Peru – Day 0

I’m up at 6:40 am, silently getting dressed and sneaking out of a full dorm room in my hostel in Medellín. My Uber driver and I chat about how nice Manizales is on the way to the airport bus station, where I find out that despite a review saying they accept card, it is cash only. A block and a half later, large suitcase in tow, I overpay a little to withdraw a few more Colombian Pesos. I knew this was a possibility though, so I’m unphased and still on schedule.

What I didn’t account for was the bus taking an hour instead of the scheduled 35 minutes, and the two delays together had the unfortunate affect of throwing off my calculation that I would arrive before the 4 glasses of water I drank in the morning would make it through my system. So part way through the ride the pressure starts building – quickly. Ten minutes later I realize the ride is going to be quite a bit longer than expected and start running scenarios in my head. Another 10 minutes later, pressure at epic levels, I’ve eliminated any more creative solutions as options and know I’m not going to make it. I grudgingly rush up to the driver and explain the situation. Luckily, from his reaction it seems this is not the first time this has happened, and he’s perfectly willing to just pull the bus over on a busy highway and let me out to alleviate the problem. I do so with as much haste as possible, hoping I’m not breaking any laws or pissing off the rest of the passengers.

At the airport I hit another snag. They won’t let me on the plane without a ticket out of the country like I did in Guatemala, so I give up the dream of super flexible plans and buy my next ticket. (Ecuador here I come!) I’m able to make up some lost sleep on the flight to Lima where I have a little scare before I realize that the only time printed on my ticket is actually the time the gates open, not the departure time. So I actually have plenty of time to make it through the airport, and even grab a sandwich so I’m not completely famished on the flight. I don’t have a window seat so it’s only snatches of views, but Lima is much drier than I realized – basically in a desert, and what I can catch of the mountain views coming into Cusco are very impressive.

My school, Mundo Antiguo, is nice enough to arrange an airport pickup for me, so after a few minutes of standing in a light drizzle I’m on my way to meet the Felcie family. It’s a warm welcome, and they seem happy to have more students who are at a conversational level. I spend a little while talking to the husband and watching soccer before supper which is pretty good and gives me the chance to meet Kristen (Michigan) and Jonas (Holland), two of the other students. The house is quite nice as well, and the cold room and bed piled with blankets is a welcome change from having to sleep in the heat at times in Colombia.

My room

The following day I wake up for a shower that’s hot at the start, meet the last student Lydia (Toronto) at breakfast, and spend much of the morning working and catching up on email/etc. In the afternoon I make my first visit to Plaza de Armas, the most famous part of Cusco, which has a nice park and some cool old buildings. I also make use of the dozen plus currency exchange shops to change a little money from other countries into the local currency and buy my first Peruvian bakery – always one of my favorite things to try.

Day 14 – Getting an apartment

Monday after class I made my second apartment visit and the lady showing it spoke only Spanish and didn’t seem to grasp the concept of slowing down to make it easy on me, but I figure it was good practice. The place seemed a little nicer and significantly cooler than the first, but the asking price was a little higher than listed on the internet so I negotiated the price back down and agreed to take it. That means makes it my last night in Cristo Rey so I walk around and find a spot next to a park with a bunch of restaurants and eat at the most interesting one I can find: a place that specializes in protein waffles. They’re tasty, reasonably priced, and all have 30g+ of protein. Cool find. Moderate portions, so I add an empenada and some banana bread for desert (both solid). Back home I do all the contract reading, payment app setup, and everything needed to get the apartment contract signed.

The park in Cristo Rey

The next morning I brought everything over to the apartment early before class, left a charger at the hostel so walked over there after class, and then went to D1, the most famous budget grocery store here, and got my first real set of groceries. It feels nice to finally have an apartment with a full sized kitchen and decent internet, and I’m happy with the price and how nice it is as well. I finally feel like I can relax a bit.

The apartment

The next few days are mostly school in the morning, work in the afternoon, finally taking a little more downtime after a relatively hectic first week including meeting my roommates Jorge from Honduras and Marilyn from Medellín. Although Wednesday I left my keys in the apartment and had to message the WhatsApp group to get someone to let me in, so that was a little stressful until I found someone to do it (thanks Jorge!). Thursday I also explored some nearby stores and got my Medellín Metro card so I can just put money on that and use the Metro super easily. First impression is very good: easy, clean, realiable. Friday I also found a ceramic pan on sale for $9 and got it so I don’t have to use the scratched up non-stick ones the apartment has.

The weekend was more grocery shopping, walking around my neighborhood to get to know it, finishing an assignment for Spanish class, and then giving myself a several mile walking tour of the downtown which wasn’t my favorite part of the city but definitely has a few cool areas.

