Salkantay Part 1

Hey!  Last week I did the Salkantay trek to Machu Picchu (we skipped the Machu Picchu part) with three of my friends from volunteering and my boyfriend Ruben as our guide.  It was an awesome hike packed with insanely amazing landscapes, some freezing rain in the highlands, and some gorgeous hot weather in the jungle.  The video was pretty long, so I had to split it into three parts to upload.  My parents might be the only people who actually finish watching it, but enjoy as much as you please!

Waaw is still going really well.  Our core team from the past couple of months is starting to break up as people go home or continue on their travels through South America, but we have a steady flow of great new people coming in as well, so the program should continue to function well.  Our Friday afternoon trips with the kids that have earned enough stars during the week for good behavior have been going well.  We took them to the Wanchaq market one day and let them pick out stuff to buy that would fit in each section of the food pyramid (we are studying nutrition in our activity time).  They loved having the chance to pick out the stuff and ask how much it cost, then pay for it with the money we gave them.  As we split into groups of six kids with two volunteers, my Belgian volunteer partner Eddy and I were asked by several of the women working in the market how many children we have.  Another week we took them to the small town of Orepesa, where all the bakeries are. They got to make some bread and see how the process works.  This week we took them to a dairy farm where they screamed and laughed and stood in awe of the cows, then tasted fresh milk that was still warm from the cow (they aren’t that big into pasteurization here).  Our kiddos are as enthusiastic and fun as ever.  I'll make a new video of them soon when I get enough pictures.