Safe arrival and the start of research (plus a little partying)

So my friend Erin and I arrived in Peru after a long couple of days of scrambling around to finish our studies (got an A in biostats! yay!), buy as much stuff as possible to bring to peru (and realize that we, or at least I, don't need almost half of the things i brought...oops), and say very sad good byes for the long and short term (Erin will be returning to seattle in the fall, while i'll hopefully be a peace corps volunteer in some amazing country!).

our trips to peru were very long (16hours +) and i unfortunately had to exit and go back through security at both of my layover stops (word of advice: never transfer in LA or San fransisco; these airports make the Atlanta Jackson airport look like a five star hotel).

anyways, we were greeted by our lovely advisors, Dr. Magaly Blas and Dr. Isaac Silva at the airport at 1:00am Lima time, and were taken to the house of a friend of their's, Brandon, who is an american from Johns Hopkins university who is doing his PhD in Global Health and his dissertation on the HPV vaccine trials here (a good resource for me!). I really like him and his wife Alejandra, who is Mexican and from LA. Brandon understands spanish perfectly, but won't speak it...which is hilarious!

We slept a whopping 12 hours that night after arriving (which made sense since at least i didn't sleep more than 10 hours total in the previous 3 days alone!). then brandon and alejandra took us around Miraflores, the upscale area of Lima. My impression of lima thus far is that it is pretty ugly, just like most latin american cities such as guatemala city and mexico city. i was kind of sad about that because i thought it would be beautiful like Quito in Ecuador, but then again the city is huge and houses over 8 million people. as we are here in winter, it is mostly foggy and around 65 degrees most of the time, which doesn't help the decor of the city, which is pretty filthy with a 1:1 ratio of cars to people. however, there are some perks. first of all flights to most interesting parts of peru from lima are very cheap, there is cheap housing here (i'm currently staying in a hostel with erin for 7$/night, and it has wireless internet!), there are fun dancing places, people are pretty friendly, and there is paragliding near this mall on the water in miraflores! awesome! dad, please don't worry...we do it with professionals!

so after walking around a bit in miraflores, and having a huge lunch of ceviche and goat with some rice and beans (i'm still hoping to lose some weight here, but with these options it might be hard!), and smoking a cigar with coffee by the ocean (i promise i'll be more public healthy in the future!), erin and i moved into a comfy hostal and then went out on the town. miraflores is known for its hopping night life, and we found a bunch of fun bars where we got to practice salsa and try the national beer. we also saw an amazing gathering in parque kennedy (named after our other favorite president) where older people were dancing to traditional songs...it was the sweetest thing ever! then we went back home to bed in order to await our next day of work!

pictures: from left to right, top to bottom: exotic fruit sold in the streets (pretty yummy too!), our first night hosts, me in the parque del amor where i'm sure there is a lot of making-out going on, someone paragliding in miraflores, entrance of a church were we did some praying before dancing!, erin and i drinking our amazingly alcoholic drink at a brazilian bar, old peruvians dancing in parque kennedy, and the government building in miraflores!