In front of the Parque Berrio stop downtown

La Raza monument depicts the history of the area

Day 7 – Changing places

Thursday I’m a bit stuffy in class but mentally better. Most of the afternoon is devoted to finding a new place to stay since my first hotel was not comfortable enough that I wanted to extend my stay, meaning I need to be out in the morning. The one I already visited seems like the best option so I get that lined up via WhatsApp and try to turn in early, to little avail.

Friday I’m finally feeling like most of a human being in class, so that’s nice. My check out time is 1pm so I rush back, pack, and take an Uber to the new hotel (roughly $2). The room is much more comfortable, and the internet fine at first so I’m excited to be there and to have a kitchen of sorts.

The room

I run out and get some groceries, the most notable of which turn out to be the bananas (awesome – slightly brighter flavor, almost with a hint of strawberry) and the pasta sauce (worst red sauce I’ve ever tasted – strong sour/bitter aftertaste). Later in the day I realize the internet only works half the time even if you’re standing directly in front of the router, so the search for a place to stay resumes.

The cemetary

Saturday I enjoy waking up almost completely refreshed for the first time since I arrived, and spend most of the morning walking around Cristo Rey, the name of this part of the city, the highlight being a large cemetery that also had a bit of a view of the city. There’s some time to relax in the afternoon and then it’s back to apartment searching for much of the evening.

The hostel

I ended up going with the sister hostel to my hotel (they let me test the internet and it was excellent) so Sunday I headed over there in the morning, picked up some avocados for lunch (better and cheaper here, definitely going on my regular list), studied and chilled for a bit, walked the area a little, and watched some NFL playoffs in the evening which felt vaguely incongruous but still entertaining.

Day 3 – Changing classes

I blink and wake up to my first day in Colombia. I congratulate myself for “walking” the path on Google Maps earlier, as that helps me navigate the one weird corner on the route and arrive to my school, EAFIT Idiomas, the suggested 10 minutes early. There’s a line of students waiting to be helped, and when I get to the front they don’t know what class I’m in so it’s a while longer before I get the class location, and they tell me I’m in Spanish 2 when I’m nearly positive I tested into Spanish 5. So I show up to class and the teacher says the same thing: it seems like this isn’t the right class for me, but he’s a good teacher and does a pretty good job adapting and trying to teach something that would be equally hard for me and the other student. I walk around the campus a bit and it’s very nice with a selection of mini restaurants in place of a traditional cafeteria. I try one and it’s pretty good. Then it’s home to try to catch up on sleep a little, and get in some work which I have to do from the corner of the bed since the Wi-fi doesn’t reach the desk. But at least it works, and the hotel has air conditioning, which is rare here.

One of the eating areas

The second day is a little bit of deja-vu. Again I’m there early, and again I’m in the wrong class, though this time it appears as if it’s on purpose at least. This time I’m in 6 instead of 5, and the new teacher definitely moves fast enough that it’s hard to keep up sometimes. I’m also starting to feel a little sick, I probably picked something up in the airport, so that doesn’t help, but I make it through the day and back home for a similar second half of the day but with more looking for a different place to stay, including a trip over to a hostel that’s in walking distance to the school. I’d like to do a homestay like in Guatemala, but that doesn’t seem to exist here outside a couple schools so I’m looking for things like short term apartments or hotels with long stay discounts.

The third day I finally make it to my correct class and meet my real teacher. She seems pretty nice, and it’s nice to be in class with a couple guys (Carlos – 18, Australia and Simon – 24, Germany) where we’re at similar levels. Whatever I picked up in the airport made me SUPER tired today though. It was a huge struggle to make it through class. Also got tuition paid, and then visited a hotel across the river and spent a ton of time looking for a different place.

Colombia Day 0 – A late arrival

I wake up at 9 something on the impressively comfortable sofa bed of my friend Patrick after having stayed up late the previous night talking and playing Baulder’s Gate 3 and The Outer Worlds. A couple hours later Patrick is dropping me off at the airport and the journey officially begins.

I see that, despite an email from Avianca to the contrary, the flight has not been delayed, so after a long wait at security and grabbing some food I only arrive a few minutes before the time they’re supposed to officially close the gate. We manage to sit long enough to delay the flight a bit anyway, and arrive in Bogotá 6 hours later. I’ve got a little under 2 hours before my flight to Medellín which seems fine until I see the first customs line. It turns out there are 2 customs lines and one security line. I ask but get no help from the airport or airline staff in the main line, but get permission from someone in the second line to skip to the front, saving me a few minutes. That may very well have made the difference between making my flight or not because I showed up just as the last handful of people were getting in line to that flight as well. I’m not super happy with Avianca at this point, but glad to finally be on the last leg.

