Saturday, June 2, 2012

The Beginning


May 30, 2012

So I went. I went from Long Beach to Starkville to Asheville to Black Mountain to Starkville to Long Beach to New Orleans to Atlanta to Lima to my destination, Arequipa, Peru.

Though it seemed like everything that could have been going wrong was indeed, going wrong, things are working out. A stressful Tuesday morning turned out to be nothing more than frivolous worrying and compounding the probability of a stray grey hair. The flight to New Orleans to Atlanta was nothing. Atlanta to Lima wasn’t too bad either? I think it last around 7 hours. I think. Yo creo. Customs was slow. Not difficult, just slow. My flight didn’t leave from Lima to Arequipa until 5:30 the next morning (forgot to mention that I landed in Lima at 11:30 p.m.), so I had some meandering time in the Lima airport, which was actually quite nice – the airport, not the rambling. I found a Starbucks to loiter in for several hours. I had tea. Earl Grey. So I guess that’s not loitering. Loitering still sounds cooler. We boarded the plane close to 5:00 a.m., where I arrived in Arequipa just shy of 7:00 a.m. With airplanes at small airports, the passengers are often escorted off of the plane right on the runway. So, yeah! That’s what we did. It was quite chilly! Que frio, no?

While walking towards to airport, the view of the surrounding mountains and volcanoes gave me a small shudder of excitement due to a flood of granola-esque idears that occupied my mind.




My boss, Sandro, picked me up a few minutes after my arrival. We took a small taxi to my new home for the summer – a quaint little two-story apartment in downtown Arequipa complete with a staircase to the roof that is begging to be made into a secondary living room/bedroom/whatever room. My roommate Phil appears to be a pretty cool cat. And when I say cat, I mean human. He is 10x the Gitano I can ever hope to be. We talked of teaching, traveling, surfing, potential hikes, places, ideas and whatever else two men who were once strangers talk of. 

Plan for the day is to run down to the market and get a few things for the apartment. Oh! I will probably get a Peruvian phone. Yeah, I suppose that seems like a good idea. Also, Sandro will pick Phil and me up to get lunch around two, and then go to the BNC – that’s my place of work. First day and I already have a teachers meeting! Love being productive with 1.5 hours of sleep. LOVE IT.

 Until next time! (Which shouldn't be but a few days)

Jonathon

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