So this is the first post in what will surely be a pretty epic blog about the travels of myself, Jarrard, and Kelsey as we head Peru to teach English for two months in a village in the Andes called Ollantaytambo. But right now, we´re focusing on getting there all in one piece.
We started out in Athens, GA, where Jarrard calls home, and stayed with his family for a night. His parents were amazing. They fed us great food, gave some much-needed medical tips, and pretty much made Kelsey and I want to move to Athens. We met Jarrard´s bulldog named Irish, who was adorable, but who may or may hang in there till we get back. We´re all really crossing our fingers.
This morning, after Jarrard packed every piece of camera equiptment that has ever existed into his bags, we departed for the Atlanta airport, where we caught a flight to Lima. Aside from sitting in the last row of a 400 person airplane next to a baby, the flight was great.
Trouble started when we hit customs. The nice friendly Delta lady had assured us that we could check our bags all the way through to Cusco, our final destination, but standing in the Lima airport, we clearly saw our luggage rolling around the conveyor belt. Hmm.
Grabbed the luggage, and headed for customs, which consisted of very, very long lines, and detectors you walk through. It was clearly some sick person´s idea of a fun game. You press a button when you go through the scanner, and it randomly selects people to get searched. Jarrard was terrified of getting searched, and made me switch places in line with him, because apparently that would make him less likely to get picked.
Of course, he got searched.
This was the part where I was convinced he would be led off into some backroom and never appear again. I was terrified of having to explain to the Morehead Foundation what exactly happened to him. What actually happened was the customs people opened his many, many bags of very, very expensive camera equiptment and jostled it around a lot, making his ¨I´m friendly!¨smile significantly more strained. He claims the policies regarding cameras are antiquated, but basically they wanted him to pay them a lot of money and fill out paperwork differently than he had done.
We´re still not sure how he got out of there, considering his entirely non-existant Spanish-speaking abilities. He says he smiled a lot, and showed them a letter from Chuck, the director of the Morehead Foundation. The letter said nothing at all relevent to the situation, but apparently was confusing and official-looking enough that they let him go with a warning to do things differently ¨the next time¨he comes to Peru. Unlikely.
After that hurdle, nothing else seemed quite as bad. I bought some water and spent a lot of time worrying whether I had actually broken a seal on the cap, Kelsey´s bag is turning out to be a lot heavier than we thought, and Jarrard is discovering that he may not be cut out for a profession that requires him to stay up all night. But nothing we can´t handle.
As I type this in an internet cafe in the Lima airport, Jarrard and Kelsey are curled up on the airport´s tile floor, on top of the Delta airlines blankets we stole, waiting to board our 5:30 flight to Cusco. We´ve taken some hideous pictures of ourselves, sung some off-key lyrics, and avoided getting deported. Clearly we´re goign to be able to handle anything.
We started out in Athens, GA, where Jarrard calls home, and stayed with his family for a night. His parents were amazing. They fed us great food, gave some much-needed medical tips, and pretty much made Kelsey and I want to move to Athens. We met Jarrard´s bulldog named Irish, who was adorable, but who may or may hang in there till we get back. We´re all really crossing our fingers.
This morning, after Jarrard packed every piece of camera equiptment that has ever existed into his bags, we departed for the Atlanta airport, where we caught a flight to Lima. Aside from sitting in the last row of a 400 person airplane next to a baby, the flight was great.
Trouble started when we hit customs. The nice friendly Delta lady had assured us that we could check our bags all the way through to Cusco, our final destination, but standing in the Lima airport, we clearly saw our luggage rolling around the conveyor belt. Hmm.
Grabbed the luggage, and headed for customs, which consisted of very, very long lines, and detectors you walk through. It was clearly some sick person´s idea of a fun game. You press a button when you go through the scanner, and it randomly selects people to get searched. Jarrard was terrified of getting searched, and made me switch places in line with him, because apparently that would make him less likely to get picked.
Of course, he got searched.
This was the part where I was convinced he would be led off into some backroom and never appear again. I was terrified of having to explain to the Morehead Foundation what exactly happened to him. What actually happened was the customs people opened his many, many bags of very, very expensive camera equiptment and jostled it around a lot, making his ¨I´m friendly!¨smile significantly more strained. He claims the policies regarding cameras are antiquated, but basically they wanted him to pay them a lot of money and fill out paperwork differently than he had done.
We´re still not sure how he got out of there, considering his entirely non-existant Spanish-speaking abilities. He says he smiled a lot, and showed them a letter from Chuck, the director of the Morehead Foundation. The letter said nothing at all relevent to the situation, but apparently was confusing and official-looking enough that they let him go with a warning to do things differently ¨the next time¨he comes to Peru. Unlikely.
After that hurdle, nothing else seemed quite as bad. I bought some water and spent a lot of time worrying whether I had actually broken a seal on the cap, Kelsey´s bag is turning out to be a lot heavier than we thought, and Jarrard is discovering that he may not be cut out for a profession that requires him to stay up all night. But nothing we can´t handle.
As I type this in an internet cafe in the Lima airport, Jarrard and Kelsey are curled up on the airport´s tile floor, on top of the Delta airlines blankets we stole, waiting to board our 5:30 flight to Cusco. We´ve taken some hideous pictures of ourselves, sung some off-key lyrics, and avoided getting deported. Clearly we´re goign to be able to handle anything.
