I have been in Peru for 3 days. It was a crazy trip, one that should have lasted 24 hours and ended up lasting 38 (?) hours with one unplanned night in Miami. The other highlight was when the airline lost my bags for 4 days. Finally, I picked them up yesterday and could change into clean clothes. The last 3 days have been crazy, but I will try to sum them up.
I arrived in Lima at night on Saturday and at 6am on Sunday we set off for Cieneguilla, the place we will call home for the next 3 months.We had the inauguration ceremony to open the sala de computo. The entire town was there and the mayor of cieneguilla came down. It's actually really amazing to see the people's reactions to the computers and compare those to how I feel about my computer. They seemed fascinated... I see my computer as a necessity, but something I can't wait to free myself from when I can. After that, we got to explore the pueblito. It is very small with one main street, uno o dos bodegas (like the depanneurs in Montreal)
I am living with a pretty young family, but they've been really kind to me... always making me hot plate of rice with some typical peruvian food and I have alot of private space. Comparing the food here to the food in Canada or USA is kind of funny. For breakfast here, we eat alot of Pan or something savory, with alot of potatos and rice. I never really have sweet stuff, and very few vegetables... and some fruit. We drink alot of tea (en español se llama aguita) becuase it is alot safer than drinking water straight from the tap.
The other awesome thing about Peru is the transportation. They don't have a public bus system around Lima...so we take Combis or Carros. The Combis have specific routes and fixed prices for different distances, and there are stops but they aren't as fixed as in Canada. Bajas cuando quieras bajar y Subes cuando quieras subir. They're fun tho because its like going on an amusement park ride without having to pay alot of money. You kind of bounce around and if you're lucky, you get a seat or you can stand... and then have to hold on for dear life. As Matt said before I came, It feels abit like bullriding.
The weather is... not very nice. It{s winter here, so there isn't alot of sunshine. It's about 15-25 degrees during the day, but its very humid, so it feels alot cooler. It's always very cloudy, in peruanese, we call it Nublina. Its a very thick cloud that comes up from the sea, and doesn't go away for most of winter. APPARENTLY, where we're living, it is sunny on some days. I hope so!
We went to the other school today in Villa Maria del Triunfo, another pueblo o cuidad close to Lima. We took around the other aulo del computo and tried to salvage parts from the computers that were there before. It was pretty funny, most of them had massive screens and specs like pentium II processors at 500 ghz with 360 mb ram or something (round numbers) but it was still pretty funny. Needless to say, they were pretty ancient and of 9 computers, we decided to keep 3 or them. In the second school, we will probably get 13 computers in total- for a school of 500. This will stop me from ever complaining about the computers at McGill ever again. Hopefully the computers we're buying will last a while. They are running much better processors at 2.8 GHZ and 2 Gb Ram. Matt will post pictures from our little adventure later.
In the coming days, we are meeting with the profes and the APAFA from each school to discuss the horario and the contenido for each program. We should have a good idea of what we'll be doing for the next 3 months in the coming days. After that, we have to sit down and plan the various activity sessions for the kids and parents from each school. We are all realizing that our days are going to be very long as we run sessions in each place, shuttle por combi between the two places, eat and plan.. and some how have downtime. Although, I don't think the days will be as long as during EMC summer, so at the moment, I can say that I've survived worse. In the mean time, I need to keep working on my spanish to that in 2 weeks I can do our presentation at Villa Maria and run the activity sessions. Luckily I have Matt to act like he doesn't understand me when I'm being lazy! hehe jk Gemelo!
Long post.. but alot has happened in the last fews days. At the moment, I am feeling very optimistic and excited about the next 3 months. It's going to be very hard, but so far things are going well and I hope that the trip down turns out to be the worse part of the whole trip!!!

Hasta Luego,
Katie