Discovering Iquitos and the selva

Mid-February it was time to take a plane again and head to Iquitos, north of Peru. This time it was for with AlternativePeru since we wanted to check out a few places around Iquitos for our new tour.

This was my second trip to Iquitos and selva, since I had been there in September last year. I was really excited to see the area again, since last time it was dry season and now rainy season, so I wanted to see the difference.

Iquitos is the world's largest city where you cannot get to by road, only by air or by river. The flight from Lima takes only about 1 hour and 20 minutes. Most of the tourists visit Iquitos only on their way to Amazonian lodges, but there are some interesting places to visit in Iquitos as well e.g. Belén, where we visited as well.

First thing you notice when you get to Iquitos, already at the airport, are mototaxis. They are everywhere and they are loud! Mototaxi from the airport to the center takes about 30 minutes.

Our flight arrived really early in the morning, so we asked our mototaxi driver to find us a place for breakfast. He did and we had a good breakfast somewhere near mercado and Plaza de Armas. Their juices where really delicious, although the coffee was instant, but did the trick.

Then it was time for us to start our trip to the first destination of our short Iquitos trip. We met our guide in Belén (area in Iquitos, which I will tell more later). After getting a taxi with our guide and a local girl Erika, who was going back home to the village we were going as well after spending some time in the city, we drove towards Nauta for less than one hour. We then continued the trip by foot in rubber boots, of course, because of the rainy season. The walk to our lodge was really pleasant. Our guide stopped ones in a while to explain us different things about the trees or other vegetation and animals that can be found in the area.

Road towards the lodge and our guide

After about 1,5 hours we arrived to this little oasis in the community of Nueva Esperanza, where you can only get by foot. Houses are here are quite widespread in the area so they are close but not too close so there is enough space and you do feel like you are in the middle of the jungle, which is a great thing :)!

In the jungle

The lodge, where we stayed, is built of woods that were found in the area so no trees where cut down for the lodge. Our guide has spent all his life in the area so he knows a lot about everything! After the walk we rested for a bit and checked out the lodge and a really cool toilet.

View from the toilet :)

Then our guide took us around the jungle and the community for 2 hours walk. The jungle around the community is untouched so it is really relaxing to walk there and listen to all sorts of sounds: birds, apes and other animals and the trees humming. We ended our tour in the community where we could see the school house, now empty because of the summer holidays, and also where locals live.

Local school

This area of the jungle is nice because there are a lot less mosquitoes than in some other areas. This is most likely because there is not that much still water around. Of course there still are mosquitoes but not like in the place I last visited in September.

It was then time to get ready for the dinner. Since there is no electricity at the lodge everything needs to be done before the sun sets or in the candle light. We had our own chef who lives at the lodge to prepare us a really delicious dinner.

Kitchen and eating area

We had a pretty long day, leaving Lima before sun rise, so we were all ready to hit the bed. Beds are in an open room, of course with mosquito nets, but you can here the jungle around you. Really, really lovely!

I usually don't sleep that long and all my friends know me as a person who gets up at 5 in the morning, so I was a bit worried that going to bed around 7-8 in the evening, I would wake up really early. I did wake up once to listen to the rain falling at night, but fell back to sleep immediately and waking up for our guide calling me at 7.30!!! So if you have some problems to sleep enough, I can warmly suggest this place to cure your sleep deprivation!

Since we were only travelling for a long weekend, we didn't do a complete tour at the lodge but headed back to Iquitos next morning after breakfast. We again walked to the main road for about 1,5 hours. On the way we saw some really cute monkeys, butterflies and of course locals walking the from the main street to the village.

We took a local bus back to the city and it took us about an hour to Iquitos. Rest of the day we took it easy, walked a little bit in the center of Iquitos and by the river.

Next morning we did a tour in Belén, the area of Iquitos I mentioned earlier. I was really interested to see how it looked liked in the rainy season after seeing it when it was dry. Belén is sometimes called Venice of Iquitos because of the water everywhere in rainy season, like in Venice. This shantytown is an area where the poor people live, not like in Italy. Most of them don't have proper sewer so the toilet is a shack next to the house. Most of the houses do have electricity and you can see lots of satellite antennas around.

Some houses are built on high legs and if the water gets higher than where the floor is, people need to move somewhere else until the water falls again. Other houses are so called flouting houses. They are not attached to the ground with feet, but they float with water. So when water gets high, the house rises; when the water gets low, the house falls to the ground.