It’s near 12:30 am by the time I get my bag, and near 1:00 am by the time I find an ATM, take the long bus ride into the city, and take a taxi to my hotel. I did confirm that I would be arriving late, but I still breath a little sigh of relief when someone opens the door. It seems the guy doesn’t know exactly what to do with me, but after only a couple minutes of mild confusion he shows me to my room and I hit the bed, knowing I need to be up soon for my first day of class.

Day 10 – feeling lousy

I woke up a little sick, stomach feeling a little off, a little stuffy, and a little lethargic. I went to class anyway, but it was really rough. I felt like I was pulling my brain through molasses the entire day. I had to take a test as well, and I hope there weren’t any performance metrics tied to it for my teacher, because it certainly wasn’t my best work.

After class was my first graduation lunch at Miguel Angel Asturias. I didn’t want to miss it so I washed my hands really well, sat as much in a corner as I could, and tried not to breath on anyone. Aside from still feeling pretty foggy it was really nice. A round of congrats for the students leaving, and then a pot luck style meal with various mostly Guatemalan foods.

I went home after to take a nap but was interrupted by a knock on the door from one of the host family’s daughters who had come to fix the internet. Not something I could skip. Forty minutes of trying later, I still didn’t have internet, and they were about to close up the school so I had to rush back to the school and work through the brain fog which was zero fun, then had to rush home to make it to dinner in time.

On top of that I had loose ends to take care of from back home that involved trying to use a government website, so that was predictably horrible. I came out of that super grouchy, and while supper helped a tiny bit, it was getting news that I got a got a bunch of money back that I thought I had lost in a financial venture that finally put me in a decent mood.

Still, with all the internet struggles and then feeling bad physically, this was not how I envisioned my first week going. It was very frustrating at times, and a struggle to push through the last day.

Day 9 – Casa Botran

Day 8 was mostly about internet issues. There didn’t seem to be anything I could do to resolve it, so I worked at the school in the afternoon. The school’s internet is fairly slow, but reliable if you sit next to the router, so I was able to get my work done at least.

Aside from the internet problems everything is going well. I like my teacher and the other students, so I signed up for another week at the school.

Day 9 started with the usual breakfast of beans and eggs, and I visited a new panadería called Sabropan during the break. A little bigger and fancier than some, but the stuff I tried wasn’t particularly impressive.

The afternoon activity was a visit to Casa Botran, a famous rum distillery.

Inside there was a fairly fancy museum and tour (delivered in Spanish) about the history and saying it’s the best in Central America, and after that there was a tasting which paired different rums with various other flavors like chocolate or fig. Very fun, very professional, and very tasty. My favorite was a spiced one that the guide said was popular around Christmas. We wrapped up with a little time socializing and a couple people ordered more drinks from their bar as well.

The tasting

I felt a tiny bit sick for the first time that evening. More on that later.

Day 7 – Internet problems

The second day of school starts much the same as the first. Up early (now a tiny bit short on sleep), breakfast, a quick stop in the closest supermarket to see if they have notebooks (they do not), school (lots of verb practice, mostly present tense irregular forms and past tense), lunch. After lunch I make a visit to a bigger supermarket a 15 minute walk away which I was told would have notebooks, but the closest thing it had was a teen tiny notepad. So that’s what I’m using for now. On the plus side, it was twelve cents.

The afternoon activity was visiting a chocolate factory. It was very small, two ladies were able to run a micro batch for us and give us a tour at the same time. The process was basically what I expected (puree and mix with sugar), but we also got to taste both the fruit that encases the cacao beans, and a tea made from the husks, which I thought was really cool. Both were pretty good. They also served us hot chocolate and let us take home a little piece which we formed ourselves. It didn’t taste that good, but it was fun nonetheless.

I chose the T-rex

In the afternoon I find out Windows has overwritten the Linux bootloader on my laptop, and I’ll need to do a reinstall or similar. I spend a while trying to figure out exactly what happened, break for supper, then back at it, eventually getting it fixed, but then discovering the internet has crapped out in the meantime. I spend the rest of the night messing with the internet and working on vocab. The internet problem is only intermittent on Windows, but bad on my phone and completely out on Linux, which is a bit confusing. The conclusion seems to be that their router extension just isn’t working correctly anymore, leaving me essentially stuck. Not the most fun way to end the day.

Day 6 – First day of class

I’m up at 7:05, dressed and having my first of many breakfasts of beans and eggs at 7:20. I wait for Sam to walk to school so he can show me the way, but it’s pretty easy to find. Right where Google says (not always the case here), and clearly marked if you’re on the other side of the street.

That’s something I’ve found interesting here – it’s difficult to see a business until you’re passing it because most of the time because they don’t have signs hanging out front, though something written on the doorjamb is more common.

Up the stairs and into the school, where I’m greeted by fairly pleasant environment.

