Moving In...

Sunday afternoon we moved into our new aparttment! We are really excited because this is our first place of our very own! :) So we have been doing lots of cleaning and organizing. The Cilta House let us borrow lots of house stuff-sheets, pillows, towels, a desk, dresser, bookshelf, FRIDGE, and kitchen stuff (pots, pans, plates, silverware, tupperware..etc etc)...pretty much the necessities! We didn´t know we would be able to borrow stuff (we were thinking we would have to buy a lot)...We only had room for a few kitchen things in our suitcases, so this came as a nice surprise!!!

Today we went to "San Juan" which is a marketplace about 15 minutes away from Surco. We went with our favorite tour guide, Mapi (who is the same woman who took us around the city on Friday and who loves to powerwalk and tell us where we can find the best deals). We also went with Elia, who will also study in Cilta with us, she is 23 too and from Mexico! Yesterday we met our neighbors who are also studying in Cilta, a woman from Peru and a woman from Mexico and a couple from Peru. Also, so far we have meet students and teachers assistants from Colombia, Chile, Costa Rica and Panama!! So it is really interesting to hear all the accents! It is funny because every country has its own vocabulary words so communicating is sometimes interesting. For example, in Venezuela, popcorn is called "kotufa". In Mexico it is "palomitas de maiz" (which literally means little doves of corn), and in Peru they use another word that I cannot remember right now....and they also sometimes say "popcorn". Ok I got off track, so back to the "San Juan" experience. Well, I have already talked about how I love Wong (the super nice grocery store that has free samples everywhere and lots of American stuff, like peanut butter and pesto sauce) but Amazing Tour Guide Mapi told us about "San Juan" where everything is much cheaper. So today we went. Let me try to describe this. Well it was in a huge building, but divided up into lots of stores. But each store wasn´t an individual room like in a mall, but looked more like this:

But in these stores there was everything you could imagine. Kind of like a Peruvian version of Wal-Mart. All kind of food-fruits, veggies, meats (beef, chicken, seafood), toiletries, school supplies. Crazy. They had huge sacks of rice, sugar, flour, etc, that they measure out and put in plastic bags depending on how much you want to buy. Tons of people. So we stocked up on groceries for the week!!

On another note, we are very pleased with the technology of skype. We have been able to talk to family and friends in the US and VZ and it is SO AWESOME to be able to talk to and see the people that I love and miss so much. We are so thankful that we have internet in our apartment that has a fast connection so that we can skype!

That´s it for today....tomorrow orientation starts! And...tomorrow is David´s birthday!!!