In the dry season there is a river running through Belén but it is really narrow compared to the lake it looks like the rainy season.

Belén September 2014 (left), Belén February 2015 (right)

Now the water wasn't yet reached its peak but you can really see the difference. Hopefully it won't rise too much since lots of people will be in trouble if it does.

Belén also has a huge market area where they sell everything from chicken and turtle meat to vegetables, all kinds of potions you can make of ingredients found in the jungle, hand made pure tobacco or mixture with coca leaves and so on and so on.

Tobacco sale stand in Belén

The same afternoon we had a chance to visit a place called La Chacra. Amazing organic farm in the middle of the jungle and again you get there quite quickly from Iquitos. With mototaxi about half an hour and a bit less than an hour with local bus. We met with Eloisa, absolutely amazing Peruvian woman who showed us around in the grounds, we ate some mandarins from the trees and enjoyed a wonderful local fish dish for lunch. La Chacra is not only an organic farm, but the owners are actively participating with local community with educational projects to youth as an example.
After truly inspiring afternoon at La Chacra it was time for us to head back to Iquitos and get ready for the next morning and early flight back to Lima.

La Chacra

All in all, we spent 3 excellent days in Iquitos and around. We had an opportunity to meet wonderful Peruvians and see amazing sites and I am sure we can put together a really good tour! So follow our website or like us in Facebook. If you have some questions or comments, drop me a line to soile.puranen@alternativeperu.org

Trip of a life time: Peru, Bolivia and Chile in 3 weeks!

My 3 weeks of traveling with my dear "little sister" Livia from Paris, France was ready to start on mid-January when Livia arrived to Lima. The planning had started long, long before  since we wanted to see and do lots and only had 3 weeks! Good planning served us well, since the trip in total was a success and we saw so many cool places. At the same time we also realised that there are so many cool places we didn't have time to see so hopefully more traveling in South America!

So our travel started with obvious choice in Peru, that is Cusco and Machu Picchu. For me only Cusco since I had already been to Machu Picchu last October. Livia spent amazing 2 days visiting surroundings of Aguas Calientes and Machu Picchu, while I tried to get use to the altitude and enjoyed really sunny days in Cusco. So don't believe what people say that it always rains there in January! We did have some heavy thunderstorms but luckily only at night.

Our traveling continued with a flight to La Paz, Bolivia. In La Paz we stayed quite near the Witches markets. Of course we had to check them out and get some souvenirs.

Next morning we continued to 2 days to Lake Titicaca and Copacabana. It is amazingly beautiful there! Our day was full with a trip to Isla del Sol and a small hike there. We came back to Cobacabana just in time to enjoy a local beer and watch the sun set.

Lake Titicaca - Isla del Sol, Bolivia

Next morning we continued exploring Copacabana with a day tour. We had enough time to visit the floating islands of Bolivia, but unfortunately the boat drivers wanted full boats and there were not enough tourists around. Anyway I've heard that they are much nicer when visited from Peru side, so just need to add that to my list of "things to visit in Peru" :).

Travel from Copacabana back to La Paz takes all together about 4 hours: first about an hour to the ferry, off from the bus and to a small boat (they have separate boats for people and cars), then another 2,5 hours to La Paz. That evening we tried a pizza place really close to our hotel (recommended by Lonely Planet) since we were too tired and lazy to find anything else and actually it was really nice! Also managed to see my friend Dan, whom I met in Quito at New Year!

The next morning we wanted to see Plaza de Armas and explore the center, which actually turned out to be impossible. Some sort of get-together with South American presidents were suppose to happen that day so the whole area was closed. But we think we saw a president (or must have been someone really important) from Brazil :)!!

Then it was time to move on and our next flight took us to Uyuni, Bolivia, which is a very busy town as you can see from the picture below (not!!!).

Very busy "city" of Uyuni, Bolivia

The picture is lousy,
but so was the "croque monsieur"!!

Our hotel was a perfect little oasis! In Uyuni it was a little bit difficult to find a place where to eat. Well, there were pizzerias everywhere but this night we wanted something different. The hotel suggested Le Loco so we decided to wait while it opened. We finally got there and since it was owned by French, I though I'd try their croque monsieur which I love in Paris. Well, I must admit, it had nothing to do with croque monsieur and it was the worst of a kind I'd ever eaten!! But the wine and french fries were good :).

Since there was really nothing else to do in town, our hotel had a collection of DVD's so we watched one and had a really good night sleep before heading to Salar de Uyuni next day!


