Peru July 19

Two girls just walked by in all black and with cowboy hats on so I decided to start writing. The plane to Philly was nice and it went by quickly. From Philly we departed early on a small little jet. I sat next to a guy who works at University of Maryland in the housing department who was flying to New Jersey to go see a Yankees/Tigers game. Interesting fellow he was. We got stuck in a line of planes and I ended up falling asleep before we even took off. Like I said, interesting fellow. I woke up later in mid-air to find that we had waited in line 40+ minutes for our plane’s turn to blast off!! Bump that. So I just went back to sleep. So now I’m in Newark airport (which is like a mall by the way) sitting at my gate people watching and trying not to fall asleep. And that brings us back to where we began, the two absurdly goofy looking women in cowboy hats. Now a guy w/ a red mohawk type doo just walked by and stared at me. It could have been bc I was staring right back at him, but I’m gonna say it’s b/c I look damn good right now.
So the flight wasn’t aweful. I did find out though that on four hours of sleep I hate children. I was almost asleep before we took off and then we started moving. I never knew a moving plane could get kids so excited. They were yelling and screaming and waking me up. And that was nothing compared to the indescribable chaos that occurred when we took off. So on four hours of sleep with a pounding headache and a 7 hour flight ahead of me to a country in which I don’t speak their language, I had my first EVER thoughts of smothering a child (or 6). But only till they pass out. Watch out fatherhood. But, against all odds, I made it through the flight with Butch and Sundance, Tom Hanks and J.D. and Turk, not to mention a crying baby most of the flight. I had a lovely lady and her daughter next to me. I think the lady’s name was Reyna and she was going to see her family in Peru, where she was raised, for the fist time in 20 years!! She was nice enough to help me get through the airport, which I needed because of my only Spanish being gracias, denada and numbers 1-29. We got split up at the very end when I had to find my cab the hostel sent. The second I stepped foot outside the main lobby I was swamped by taxi drivers asking me if I needed a taxi. I was literally asked by about 25 taxi drivers within the three minutes it took me to find my needle in the haystack of taxi drivers. His name… Henry. He had no sign but he somehow overheard me asking another driver about Pay Purix, my hostel. He yelled my name, and although it was in broken English, it was the most beautiful “Forrest!” I have ever heard in my life. I had found my taxi!! It turned out Henry was part of the family that owned the hostel and he walked me about ten minutes away from the airport to the taxi in Lima in the middle of the night. Sketchy. But we got their and the taxi ride was like taking a taxi in India. At 11:30 at night we somehow managed to honk about 6 times, break hard about 4 times and almost get in about 3 crashes, all on a 3 minute taxi ride with only seeing 2 cars. I did make it to the hostel though and was greeted by Erik, Henry’s older brother who was very nice. He showed me around the place which is very colorful and pretty nice. Unfortunately, Erik made the mistake of challenging me to ping pong after he saw how crappy I was at pool. Big mistake. And somehow, on my first night I met a pretty English girl from Wales. Good way to finish off the first day.