Entry/office

Gathering room plus kitchen

Hall which the classrooms branch off

I have to fill out some info I’m pretty sure I already gave them electronically, and then we meet in gathering room pictured above and there’s a little welcome for the new students, everyone says their name, and then we get assigned our teachers. I’m with Nancy, a soft spoken young woman who is very kind, gives good corrections, and seems genuinely interested in my stories and views. We seem to get along fairly well.

After school ends at 1pm it’s back home for lunch, after which I barely have time to enter my vocab for the day into Anki, and then it’s off to the first school activity. It’s a movie, The Crime of Padre Amaro, a story about corruption and politics based, I believe, in Mexico. There are some interesting parts, and I think it’s good from a culture perspective. After that I attempt to find a papelería where I can buy a notebook but fail to find it before I need to head back for supper. (One hard thing for me is that small businesses here only seem to show up on google maps about 40% of the time, and sometimes they’re on the other side of the street, have been renamed or closed, or otherwise made more difficult to find.)

After rushing back for supper (another chicken and rice based affair), I have to mess with errands from home for a while which makes work end up taking me until 11pm or so, and then I have to get cleaned up and review my vocab leaving me with scarcely a minute free until 11:30 when I go to sleep. All in all it’s a very busy first day.

Day 5 – Meeting my host family

My last day at the hostel I don’t try to do to much, just pack, shower, and spend a little time on the blog. A little after lunch a man shows up with my name, I throw my computer in my backpack, he throws my suitcase on his back, and we hustle walk the block to where he parked the shuttle. We pick up a couple more people on the way out of town, and we’re off.

The first part of the ride is pretty uneventful. Light rain and many clouds obscure much of the view, most of the rest being typical Guatemalan roadside stores and restaurants. A bit past half way we stop to pick up 5 more people. We have 3 seats available. I get out to let people in more easily and someone takes my seat. They have one more seat up front which one of the new folks has taken but then they tell me to go up front as well which leaves (presumably) the driver’s son without a seat. I ask him where he’s sitting and he points at the floor near the door. To be clear, there’s no seat and very little space there. I’m sitting up front so I don’t know, but my imagination has him crouched in the side rail huddled up against the door for the next hour plus.

So I start talking to the other person up front and it turns out she’s staying in Xela as well. To learn Spanish. At the same school as me. So that’s a fun coincidence, and we chat about Spanish and expectations in addition to the normal intro stuff most of the way to Xela.

It’s still raining as we exit the shuttle and it can’t fit down the street where my house apparently is, so I’m told to head down an alley and someone will meet me. I start down the alley expecting a middle aged woman, so halfway down the alley when an old man calls out “Joan?” I’m slightly taken aback. But I assume there wouldn’t be any other Guatemalans out in the rain looking for a Joan, so I follow him home. The door opens to a ramp down into a cement courtyard of sorts, and I’m guided down to a door on the left, down a hall lightly coated with wet and grime from the outside, and to my new home – a long narrow tile room with a bed, table desk, and semi-functional dresser to round out the ensemble. I’m asked if I need to use the bathroom, to which I reply yes, and the man disappears without any hint of where the bathrooms might be.

My street

The courtyard after from the front door

My new home

In the middle of this there is one more mild surprise when a tall young man with a full head of curly brown hair steps out, introduces himself in Spanish, and also disappears but into a room at the end of the hall. Shortly after this is when I notice I can’t find my phone which is a little worrisome since I don’t know where the host family is (there 6 other doors in the courtyard and it sounded like the host mother wasn’t home), and they are my only way of contacting the driver. So I knock on the young man’s door, interrupting a phone call, in hopes of finding the bathrooms and host family, and ultimately my phone. While he is hanging up on his friend I find the phone in a pocket I hadn’t checked, breath a little sigh of relief and am finally able to pay enough attention to find out he’s Samuel from Maryland, here studying at the same school, and starting his 7th week.

The room is a little stark and very humid. Not quite “everything is wet,” but definitely “nothing is truly 100% dry.” The floor is a little dirty, the dresser clocks in at around 80 decibels, and the chair, though padded, is impressively hard. But the bed is fairly comfy, the blankets are are nice, and it’s very dark and pretty quiet down here, and for those I am very appreciative.

At dinner most of the family isn’t there or doesn’t talk to us much, but Marisol, the matriarch, is obviously experienced with talking to students. She asks easy questions, usually speaks slowly, and is willing to repeat herself and correct us. The family seems quite nice overall. They Dinner is chicken and rice with a mild sauce and some black beans. I’m not a huge fan of the sauce, but the beans and rice are solid.

Afterward, I talk with Sam for a little while before retiring to my room, unpacking a tiny bit, and going to bed somewhat early to be ready for breakfast at 7:20 and school at 8.