Spanish is one of the official languages of Peru, and everyone at my site speaks Spanish. I am the only person here who speaks English, so sometimes it can feel a little isolating! Many people, especially older people, speak an indigenous language called Quechua, and the folks here speak Spanish with a lot of Quechua slang. For example, we say palta instead of aguacate for the word avocado, or misi instead of gato to refer to cats. There are plenty of examples of Quechua influence on the Spanish spoken in my region.
We use the Peruvian Sol. There are 200, 100, 50, 20, and 10 sol bills. There are 5, 2, 1, 0.50, 0.20, and 0.10 sol coins. All prices in Peru are rounded to the nearest 10 centimos.
A regular bottle of water costs 1.50 sol, or about 40 cents. Luckily, I have a water filter and I boil my water before I drink it, so I don't have to worry about buying bottled water or getting sick from the tap water here!
