The main language spoken is Spanish. Here they call it Castellano instead of Español. In some parts of Peru, other indigenous, or native, languages are spoken, like Quechua (pronounced catch-oo-ah), but not in my town.
The money we use here is called soles. This is pronounced sole-es. Just like dollars in America, soles come in various forms. We use coins, paper money and bank cards. One U.S. dollar is worth about 3.5 soles, but this changes depending on the exchange rate. Our coins come in 1, 2, 5 sole amounts, as well as 10, 20, and 50 centimos (like cents). Paper bills come in 10, 20, 50, and 100 sole amounts. At first it was hard to remember the difference, but now I have learned and find it natural to think in soles!
It depends where you go, but a bottle of water can be anywhere from 1.5 to 4 soles! This is equal to 41 cents to 1 dollar in American money.
My best meal of this week was Aji de Gallina. This is a very traditional Peruvian dish. It is boiled potatoes served with rice. On top of this they pour a spicy yellow sauce. The sauce is made with chicken (gallina) and aji (a type of yellow chili pepper). They use other ingredients in the sauce like milk saltine crackers.
