Tired and constipated in Lima

My first experience of an internet cafe and I had to ask how to use the @ sign. It is a pretty significant amount of work for such a common symbol, having to press ALT and then hit 64 consecutively. I would not have figured that out on my own. Here I am, in badly need of a toothbrushing and a change of clothes but feeling fairly awake and excited to get started. The flight was so horribly uneventful I have nothing really to report except that my connecting flight from Miami to Lima was late so I missed my last leg to Cusco by, oh, three minutes!! But being unable to do anything about it until about an hour later when the American Airlines reps got in I considered crying about it and then decided to laugh and get some reading done. An observation: I would not have fit in in Miami. That´s ok with me. So far I haven¨t really had to use my Spanish too much except for an occasional gracias, which is probably good because my skills have seriously degraded. I did whip out ¨tres meses, por favor¨when bartering with the immigrations agent who insisted on giving be only 60 days entry into the country and not the 90 I needed. But he caved. After I was given a ticket onto a later flight (1pm in an hour and a half) it struck me that I was hungry (midnight lasagna on the plane didn¨t hold me past 630am so I went in search of some local cuisine. I was a bit disappointed to find that I recognized almost every food distributor except ¨Manos Morenas¨or ¨dark hands¨as it translates... Determined not to make my first meal in South America a trip to McDonald´s I settled for a donut and water at Dunkin´Donuts (I had no idea they cornered the Peru market). Even the donuts are different. The icings are almost neon and have flavours like pistaschio. I went for a halloween-y ¨durazno y chocolate¨or peach and chocolate (you figured out the chocolate all by yourself, didn´t you?) and it really tasted like peaches. Anywho, after losing three soles (the currency) to a pay phone in order to inform the school that I would be late arriving at the airport I was reassured by the fact that it seems as if they pretty much forgot that I was to arrive at 715 so it wasn´t a problem to come at 2. Oh, random event: so a band starts playing and film crews are squishing this stylish latina woman while she walks through the airport. The crowd then stops, parts and the band plays some traditional latin music while many of the excited followers begin dancing with her around the circle and waving some papers. I wish I knew what was going on but I decided to test out my Spanish right then and there and asked in my best accent who the woman was. Well of course I had to smile and nod when the reply was in Spanish. I think....that maybe....she was some sort of Spanish figurehead and was allowing some sort of immigration papers for some native peoples. Or nothing like that.

ps. I copy and pasted this. I apologize that it has no paragraph breaks but it did and now I don´t care enough to put them back