Amazing First Day in Our New City

I guess the most amazing thing about our first day in Lima is that we opened a bank account! We walked to the bank 2 blocks from our apartment and with nothing but our passports and one other picture ID were able to open a bank account. No utility receipt, no reference from a citizen, not even any blood drawn. We have a  Peruvian bank account! And there was no one there who spoke English, so I didn't get to wimp out, but had to do the whole thing in Spanish. And by the way there was no guy with an M16 wanting to go through my purse before entering. Refreshing. So that was our big accomplishment for the day.
It was brisk and refreshing during the day. We wore sweaters and jackets. Felt nice. Tonight it was damp and misty in addition to chilly - and we decided to stay in, which is not bad in our cute little apartment. Our apartment is about half the size of our terrace, which is perfect. We have a teensy little kitchen area with a counter-top 2-burner stove, a dorm fridge and hot running water, which produces a god-awful screech when turned on. Hopefully we will figure out eventually what we're doing wrong and be able to use the hot water without waking the dead.
Getting here was quite a trip. Sue and Snooky drove us to the airport in Portland, Maine Wednesday morning. It was good to have one last chance to visit with them. On the way, we stopped at the hospital in Kittery to let them draw Gene's blood to be sent on to the Mayo Clinic to make sure he's not one of the ones infected by Hepititis C from their big employee disaster which you may have heard about on the news, and about which we only heard the night before we were leaving, which was pretty weird.
In Orlando Wednesday night we had a nice dinner at Tony Roma, where fortunately we shared a meal instead of trying to eat one each of their huge portions. It was a "special" with small pieces of steak and some sort of lobster thing. Good. Thursday morning we actually went to a bank in Orlando to cash a check so that we wouldn't have to constantly hit up the ATM machines for our "stqrt-up" expenses here. This banking thing is sort of a long story and I don't think you want to hear about it. So let me just say that we are still married.
Tomorrow we will see if we can get a sim card for the cell phone, but it's Saturday, so I'm not sure. At any rate, we will probably do some walking around looking for vacant apartments. We have this one til the end of October, but need to try to get a "permanant" address as soon as possible to give to the shipping company to send our things down from Costa Rica.
We are happy to be here. And a little tired tonight. Hopefully tomorrow will be a good day for picture taking and my reporting will be a little more exciting. I will be thinking about my friends and wondering what is being discussed in Conversation Group in Heredia.