el primer dia

I have arrived safe and sound in Peru! After a long day of flying and a 30 minute bus drive to La Universidad del Pacifico (UP) I met my host mom (Pochy), dad (Raul) and my new 'twin sister' Jessa who is also in the program with me and is from Maryland. Raul, drove us to our house in Miraflores, about a 30 minute drive in his 'pickup' (pronounced 'peekup') which he told us proudly is an American car. When we arrived home close to 1:00 am I met the youngest of my three new brothers, Alvaro, who is 16, but like all younger brothers is way taller than me... There is also Diego (29) and Alonso (26) but they are full time students and are not around too often. Then Pochy showed us to our room, which is really more of an apartment actually separate from the rest of the very beautiful three story house. We have a downstairs living room with a 'sofa-cama' (pull out couch) a giant LG TV, a desk, a mini fridge and a bathroom. Then, up a metal spiral staircase is our room with two beds and a bathroom. It is quite nice and I will post pictures of the house and the yard soon.
After staying up way too late talking about everything from A-Z, Jessa and I have concluded that we are freakishly similar, although different enough to get along well. We finally fell asleep around 3 and slept this morning until 11. We woke up, showered and finished unpacking then went to have breakfast/lunch (or whatever you want to call cereal and orange juice past noon) Pochy took us to Wong, a supermarket/target kind of place where we picked up a few things for dinner and changed some dollar into soles.
After that Jessa and I walked over to Leah's house, another girl in the program who lives about 4 blocks from us where we met up with Sara and Shelby, two other girls that live close by so we could all share a taxi to UP for orientation with the program. The orientation was great, and our resident director is really nice and just seems happy with what she does. She is an american who married a Peruvian and has been living here for about 3 years and just had a baby 2 months ago. Her energy and how she talked reminds me of Aunt Beth. At orientation we met more students, more ISA staff and learned a lot about Peru culture, safety, money, transporation etc. After we finished we all took a taxi home together and Maria Christina, our live in helper/ totally awesome woman second mom of the family cooked dinner for Jessa and I. Pochy told us right off the bat that Maria Christina was the 'madre' of the house. She is great.
Things have been so great so far. Just enjoying getting to know people, the city and the culture little by little. I will learn more every day that I am here. I have such a great feeling about this trip.