Today was my first day at the university, and as I already have realized, Lima’s schooling system is much different that those of the United States, but I didn’t realize HOW different it really is.

Before departing, I wondered if bringing school supplies such as notebook, pencils, pens, etc. was necessary and I thought, no, there will be stores in Lima with all the supplies I need….WRONG. I had no idea it would be so difficult to find a simple lined spiral notebook. All the notebooks that I saw had spider man or hello kitty on the front and the pages had paper that was cubed, like graphing paper. So then I moved on to my next option and thought I’d maybe find some lined filler paper, wrong again. I couldn’t believe that no one store I went had just a normal notebook…..not even the university could show me where to find a notebook.

The next difficult encounter I had was buying text books…there is 2 stores to buy books, one at the school and one in another district, but nowhere else. Luckily books aren’t as expensive as they are in the states but I am used to ordering them offline for a low price, and here they don’t have that option.

Lastly, there is no printers in the school…anything you need printed you have to take to a print shop and pay 30 cents per sheet. That is something I am going to have a difficult time with because I need to have things available in front of me to be able to look at, such as schedules and syllabuses.

All these things I know I will get used to, I just feel that I am back to the first week of arriving here, everything was different and took awhile to get used to, and as soon as I started getting accustomed to one thing something else popped up that is going to take time to get used to. It’s all a learning process 🙂

Below is a picture of the only “simple” notebook I could find…

The entire group of international students in front of the university 🙂