Por fin! Welcome to Lima!

After a three day adventure of trying to get to Lima, we are finally here! Here is what happened:

Jeanne and I left at 5:30am on Tuesday for the MegaBus to Milwaukee, which turned out to be great- the four of us spent the night at Katie´s parents house and in the morning Katie´s dad graciously drove us to Chicago to the airport. Unfortunatly for us, this same day there was a blizzard making our hour and a half drive over three hours long, and we found out our flight was cancelled until the next day. So, yet again, we spent a wonderfully restful night sleeping on the floor of the airport across from McDonalds. Cool.

Anyways, after that we got on our way, arriving in Lima at around 11:30pm on Thursday night. We were psyched and I was just moseying through security when the man checking my passport stops me, calls a police officer who says "could you please follow me." Apparently I had a problem with my passport- meanwhile Jeanne, Cory and Katie are thinking that I was suspected of being a drug mule or something. I ended up in the police office for an hour. Turns out that my passport (which I lost 4 years ago and had to get a new one) was not properly reported by my government to interpol as a replacement of a lost passport. Thanks USA. Thankfully, its all figured out now.

Needless to say, I didn´t have the greatest first impression of Lima, but I am warming up to it. It´s almost 500 years old and there are 8 million people living here! Certain parts are gorgeous and have a very european feel to them, but its the unfortunately common story of class stratification in latin america: there is the very rich and then there is the very poor, with little to nothing in between. I see this when I travel to work at the hospital-- our hotel is very nice, and we get driven to one of the poorest parts of lima. I´m still taking it in, but more on that later.

Cory, Jeanne, and Katie just left for Arequipas for the week and I will meet them in Cuzco on the 24th when I am done with work in the hospital. I am unbelivably excited for this week, but i also cant wait to be back with the gang :)

Sleeping in the airport in Chicago

The beach in Lima-- it was a little foggy/smoggy The gang!