Saturday in the evening I arrived in Arequipa and was fetched at the airport by my temporary parents Oscar and Silvia. The plane was about 40 minutes late, though. The flight was only about 50 percent full which makes me wonder about the future of LAN (the airline). But maybe that was just an exception or it’s completely out of season.

Yesterday I had some stomach problems. I suspect the altitude change as the reason for my sickness, though it may also have been the pizza I got in the plane. Silvia put me on a diet immediately and I am feeling much better now. I hope to resume normal eating tomorrow.

I had my first Spanish lesson at the ABC school today. My two teachers are called Sandra (for grammar) and Edgar (for 1-1 language practice). They have started at quite a high pace which is fine for me. I just hope I can keep up with that pace when practicing the vocabulary. Today’s two topics were verbs (especially the regular ones) and family vocabulary. So I’m now able to talk about my hermanos (brothers), can say that I’m soltero (single) can answer questions like ¿Cómo te llamas? (What’s your name?), ¿De dónde eres? (Where are you from?), ¿Cuántos años tienes? (How old are you) and some more stuff along those lines.

Even after only this few hours I was already able to talk much better with my family during dinner. For the beginning it’s an advantage that Oscar know English quite well, though.

I haven’t had much time to take pictures, yet. So you’ll have to wait for those to be available. Also I haven’t taken any real time out to the city. I’ve only walked a short distance from the house to one of the main avenues. My first impresison: lots and lots and lots of taxis. And very hectic streets.

There is an Internet cafe just across the street from where I currently live. It seems, that at least in Areqiupa that’s a major way for people to get online. There are eight stations here and all are currently in use by Peruvians (except one of course which is in use by a certain Swiss). My guest family doesn’t have Internet access at home, either.

Oh and the language school is also only about 50 steps (probably less but I’m not going to count them) from my home. So everything important is really close for me.