Estoy en Peru

(Im back to using a Spanish keyboard so please bear with me while I try and figure out puncuation and symbols on it)

Well, here I am. Some 38 hours after leaving Eugene I arrived in Huancayo last night around eight in the evening. The bus ride wasnt too bad, minus the showing of The Son of Mask and some crappy TNT movie about Crazy Horse (or caballo loco for the Peruvian faithful), and the fact that someone managed to pee everywhere except in the toilet when we curved around the Andes mountains, making the entire first floor of the bus smell like urine and mints. Anyways, today was my first day in class and I'd like to speak more to what happened today:
I woke this morning with a light headache so continued my attempts at offsetting elevation sickness (I am at 10,000 ft...but went as high as 14k yesterday) by finishing off a half gallon of water before heading to breakfast. At the cafe next to our hotel I was able to get an omelet, mate de coca and toast for 6 soles or 2 dollars. Can you imagine buying a ham, cheese and tomato omelet for less than a dollar fifty? So nice, I may have to eat an omelet for breakfast everday here.

We met the mayor of the town of Miraflores, a small community outside Huancayo who seemed far from excited to see us. Apparently, noone informed him of our intent to work in the school in his township and our terms: A bed and three meals a day. Needless to say he asked for more time and tonight myself and my partner are staying in a hotel with concrete walls, a single bulb hanging from the ceiling for light and a dog in the yard who still has not been convinced Im a guest and not a burglar.

We went to our deployment school where after a meeting with the prinicipal and the students we were given the afternoon to hang out with the 5th-6th grade class and see what they know about the XO. Playing a supporting role I walked about the classroom attempting to talk to the kids about their favorite programs and we taught them how to use both Speak (a computer voice that says whatever you type, including the number 127648759393058375957843, which took quite awhile to finish saying when one of the children entered it) It was a great experience and while the children have had the computers for awhile it seems to be that they were only taught how to use two programs, a writing program and a video recording program. This means we have plenty of material to teach these kids over the next 3 weeks before we transfer regions.

I am working with a woman named Becky, and am super excited because not only can she speak fluent Spanish but she also has a background in teaching- early on elementary education and currently a high school for adults in Virginia. We will be working together in the classroom from now until when we finish in August.

After class we returned to the mayors office to be told by his secretary that he was in a meeting. We proceeded to his meeting, which turned out to be him and 10 other middle aged men drinking beer in the main street of the town while listening to very loud Peruvian music. I had a meeting with minds in what Becky called "Beer diplomacy" and participated in the ritual: pass around a cup and a 22 oz beer pour, drink, pass. By the time we had showed the old men our laptops and proceeded to lunch, myself with a nice buzz, nearly 15 empty bottles sat in a box on the ground.

Ill post more later. If you have questions please ask and I will try to address them. I will also attempt to put up pictures and videos of my trip so far as soon as possible. Tomorrow we work in a class of first graders, the teacher was initially apprehensive but has decided to allow us some time to teach the computer tomorrow. Love.