June 2nd: 

After arriving in Huancayo and at our homestay John and I both took showers. Fortunately for us our homestay has a gas water heater, which we have to manually turn and off. The other homestay, where the majority of the other girls are staying do not have a water heater. We lucked out!! Immediately, passed out for a large portion of the day as the altitude really got to us! After napping for a while we got a tour of Huancayo from Ellie (one of the host moms). Huancayo is not a very clean city (Lima was surprisingly clean). Ellie took us straight into a church where a wedding was going on, the bride was walking out as we squeezed ourselves through the doors of the church. After this we ate with our host mom at the market, and walked around the mall area. John and I chewed on Cacao leaves, because they were supposed to "cure" our headaches from the altitude. It tasted like grass so we each only chewed about 3 leaves, apparently you have to chew about twenty to feel any effects.  Later, our group went to El Parque de Identidad, and there are plenty of pictures of this to follow as well. There were three arches by which you could enter the park, one for Energy, one for Hope and on for Love. Of course, John and I went through the love arch. The park was beautiful, and surprising because of the surrounding areas. Later we went out for dinner with the group and again indulged in some Peruvian Cuisine. 

The rest of the group went out drinking, but since John and I still had pretty bad headaches from the altitude so we went to bed around 9pm. And slept until about 9am! :)