SO I have been horrible at keeping up with this, but since my last post:
- I ate guinea pig (cuy) in a town called Tipon, it tasted a bit like duck meat and was surprisingly delicious!
- We finished the SODIS project and had an amazing goodbye from the teachers and students at Huacar Pay (even though it was a bit hectic trying to explain, in Spanish, to a group of fifteen 4-15 year olds that it isn't good to drink the dirty lake water while washing your hands, hence the purpose of our Water Purification project...). We gave them a bunch of little things from Canada and they asked us questions about our country and could not fathom that the temperature gets below freezing, let alone to minus 30 (or lower) in some places!
- We attempted to start greenhouse construction at another school called Q'ollana, however the plough man, who was supposed to come last week, wouldn't show up until Friday (the day we leave) and so we couldn't even start it. I think I mentioned that things take a while to happen here...
- I ate alpaca, twice... yumm
- I travelled to the city of Puno on Lake Titicaca (the highest navigable fresh water lake in the world!) last weekend
, where we visited floating reed islands and stayed overnight on an island where there was no electricity or running water!! Our host family also didn't speak any Spanish let alone English, as they had lived on the island for a long time and only needed Quechua to get by. Amazing experience. We also hiked up a mountain and were at 4100m above sea level. Before that, we got to play some football at 3900 m and I was the only girl playing against a bunch of intense French guys.. just a little intimidating.- We went to a huge market in Pisac today and while trying to barter for items (which I am SO terrible at) it was so windy that a pole holding up the market stand flew down and struck me in the head. I proceeded to ask the sales lady "tienes descuenta?" (can I get a discount?).. needless to say that didn't work in my favour..
- The family here had a bunch of family friends randomly come over last night and tonight, and what I thought was just a hang out session in the garage turned out to be all of them (20+ people) dancing in the street in sync, Peruvian style to Peruvian music. Turns out they just do this on random nights every week after work/school. You should see how amazing they are at dancing, us Canadians have nothing on them.
When I get back to Canada I will post pictures on here that I have been trying and trying to do while I've been here. This has been an experience of a lifetime and I would recommend to anyone going traveling to come to this beautiful country.
I would've liked to have accomplished more with the volunteering aspect but it is so hard to get something going when you're in one place for only 3 weeks. I have had a taste for travel and volunteering and don't think that this will be my last time doing either. If anyone ever wants to ask about traveling to Peru I would LOVE to talk about it!Buenas noches,
Lauren
