My Spanish is as bad as I thought it was....
Cincinnati to JFK in NY to Guayaquil, Ecuador to Lima, Peru....
I began my trip yesterday, leaving my house around 2:30pm. I got to the Cincinnati airport with time to spare, and my flight was delayed from a 5:20 to 7:20 take-off. Made me really glad I had a 4 hour layover planned in at JFK (the 3rd most unfriendly airport I've been too-- 1st being Paris, 2nd being DC). It was huge and I had to run/train from my dinky Cincy plane to the other end of the airport to find the international flights. I got to the correct gate and no one really spoke English... So now the crash course begins! While waiting (now 2 hours) at JFK, I had the most expensive whiskey on the rocks of my life, and realized I won't be having another until after Peru because I can't trust the ice (maybe if I make it myself). Oh joyous.
The flight to Ecuador was crowded and uncomfortable. My but fell asleep, people continued to speak Spanish and look at me like a mentally-handicapped 4yr old when I tried to speak Spanish in response, I deemed the movie "Water for Elephants" an awful movie, and I didn't get nearly enough sleep. However, I was awake long enough to talk to the girl next to me, who was on her way home for Universidad, after spending a month in NYC with a cousin. She was wonderfully nice and patient with me and we spoke brokenly to one another in languages that weren't our own. After I got off I realized I never got her name.
Our flight landed in the middle of nowhere at the airport, in the dark, and we were (overcrowded) bussed to the terminals, where I successfully asked where the bathroom was in Spanish. So now I'm waiting for my flight to Lima at the Guayaquil Airport. It's an hour earlier here than at home (5:30 instead of 6:30 eastern time), and all I want is to brush my teeth and find a muffin... Instead I have a while to wait and 2 more hours on a plane to look forward to. At least the cappuccinos here are delicious (salvation).
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The flight from Guayaquil to Lima was uneventful, with the exception of Jamila (my new tiny friend). At some point near the end of the flight, this 3-4 year old girl in a pink disney princess dress and pink disney princess jacket decided to crawl across my lap to "Miro las montanas" (watch the mountains) and then decided she liked that seat better and proceeded to have a half english-half spanish conversation with me, which ended up with her pointing at our surroundings and telling me what things were in spanish, and me asking words that came up in our english conversation. I am most certainly at the speaking level of a 4 year old (this is proof). At the airport later, when we were waiting to go through customs she was waving and shouting "hi friend!! hi friend!!" which her mother found distressing and I thought was the cutest thing ever. I think she proly would have wandered after me if she weren't so excited about visiting her abuela (grandmother).
I arrived in Lima around noon today, couldn't find my taxi, found my taxi (with assistance) was taxied to my hostel. The drivers here are just like how the drivers in India were described to me. Every type of car imaginable new and old, bikes, mopeds, dirt bikes, motorcycles, people walking and running everywhere. Insanity.
When I got to the hostel and got my room, I promptly brushed my teeth and took a LONG nap. Woke up, dressed warmly (it’s winter here) and went for a walk around the square outside... It's a round-about that seems to be the center hub of tourism-- there's a starbucks, McDonalds, Friday's, Chili's and a cinema (which is showing The Lion King omg wtf I'm going to see it in Spanish!!). It's horrific how hard it was to find a local restaurant. However, I went to a cafe y gelateria and had the best cappuccino I've had since I was in Venice and a very interesting sandwich (tomatoes, hard boiled eggs, olives, motz, and vinaigrette)... Not quite how I translated the description to myself but good none-the-less. Also went looking for "local" wines. Will have to try some of these Argentinean Malbecs asap.
Lima
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