So it's been a really long time since I posted. Sorry about that. Peru can be a busy place. Since my last post of videos of our Salkantay trek, I've done the Lares and Choquequirao treks, spent a lot of time volunteering with the kiddos and moved apartments twice. I'm now in a beautiful lofted apartment (two lofts: one for a sitting area, the other to make the second bedroom for my roomies Brenna and James from Australia). We've lost a few kids at the school, but gains a few more and they are gorgeous kids with sweet personalities.
Brenna is a teacher back in Australia, so she's been making our program much more organized and thinks up really fun activities for the kids. I gave her $50 of your donation money and $50 from my grandma to buy books for the classroom. She's really awesome about making reading a priority and bought a whole bunch of beautiful books so the kids are really excited to read. She also got in contact (I think with the help of our awesome friend Stephanie from England) with a lady who runs a children's library, so every Wednesday we take 7-8 of the kids on a bus to the library and they get to pore through a whole bunch of books in this tiny library and they love it!
James has been doing an amazing job managing the program since Shawna left to go travel before returning to Belgium. He's great at organizing and leading and entertaining the volunteers. The two of them make an awesome team heading up this program and they are fun roomies too.
I also bought a box of those mosaic tiles for the classroom... different little shapes that you have to use to form pictures. They like those too :).
So on the Lares trek... I can't believe I didn't write about that... Ruben and I just did that one solo. He carried our tent and sleeping bags, I just carried my backpack... what a nice guy, eh? It starts out at some beautiful hot springs, then you trek through the mountains to a town in the clouds called Huacahuasi (town or house of cows in Quechua). The boys of the town were in the school yard wearing their traditional dress of colorful ponchos and hats with ribbons hanging off of them, hunched over little circles drawn in the dirt, playing marbles. We walked through to watch and one of them invited us to camp in his yard and use their house to cook. He wanted 1 nuevo sol for us to camp at his house; that's 38 cents. They live in a stone house with Andean grass for a roof. The stove is a three burner iron (or some other material) thing on the ground that you burn llama poop in for fire because there are no trees at that high elevation. The mom was going out to the mountains to care for their llamas for the night, but Edgar and his two small cousins were there for the evening. We decided to cook dinner for the boys and make arroz con leche for desert later. So we sat with Edgar (11 years old) and chatted in Spanish (they learn it in school) while his two younger cousins chatted and giggled in Quechua (they haven't learned Spanish yet) until we looked their way and they would start and be very quiet until they felt they weren't noticed again. Later Freddy, one of the small boys, pulled out a couple of thin books from the other side of the room. They were Edgar's books he'd bought from the school, fables in Quechua with lots of colorful pictures. Freddy pored through the pages, looking at the pictures because he can't yet read, then looked again from the back cover to the front. We were talking to Edgar and Ruben was encouraging him to keep inviting the guides/tourists to camp at their house and use that as a way to support his family. He was such a beautiful boy, so friendly and open. We ended up buying some food to leave with them from the tiny tienda run by a 7 year old, and I cooked them breakfast in the morning before we sat and ate our breakfast with an 83ish year old man who came to visit their neighbor. He was also very gracious and friendly. I was so impressed with the people there. We told Edgar we'd come back around November, so I've been on the hunt for books in Quechua to bring to him and Freddy. It's surprisingly a difficult task to find children's books in Quechua in Cusco.
Then there was the Choquequirao trek. We bought some camping equipment in preparation for Ruben to start his own trekking agency... the website is almost ready... and decided to take it with us to try it out. My roomies Brenna and James came with us, which made it really fun. I have to say, this was the hardest trek yet, by far. It's about 42 miles out and back and a 4500 elevation gain in one day. Oh, and it's also HOT. The bridge was out, so we got to ride across the Apurimac river in a basket. The site was amazing. It's much bigger than Machu Picchu, and only 30 percent excavated. Pretty amazing. Ruben and I heard a huge rush of wind type noise when we had stopped to put on sunscreen and saw three condors flying in formation through the canyon. It was awesome. The crap part is that once you're done in Choquequirao, you have to retrace your steps, and you've already seen the horrors that lie ahead of you, heh heh. It was so hot when we were climbing back up the other side of the river to our camp, that the hot water we took out of our backpacks felt icy on my head when Ruben was pouring it over me trying to cool me down. We ran out of water about 15 minutes from the camp, so when we got there, we put our heads under the sink and just sat there with water running down our faces. The views were just incredible. I'm going to put the pictures to some music and I'll post them.
So we got a few new kids because we've lost some of the originals due to different reasons... Mario is our oldest kid. He's very enthusiastic and very polite (most of the time). He shakes the profe's hands before going home and gives some of us hugs and kisses. I'm the profe for his homework group, so I get to talk to him more. He's really pleasant. I'm trying to get him to help me with my Quechua, but I think he's embarrassed that he knows it and pretends that he doesn't. His younger brother, Alberto, is suuuper shy. He typically watched the other kids, while clutching this three headed dragon toy and looking around with a little furrowed brow. He's a sweet boy. Sadly, I was told by my roomies that they saw him digging in the trash on the last Friday outing, only to find out he was looking for food because they only eat once a day at their house. We decided at that point that we need to make sandwiches to send with them on Fridays since we don't make dinner that day. It breaks your heart to know just a bit of what this sweet kids are going through on a daily basis.
We also have Julio, who is always eager to help out with whatever you may be doing and is really smart at math and pretty much everything else he tries. We have Helen, our oldest girl, who seems very wary to get to know us, but opens up a tiny bit once in a while with a beautiful smile. I believe Roly is her little brother, another boy on the quiet side, who seems eager to learn and was eating up our review of the food pyramid. We also have a little one called Adrian who is clearly babied at home and is learning not to whine like a two year old, because the profes don't listen to that, but put him in front of a camera and he becomes a really cute little guy posing in all kinds of ridiculous ways that remind you he can be pretty cute.
I was pretty sad not to be around for my cousin Hill's wedding to the amazing Jono, but I am excited that they are starting their life together and can't wait to congratulate them in person in December.
I'm still confident that this is where I was/am supposed to be this year and feel really blessed to have this opportunity. Hope everyone is doing well!
Besos! Kelly
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