Our pickup was on time (yey!!) and our guide was nice Peruvian guy. Our tour was 3 days and 2 nights from Uyuni through Salar de Uyuni, Boliviia and ending to San Pedro de Atacama in Chile. Almost all tours are similar but so many reviews have comments about drunk drivers so we were a bit cautious. But our tour and guide/driver was perfect! He only spoke Spanish, but we understood each other perfectly (at least so we think!).

First night we stayed in a really cool salt hotel and the second one up at 4600 meters! I admit that  I had quite a bad headache because on the second hotel because of altitude but they had oxygen available, which helped!

As you can see from the pics, it was pretty amazing!

Salt lakes, lagunas with flamingos and llamas,
aaah so pretty!

And of course the goofy pictures :D!

This trip ended to Chilean city of San Pedro de Atacama, where we changed from cold to warm. Until San Pedro lots of warm clothes were needed but now all these could be packed away and we could enjoy the summer again :)!

San Pedro de Atacama is super cute little city. It is quite touristic but still really nice and friendly. From there we did 2 trips, first one to Moon Valley and second one to Tatio geysers. Ok, I was wrong. We couldn't pack our warm clothes just yes, since we left to Tatio geysers really early in the morning and when arriving to our first stop it was rrrrrrrrreally cold, but oh so beautiful! And we did take a dip in the hot laguna :)

Valle de la Luna, Chile

Tatio Geysirs, Chile

Next 2 days we spent in Santiago. I liked Santiago a lot, perhaps it was because we did a super nice free walking tour around the city with Franco (who knows everything from student life to history!) or maybe it was because of that yammy lucuma-chocolate ice cream I had or maybe it was the wine tour - Viña del Mar - Valparaiso tour we did or Pablo Neruda's interesting houses and stories or maybe it was just all that above. Definitely I want to come back to Santiago one day!

Santiago, Chile

Then the highlight for our tour, at least it was for Livia :), Rapa Nui, i.e. Easter Islands! We had the biggest surprise when we checked into our flight, we were in business class, yippeee :)! Not sure if it was a mistake, but we didn't care and enjoyed our 5 hour flight! Arrived to hot and humid (almost like Lima) Hanga Roa, that is the capital of Easter Island. We had almost 4 days to enjoy the island. Of course we wanted to see all the Moai's and everything this amazing island had to offer us. I think I will let the pictures speak the thousand words....

Easter Island, Chile

After arriving to Lima from Easter Island through Santiago we still had almost 2 full days in Lima. First day just strolling around Barranco and Lima Centro. Livia's last day in Lima was spent visiting worlds 2nd largest cemetery in Lima "Nueva Esperanza" and also pueblos jovenes in Manchay.

Lima: Barranco, Nueva Esperanza, Manchay

Gracias, mi amiga Livia <3, for this amazing trip!

Where did the year 2014 go???? Well, I lost mine in Quito, Ecuador J. Anyway it is now gone and the new, amazing 2015 is here! Before going more into 2015, I want to take a brief moment to look back of a really different year in my life. In June I moved to Lima, Perú. I cannot believe I have been here already 7 months and volunteering for 6 months. My volunteering period at La Casa de Panchita has been full of experiences; interesting, frustrating, happy but most of all I think I have learned a lot about myself, I have had a chance to create wonderful friendships, which I hope will last through a lifetime. I have met so many new people, I am not sure I’ve ever met this many people in a very short time. Lima has shown me different faces: grey, sunny, sad, funny and much more that has been really hard to describe in words. (My excuse for writing so seldom in my blog!) 

My volunteering period is almost over. I still have a few reports to write and one more Sunday of English and computer classes. It has been agreed that my last day at La Casa de Panchita is January 14^th, 2015. Muchas gracias a todos mis amigas y amigos en LCP ©.

I also want to take this opportunity to thank you all who have donated and supported La Casa de Panchita! If you still haven't, it's not too late - our work will continue and you can continue to donate. 

From mid-January I will take a small break and explore Perú, Bolivia and Chile with my lovely friend from Paris. I am sure it will be a wonderful adventure!

When I will arrive back to Lima early February the next chapter of my life will begin. I am starting my work with Alternative Peru organising trips in Lima for tourists to get to know a different side of Lima than just the main tourist sites. We are concentrating on sustainable tourism and are planning trips together with different NGO’s and communities. At the moment we are also have a community stay in Huaraz. Take a look at our trips at Alternative Peru and if you have any question, feel free to send me your questions! We are planning a lot more trips, so you will be hearing a lot more from me J. I am more than happy to help you plan your amazing holiday in Perú!

