Finally here.

Peru, where have you been all my life? I am fully and totally in love with this country. After quite the adventure of traveling and way too many hours in the Lima airport, I finally made it to Cusco! In Cusco we met up as our entire group and met our academic directors and assistants as well. We took a bus for about an hour until we arrived in Urubamba, the place we're staying at for our orientation. To get to the unbelievable hotel we're currently at we took motos, a little motorcycle which tows along a seating spot for two. It was quite the ride and an awesome way to get to our location.

We're staying at El Huerto Paraiso and it is unreal. It's right in the valley of Urubamba and looks out onto some of the most beautiful mountains I've seen in my life. I obviously still have a soft spot in my heart for the Colorado mountains, but these Andean mountains are currently taking my breath away. This place is indescribable--I'll make sure and get pictures up sometime soon so others can potentially begin to understand the sheer beauty of this place.

We've just had basic orientation so far--my Spanish is decent, but still needs a lot of work. I'm feeling really confident in understanding what people are saying to me, but I struggle with communicating back. I think that's going to be my biggest struggle for a while. But, being around Spanish all the time is already helping a ton--I think I'll be just fine after time with my host family (which we meet up with on Thursday!).

We got to explore parts of Urubamba this morning and yesterday afternoon. I am in love with South American cities. The colors, the noises, it's all so exciting and amazing. I can't wait to explore Cusco. We're here in Urubamba until Thursday, but we luckily get to visit Machu Picchu on Wednesday! As touristy as I think Machu Picchu is supposed to be, I am fully embracing my tourist tendencies and am totally stoked to check out one of the most amazing places in the world.

I guess that's all for now... I'll have much more to report in a few days once I'm with my host family and living in Cusco!

Ah, blogging.

I'm not a blogger by any means, but I'm going to make an attempt at it now.  I wish I could be as clever and witty as Ezra Klein or any of the Huffington Post folks, but I'm not.  Therefore, I apologize in advance if my writing brings no laughter to your day or if you are not inspired by a single word I write.  Basically, I'm headed to Peru come Saturday morning and instead of writing long-winded and detailed e-mails to the people I care about, I'm going to jot it all down on this lil' blog so everyone and anyone can read about my adventures and explorations in South America.

There's not much to say about my adventure yet.  I suck at packing, so all of my belongings are currently scattered across my room in Minnetonka.  I just returned from a summer of guiding canoeing, rock-climbing and backpacking trips for YMCA Camp Menogyn in Northern Minnesota and I'm desperately missing everything about my summer lifestyle.  Alas, I'm quite excited to do something totally out of the norm for me and start itching the travel bug that has been burrowed inside of me for quite some time.  I fly out of MSP on Saturday morning and head to Atlanta where I hop a jet to Lima, Peru.  I land in Lima around 11 PM at night and get to hang out in the airport until 6:30 AM when I finally catch a plane to Cusco, where my program takes place.

I guess that's all for now!  I'm excited to start telling stories about my time abroad.  Till later...