Peru - Day Four

Our train didn't leave until 5:00, so we were stuck in the little tourist town that only exists because it's close to Machu Picchu. We spent the day shopping for souvenirs and eating a 3-hour lunch.

One of the funniest things that happened was that on the train trip, there were 4 Japanese guys who all pulled out their Nintendo DSs and started playing Mario Kart together. Jonathan then proceeded to whip his DS out and play with them. Bonding through video games!

Peru - Day Three

This is the day we went to Machu Picchu. We have some amazing pictures of it, but of course they are on our camera's memory card which we don't have a way to access right now. So, I am just going to include a picture that someone took of us walking around inside it. Disappointing, I know. This is the only day on the entire trip that it rained, and as soon as we left Machu Picchu, it stopped raining! Ah, well, it actually made the day seem like more of an adventure. As Jonathan said, "The rainforest is actually rainy!"

Peru - Day Two

On the second day of our trip, we flew to Cuzco which was a very pretty city, but very geared for tourists: lots of street vendors, beggars, and overpriced restaurants. But the scenery was impeccable! The afternoon that we got there, we took a tour of some ancient Incan and pre-Incan sites and stopped by a shop where they sold items that were guaranteed to be made of 100% alpaca. Apparently, the street vendors will tell you it's 100% alpaca when it's not. Go figure.

What Would My Kid Look Like?

I found this hilarious website today: http://www.morphthing.com/

It combines facial features from two different photos and morphs them together. I did mine and Jonathan's. Here's the result:

Not bad! This was back when I had short hair. That shadowing is because Jonathan's head was at an angle in the photo.

The website is free, so I thought I'd share. I want to take better pictures of us so there's less distortion in the photo. This picture was also taken from a scan of a real picture, so I bet a digital picture would come out much better. Sooooo fun!

Peru - Day One

So, we got a bunch of digital pictures from folks who spent a lot of time on the trip with us. Once our camera broke, they were so kind and took pictures of us with their cameras and e-mailed them to us. So, now I am ready to share.

We spent the first day in Lima. We started out in the most tourist-y place you can imagine because it was kind of close to our hotel. It was also close to the beach:

The place was called Larcomar, and it was basically a huge kitschy shopping mall. We got out of there as soon as possible and took a taxi to the Plaza de Armas in the center of town.

We ate lunch at a cute little cafe right off the main square, and unlike in Paris where you would pay almost twice as much for a meal by say, Notre Dame, than you would anywhere else in the city, this meal was just about the cheapest one we ate the whole time we were in Peru. We were also pretty much the only white tourists walking around.

We had heard before we went that Lima is a terrible city and we should leave as soon as we could. Our experience of it was completely different. I thought it was great! So, it's not incredibly tourist-y. People don't really speak English there. There are bad parts of town. That doesn't make it a horrible city! I don't know what people are talking about! We had a great day there!

Terrible Drug Name

I had the TV on the other day, and a drug commercial came on for Aciphex. I think it's a stomach acid drug. Anyway, I wasn't watching the TV, I was just listening to it, and it totally sounded like they were saying "Ass Effects." "If you have stomach acid, you should talk to your doctor about Ass Effects." Who let that through the marketing department?

And We're Back!

We got in yesterday after several flight delays and over 24 hours of sitting either on planes or in airports. We are lucky to have gotten back yesterday at all since DFW had been closed and everyone was trying to make up for their missed flights. American Airlines took really good care of us, so I don't really have much to complain about.

Our trip was great. We won't have pictures to show for a little while because a guy we asked to take our picture dropped our camera and broke it. Brand new camera finito. We are going to take it to a shop and see if they can repair it, but I think we will probably have to buy a new one. We'll see. We bought a disposable camera after that, and some people who ended up in almost every place we were in offered to take pictures and e-mail them. We took them up on it, but I don't know how long it will be before we hear from them.

All in all, Peru is just gorgeous. So lush and green, and the people we met were very friendly and happy we wanted to see their country. I would go back someday.

In grad school news, I got into UT Arlington. Yay! I actually got in somewhere. I don't know about financial packages yet. I'll keep you posted.