We arrived in Lima without any major problems. We went through customs rather quick but it ended up taking us four more hours to locate a place to stay. The guy that was supposed to pick us up did not get the message to come, hence a lesson learned within the first hour of our arrival: Speak with the person you are dealing with directly.

We decided to stay at Hotel Colon in Miraflores, a costly $100. We arrived around 4 a.m. We had to wait until 2 p.m. to even meet the Peruvian that was to take us to a temporary house. Once we finally arrived at the house, somewhere in the farthest part of La Molina I think, we realized it was TOO far for us to live while we looked for a permanent residence. It would have been more money in taxi charges than what we were currently paying for the temporary house, so we decided we needed a place closer to the city. Some of our Peruvian friends like to travel with us also so paying their fare to come meet us would also be too costly, not to mention it would take them half the day to reach us if the traffic was bad.

Ja and I set out to look for a better location but it wasn't as easy as we had thought. It took us about 40 minutes to find a taxi and then another hour to get to a spot where we would be central in location. Once we were in the taxi, Ja and I had a long discussion about the situation and decided to pray that God would show us what to do because we didn't want to offend the kind Christian women who was letting us rent one of her houses. The first hotel we came to was willing to work with us on a 15 day stay but we decided to look around some more, only to find that almost every hotel was booked and the ones that weren't were $250 per night! We then decided to go back to the first hotel we found but by that time (2 hours later) they were booked. The hotel would have been perfect as it is only 5 minutes from where we want to work in Lince. We decided to just go back and get 3 taxis to take us all to a hotel closer to where we needed to be. The taxi ride for me was actually pleasant. I had to ride alone in a taxi with all our luggage and I probably learned more Spanish in that taxi than I have learned in a long time. The taxi driver's name was Wilbur and ended up giving me his phone number so I could call him when I need a ride again. After an hour taxi drive, we found a hotel in Miraflores for $80 (the only one with vacancy I believe).

We are hoping to make a deal with this hotel or possibly go back to the one close to Lince ($80 is too much for us while we find an apartment).