Peru for me and you

Well, I wasn't crazy about Lima. The Miraflores area where my hostel was is nice. The highlight there is Larcomar, this open air mall built into the cliff that overlooks the ocean. While I was eating my luch I watched people playing a soccer game on the beach below. At the table next to me there was this group of Chinese kids (Peru has one of the largest populations of Chinese people in South America) and it was interesting to see them all speaking spanish to each other. After that I walked around the central Lima district to check out some of the plazas and museums. Trying to take the bus there was quite an experience. One guy drives the bus, another shouts at people on the street trying to get them to get on the bus and I had no idea which one to take. I made it there eventually and shortly after a girl approached me and asked me to help her with her English homework. The questions were pretty strange and I kept thinking someone was going to come up behind me while she was talking to me and steal all my stuff. A minute after she left a guy came up and asked if he could practice his English with me (I'm seeing a trend develop here). I thought he was just going to talk to me for like 5 minutes, but after 30-45 minutes I still couldn't get rid of him. Finally I told him I was leaving which is when he started asking me for money. Pretty sneaky. The people in my hostel were cool and we hung out till the wee morning hours Sunday night.
Getting up for the flight to Cusco was not fun, but when I got here, it didn't matter. Cusco is beautiful. The weather is warm, sunny and dry, like Arizona, until the sun goes down when it gets fairly chilly. It reminds me of a town you'd see in a Zorro film, with nice colonial architecture and open plazas with big churches everywhere. I took a city tour to see some of the Incan ruins which was fun. The next day I took a tour to the Sacred Valley which was really great. The scenery is amazing. Of course we had to stop in a few markets along the way. If I never see another Alpaca garment, I'll be totally fine with it. At one of the ruins, I met two American girls who are studying in Santiago for the semster. They gave me tons of great pointers on where to go and what to see. Gotta love the insider's info.
Anyway, tomorrow morning I get picked up at 5:30am (ouch) to head off on my two day hike to Machu Picchu. Can't wait. Saturday night I'm back in Cusco and then off to Santiago, Chile on Sunday to get ready for my first day off class on Monday. I've been speaking with a ton of different people and they're impressed by how much Spanish I know, so I'm thinking that by the end of my 16 week program, I should be well on my way to fluency. Maybe I'll even start writing some entries in Spanish. We'll see.
Adios.