I am going back to Finland for a short while but returning to Lima by end of April! I cannot wait for this new chapter in my life to begin, but still enjoying the last days of my volunteering.

Hopefully I am able to see as many of my Finnish friends as possible in May and April, but if not, you just need to come and visit me to Perú J!!!!

May all your dreams come true in year 2015! Remember also to help those who might not even have the energy to wish for a better year. You never know where it will lead you!

Lazyness (with blog writing) continues ....

This time I will just add a link to another blog that I wrote a little while ago. Reuse is the word at the moment, isn't it :)?

My life as a volunteer at La Casa de Panchita (click here)

I must emphasise once more that please make your donations before Christmas and help us to continue our work! You can find links at the end of the other blog. Thank you so much for your help!

I wish you all a very peaceful time before Christmas!

Love <3

A lazy blogger ...

I promised my friends I will write into my blog once a month. Well, it's been 2 months since my last writing, so I guess I am not very good at keeping my promises... So sorry about that!

Time seems to be flying here in Lima, but I guess that is the same pretty much everywhere when you are having fun! To be honest life isn't always just pure fun, but I have enjoyed my time in Lima. Yes, it is still grey and most of the time cold and it drizzles almost every night, although someone told me that spring will start September 23rd. Maybe it did, I just haven't noticed  much of a difference. But I would be lying if I didn't tell you that September 12th and 13th sun was shining for two whole days :D!!! (Yes, I did check from my calendar, because I wrote it down).

So what has happened since I last wrote... I have a schedule now at work. Sunday mornings I am with children who come to La Casa de Panchita from Pamplona Alta (poorer areas in Lima). These are (mostly) girls who have been identified as child domestic workers or in danger of very likely becoming one. Usually there are about 25 girls attending.  In the morning we try to have some fun with them, go to the park and play games, then coming back to La Casa de Panchita where we have different workshops. Sometimes we are talking about domestic work and risks, or we could be talking about their families and how they feel in different situations etc. but always we are drawing, painting, cutting paper and gluing, doing things with our hands. These mornings are lots of fun. I have also noticed that most of these lovely girls are really, really great at drawing! There are many talents to be found here.

After having lunch with the girls they go on with their activities and I continue to teach English basics. Depending on who is attending the group we are trying to learn different things greetings to numbers to verbs and so on. I must say that this class is also my Spanish class since my great students are teaching me plenty! We try to have fun and not make learning so serious. After English class I have a privilege to spend couple of hours with some amazing ladies learning about Internet and computers. There is this one lady who comes every Sunday and first thing she wants to do is check her horoscope and next she goes to search new cooking recipes. Last Sunday she wanted to know what we cook in Finland. Lucky for Internet we did find recipes of Finnish food in Spanish :), since I am not much of a cook nor is my Spanish good enough to explain any cooking!

Monday through Friday mornings I go to my Spanish classes. On Mondays after my class I go to one of the schools in Pamplona Alta. It feels really great now because I can find my way all the way to the school with two different combis (small busses) and I even know when to get off!!! Most of the time I know how much the fare is but during last month the guys on combis charge me different amounts every time so I actually have no clue how much I should be paying. At least I know how much I shouldn't be paying :).

At the school we have a morning group that is there until 12.30 and the next one arrives around 1 pm. We help the children with their homework and every week we have different excercises for them about math or Spanish. I am not so great helping with the Spanish grammar but I do like the math :)! I did take me while to remember all what they are doing at school when you are around 10 (also they teach things differently here). But last Monday I was teaching decimal calculations to these poor kids! Poor kids because it was ME who was teaching them with my still-bad Spanish. I guess I'll see soon if they learned anything, when next Monday we do the exercises!!!!

This picture is from Pamplona Alta.

On Tuesdays usually I go to help my wonderful colleague Adalid in risk workshops that are held in different schools again in the same area Pamplona Alta. There are 6 or 7 different workshops (not quite sure but eventually I know!). The workshops are about risks. During the series of workshops we first talk about what is a risk and what kind of risks there are and how to handle if e.g. someone asks you to do something you don't want to. In the following workshops we move on to discussing more about what is a child domestic work, when is work a work (helping your mother or working everyday for a neighbour). The idea is to make children realise that they might actually be working and perhaps give them tools how to see things differently. These workshops are held in normal classes so we don't know which, if any, of the children work. When making surveys with the children who do work, they quite often don't think what they do is work. They think they are helping out a relative or a neighbour, but if a 10-year-old child is taking care of a 1 year old baby every day more than 8 hours a day when the mother is going to work, that can be called work and not just helping!

