Dear Lima,
I love you.  My journey here has increased my understanding of ethnocentrism a lot.  Day in and day out I have been keeping my eyes wide open for sights, smells, and perspective.  What I have kept close to my conscience is the fact that i do not know how this world works completely and that everyday is a day to learn something new.  Some people live their lives as if they know everything and as if they know why people are the way they are based off no factual evidence.  Asking questions and experience are the only ways to combat one's own ethnocentrism.  We have been instilled with codes and values that at times turn our perspectives in to bias and judgmental domes of ignorance.  This translates with every countries peoples.  It is not just a sickness of the United States but people from every where wave flags of misconception as if a patriot of misunderstanding.  A great example of gaining perspective was a lecture i attended at the University of Antonio Ruiz de Montoya, a Jesuit college here in Lima.  In regards to the reader this school is the University that is hosting "us" college kids from Omaha and they're doing some really beautiful and progressive ventures here. The lecture was given by a highly intelligent lady named Carmen Ilizarbe.  Her beauty matched her words of the politics and social issues that have invaded Peruvian life for many years.