PERU!

Hello from Peru! I´m partly shocked I actually made it here, after frantically packing up my room until 2am and leaving the house at 6am for the airport, where I flew with a friend to Arica, in the most northern part of Chile. We then took a pimped out 50´s taxi across the border into Peru, and from there got on a bus to Arequipa, a supposed 6 hours (on Chilean time this would actually be 7.5 hours, but in Peruvian time this meant 8.5 hours) northward into Peru... and here I am!

From the first moment getting on the bus in Peru I realized why Chile is not considered a third world country and Peru is. Just everything about it was so not Americanized at all. One of my Chilean coworkers told me ¨Until you open your mouth you are just a high class Chilean from Los Condes¨ (Los Condes is the fancy Hollywood suburb part of Santiago where my school is and the people are more light skinned and have lighter hair and stereotypically don´t look South American... sad how everywhere in the world there is a connection between skin color and money). So this whole idea of me blending in... well, in Peru, not quite so...! I´ve never felt like I stood out so much before in my life, and its a feeling that I am still getting used to.

On the bus there were these Peruvian women who went to Chile to buy goods imported from China because Chile doesn´t pay taxes on these goods, and then they illegally bring them into Peru to sell. They kept trying to get everyone on the bus to hold one jacket, as if they were ours, because there were random stop points where police custom guys would get on the bus and check for these such things. The women hid stuff under their own jackets and watching the police interogate them because I´m sure this happens daily was a big wake up call cause I´ve never seen anything like that happen in Chile.

Arequipa is a beautiful city, with a complete mix of modernized people and European architecture and indigenous people. National Geographic wasn´t lieing to me afterall! More than anything, I have been so struck with how happy and friendly and smilely everyone is here... as compared with Santiago where people are most closed off in their own world. When we first arrived we learned of a few different strikes which temporarily closed all buses leaving the city because of potential danger, a potential problem since I am meeting a friend from camp in Cusco, 12 hours North of here, tomorrow. For a moment I thought I would be stuck here for the next two weeks, but as always as is well. Today things have calmed down and the buses are running as the government is in the middle of ¨peace agreements¨ with the strikers. From a distance yesterday I watched some of the strikers, and all the stores closed their front entrances when the strikers marched past. One of the main strikes is over gas, because no one can afford the high gas prices.

And last up, in case anyone doubted the love. From a student...

it`s so sad because you`re the best teacher jkajkajk it`s not a joke, i hope your time in chile (fue bueno) and next semestre do you know who will be the english teacher? i hope the next teacher be an american just like you pretty and nice jkajkajkajk well marina good luke with your last month in chile, i`d like to keep in touch with you, i like to write at least one time a week in english, and marina if you change your e-mail please let me know. another thing if you see in my mails bad orthografi ( i don`t know how do you write) please tell me i write very bad , well that`s it.
bye marina