Exploring

After seeing what became of that first blog post, I've decided to make future entries much shorter if possible. This one will be a much more brief discussion of my latest adventures, I promise!

Now that I've been here for almost two whole days, I have gotten the chance to start to explore much further beyond the walls of my house. Last night I went with Cydni to a café in the Plaza de Armas, where I ate pizza with cuy (guinea pig!), a delicacy here in Peru. Though the experience was fun and a must-do on my list of adventures this summer, I don't think I'll be eating cuy, prepared somewhat like bacon on the pizza, again any time soon. Today, in fact, I went to a rural village 40 minutes outside of Cusco to build stoves with my ProWorld group and in exchange, the grateful villagers prepared us a feast of cuy, potatoes, and cheese. While I was blown away by the generosity of the villagers and enjoyed my cheese and potatoes, I happily gave my leg of cuy to our cuy-loving bus driver David.

Our work in the village was one of the greatest experiences I've had in my life. Never before have I done any sort of community service involving manual labor, but today, I (with many new friends interning here this summer!) spent 6 hours building adobe stoves in the hot Peruvian sun- and I LOVED it. I think the most enjoyable part was getting to interact with the villagers and knowing that we were helping them create a healthier and much safer set-up for their kitchens. Without the cleaner burning stoves we were constructing, many of the women develop severe respiratory issues due to fume inhalation and also often catch on fire when working over the stoves. After the community president came to our ProWorld representative, Lalo, ProWorld began sending volunteers to build new stoves with long chimneys to direct the smoke out of the houses- a much safer alternative for these women who often spend the majority of their days in the kitchen. Not only was the work rewarding, but the village itself was eye-opening and beautiful. This was likely the greatest level of poverty I have ever witnessed first-hand; the children played in mud filled with animal hair and bugs, trash was everywhere, and livestock (cows, sheep, pigs, guinea pigs, chickens, dogs, cats, donkeys, goats) ran more or less free throughout the village. But despite these conditions that to an outsider might seem unlivable, the villagers seemed happy, the children were adorable and full of joy, and the daily routine seemed as normal to them as to anyone else I've ever met.