To continue with my schedule, on Wednesdays I am at the office. At La Casa de Panchita there is a employment agency, where I have been helping once in a while. There is quite often different types of excels to fill etc. and I try to help with what ever I can. Or one Wednesday I went with other volunteers to share leaflets in areas where we thought we could find adult domestic workers. We told them about La Casa de Panchita and our services and where we are. It was very interesting to see their facial expressions changing from absolute disbelief to smile and warmth :) Especially at one point we were just to blonde gringos starting to talk to these wonderful ladies! (Luckily the other gringo speaks so much better Spanish than I do ;). Or another Wednesday I went with other volunteers to help local Cancer organisation to raise funds on the streets of Lima. And again I met wonderful people on the streets, some of them who wanted to share their stories.

Thursdays is back to school, another school this time, but again in Pamplona Alta. This school has been "famous" for having very difficult children in our group. I have heard stories about how they were when people from La Casa de Panchita started to work there! They are not anymore that bad, most of the time they are actually really sweat but there are some challenges, at least compared to other schools. Sometimes I really, really wish that one morning I could wake up and my Spanish would be at least much closer to perfect than it is now, so I could communicate better with these kids. These kids, like we all do, have good days and bad days and when it is THE bad day, it would be so much easier to handle to situation with better Spanish. Luckily I am not there alone. Again, my absolutely remarkable, amazing Peruvian colleague Adalid saves it all :)!!!

Sometimes on Tuesday and/or Thursday evenings I attend evening classes where there are a bit older students (not all) and we have different workshops with them.

Then it is my weekend, Friday and Saturday!!! Mostly on my timeoff I am just being lazy and doing nothing since after work week I must admit, I am pretty beat. But I do love what I am doing here. I have had some fun days with my great Finnish friend Heidi, who is also volunteering in Lima. I have had some odd evenings with wine and my landlady in our kitchen. I have also bought a membership card to a gym so I have been going there as well (to be honest only few times but I will go next week!). And last Friday we finally went out with the girls from work (after weeks of planning) and it was a lot of fun :D!!!

Party Girls at Barranco, Lima :)!!!

It has been 3 years since I quit my job as an IT consultant and I never thought I'd be doing this, but I love it :D!

Exploring South America and first month at work

I think I said to some of you that I am a really bad writer, well in many ways. One of them is that I am way too lazy. But I promised to write at least once a month, so here I go :)

All is well in Lima. It is winter so it's grey, humid (and humid and humid and really humid) and at the moment drizzling. But every once in a while when we see the sun, oh it feels so good :). I've been told that August is the worst. We are almost there so no worries, we'll get through! And to be honest it doesn't really differ that much our autumn months in Finland, except it's a lot warmer here (outside, not inside). Enough about the weather, I didn't come here for the weather, did I :)?

Since I last wrote I've been lucky to have been traveling a bit to Argentina and Uruguay for a week. I liked them both a lot. Buenos Aires, especially Palermo Viajo, seems really European with cute cafes and restaurants and small boutiques. Also went to see San Telmo and the market and of course found a really nice French-owned restaurant. Everywhere in Argentina the beef and red wine are amazing!!! It was a bit cooler in Buenos Aires, but the sun was there, aaaah! The sun followed us to Uruguay, Montevideo and Colonia del Sacramento. Montevideo was a nice city with a really long beach (quite cold in the winter, I must say) but the sunset in Colonia was one of the most amazing once I've ever seen.

Buenos Aires, Argentina

Montevideo, Uruguay

Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay

After traveling it was time to start my work. I am volunteering in La Casa de Panchita, which is an organisation that helps domestic workers, both adults and children in Lima. There are many projects going on, thanks to different donors, Naisten kehitysapu and Finnish Foreign Ministry being one of the enablers for this wonderful organisation. So my first 3 weeks my task was to get to know as much as possible of their projects.

Sundays are important days at La Casa de Panchita, since Sunday is normally the only day off for domestic workers. We have kids coming from the poorer areas for a day of fun and there are many different workshops for adults (English, German, dance, drawing, singing, cooking to name a few). It is usually a fun day with lots of people around having a good time.

