So it's been about two and a half weeks since I
arrived in the city of Lima, and in some ways its flying by and in other ways
it feels like I've been here forever.
Luckily, I was able to move into an apartment only
a day after I arrived. I had been emailing with a girl named Teresa that posted
an ad on expat peru and I came by to see their apartment and moved in on the
same day. It's a bit expensive for what I wanted to be paying living in Lima
($400/month) but I figured it was a good starting point because its a safe
building and its in downtown Lima. My roommates are super nice and friendly, and have made my transition a lot easier on me. They also have a dog named Hatchi who's great :) The district is called Miraflores and from
here I can take the bus to work which takes about 10 minutes on the bus + 15
minutes of walking...or just a 40 minute walk. I'm hoping that in the next two
weeks I'll be able to find my own apartment with a coworker so I can start
making my "home" in Lima rather than just renting a room in someone
else's place. Although I have to say it is really nice to have three roommates
since it can get kind of lonely not knowing many people in such a gigantic
city.
As of today, I’m 2 weeks and 2 days into my
training as a Travel Advisor for Latin America for Less. It's crazy to think of
how much information I have learned in the last two and a half weeks. Basically
my training has consisted of learning all the ins and outs of the company,
learning the process of projects, how to use all the excel spreadsheets to do
price matching and itineraries, and how to quote packages and hotels to
clients. And most of all, I've been learning about all the countries we sell -
Peru, Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile and Costa Rica. It's like
being in college all over again. Normally, the first 3 hours of my day consist
of studying a handful of destinations in a given country (for example, today I
studied the Amazon, Iquitos, Puerto Maldonado, Chiclayo, Trujillo and other
cities in Peru). Not only do we learn the destination, but we are required to
know all of our "top pick" hotels for three, four, and five star
hotels, why they are top picks, where exactly they are located, and what makes
them special. I'm starting to feel like an encyclopedia but I like it because
its all about travel which I'm passionate about. After being quizzed on the
destinations by my trainer, I usually have some kind of class to learn about
operations of the company, etc and then I work on fake itineraries or shadow
other TAs during the day.
Lucky for me, I'm not the only new one this month.
There's two other TA's, Mark and Matt who started a week or two ahead of me. It
definitely takes the pressure off knowing that I'm not the only one who doesn't
know what they're doing. The office environment is really chill and its
interesting to see how everyone has similar backgrounds...either studied or
lived abroad before in South America, and came back down because they missed it
so much. Many people are from the US, but also some from Canada, Europe and
Peru as well. Between the 40 of us, it feels like a close-knit family and even
after only a few weeks I'm feeling comfortable there. My AGM also has a puppy
that hangs out at the office which makes life a little better too :) Oh, and we
have a cook that comes in everyday and cooks us a two-course lunch for 8 soles
(about $3) so I haven't even had to worry about cooking myself many
meals.
Besides work, I haven't been doing too much else
mostly because I've been so exhausted from working 9am-6pm everyday. I'm hoping
to start taking some dance and zumba classes soon though so I can get into a
good routine. It's definitely weird working a 9-6pm job when I'm used to
working crazy hours in a restaurant back home.
Hopefully the next time I write there will be more
interesting stuff to write about but that's all I got for now :)
Hasta luego.
