn around a number of times and, for whatever reason, cabs here beep each time they backed up, just like garbage trucks, which was cracking me up. When we finally found the house, our hostess, Jessy, came to the door in her pajamas and let us in. We said a quick goodbye to the boys and the taxista and headed inside. We went straight up the stairs - to the third floor - where she showed us to our room. It was small - there was a twin bed, a bookshelf, a chest of drawers, a chair with extra blankets on it and just enough room for our three back packs and about three square feet left of space for us to walk around the room. Andrea, loquita that she is, decided to sleep on the floor even though I insisted that we'd all fit in the bed if I slept on top of them. ;)
We slept in late and took our time getting ready in the morning. By the time Jessy came up to look for us, it was nearly 3pm. We went downstairs all together and sat at the kitchen table in their cute little house (they have four floors of bedrooms and I think three bedrooms for guests). She had made us smoothies and sandwiches - something that is totally above and beyond for couch surfing hosts. We sat and talked for more than an hour. Jessy, is the sweetest girl ever and it turned out that she happens to love salsa & bachata dancing which is exactly what Lizzy, Andrea and I bonded over. She ended up letting us stay for four nights instead of the one that we had requested and she showed us around all of Lima.
We walked around the Centro, went to a museum, an exposition, some malls and walked through all the parks along the beach. She took us to different places to eat every day (the ceviche here - omg!!) and out salsa and bachata dancing once every one of the full days that we were with her. We went to a rueda class, which was always one of our favorite styles, and then met up with those same people in a park to dance out in the plaza. That, alone, made me want to stay in Lima longer but I'd already committed to working elsewhere.
After a few busy days in Lima, it was time to head out! We took a 12-hour, $35, overnight bus up north to the surf hostel where we'll be working for the next couple weeks. We've got our own full room on the fourth floor that overlooks the ocean. We have the day off today and work starts tomorrow!
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