Sunday at work

During weekdays I got to see many schools where we work. There are morning, afternoon and evening "classes" when volunteers and La Casa de Panchita's workers go to schools to help them with their homework. There are different topics that we go through in workshops, e.g. risks of violence or dangerous situations and what can you do then. We can also go through e.g. some specific math problems. At day time the children are about 7-12 years old and in the evening school around 15-17 years. There are two psychologists who meet with the kids privately, where they can speak freely about whatever issues they might have. And yes, these children are either already working as a domestic worker or are in danger of becoming one for various reasons.

I have also been able to attend workshops with the incredible ladies that come to La Casa de Panchita. There is an employment agency who helps women to find a good job. Employment agency is also the place to come if they have problems with their employers. Before you can apply jobs through the agency you need to go through three-day training where different topics are discussed, for example employee's and employers rights, empowerment of women, how to build more self-esteem and also more concrete issues like recycling and what to do if an emergency happens. And one day is spent in the kitchen to learn different types of cooking. I must say that the scent that comes from the kitchen on those days is really tempting!! (I might have ask if I can join this class, since my cooking and cooking skills are absolutely non-existent at the moment!!!)

This all happens in Spanish, of course, so I might have missed some important things that happens in all these projects, but I think I have covered the basics :). My days are a non-stop Spanish comprehension class all day through :). I am getting there with my Spanish.... Well, of course not as quickly as I would like to (in my mind I should be fluent by now, I've been here 1,5 months already!!!) but I am trying to be patient. I scream of excitement when I can make a sentence that someone actually understands. What a feeling that is :D. The same feeling comes when you have a conversation with someone and you can actually have a (short, but still a) conversation!!! (meaning understanding correctly what they say and give an answer that is actually an answer to THAT question and so on.... It is pretty cool ;) and something you don't realise when you know a language!) I must say huge thanks to all my fellow volunteers, everyone at La Casa de Panchita, the children and the ladies and random people in Lima for being so understanding with my poor Spanish. I promise you all, I will get there, I will be able to make proper sentences that makes sense both in present and past tense and have a more than one sentence conversation with you - one of these days :D. Bear with me!!! Everyone here has been really patient with my crappy Spanish. Even when I just put words after another (normally in wrong conjugation, of course), they nod and try to understand me and guess what I am saying. It is really sweet and I really thank everyone for that <3!!

This month we also celebrated the 25th anniversary of La Casa de Panchita! The official day, July 16th, we had official celebrations with representatives from ministries, partners, embassies and so on. On Sunday, July 20th there were celebrations with kids and ladies, friend's of La Casa de Panchita, volunteers and everyone was invited. There was a lot going on with games, singing, comics and of course the cake! It was a fun and exhausting day :).

La Casa de Panchita 25 years!

If you are interested in volunteering at La Casa de Panchita, check out Etvo-site (in Finnish). The application period for next year is on! For non-Finnish people, you can always just contact La Casa de Panchita, if you want to volunteer. You can contact me, if you want more information.

So what next? Tomorrow, July 28th, is the Independence Day of Perú so there will be lots of celebrations around the city. Schools are on holidays for two weeks so we won't be going to schools. I will attend an NGO conference in Trujillo and then back to normal routine with work. I will also have a visitor from Germany to explore Lima with :).

Enjoy your summer in Europe!!!!!! Hasta luego!

Soy Soile!

Me llamo Soile. Soy de Finlandia, es decir soy finlandesa :). Soy una voluntaria. This is what I started with at Peruwayna last week, my first Spanish lessons in Peru. It was lot of fun with my great teacher Marilyn and 2 girls from UK. We learned how to introduce ourselves, ask where to go when we are lost and lots of other important things :)!! I must say this week I can already make some sentences - great start, I'd say :D! Well, I am far, far, far from fluent but day by day I am getting there, creo que si!

Last week there were many firsts: my first ceviche, my first visit to Centro de Lima, my first pisco sour (local drink), my first glass of Peruvian white wine (I think!) to name a few. I have enjoyed lovely food, met really nice people and started to enjoy this, a bit grey city (well, it is winter!!!). Weekend surprised us all and we saw the sun :)!!!

Centro de Lima con mis chicas

Pisco Sour @ Hotel Bolivia

Ceviche á la Punto Azul, Miraflores

Trying very hard to study @ Parque Kennedy, Miraflores

So first two weeks I am a student, next week I will be a tourist and then volunteer work starts at Casa de Panchita!