One for one

Life in Huaycan, Peru has been great so far! I am venturing into Lima with the other volunteers tonight. They have a friend that is opening up a hostel and he is letting us stay there for free tonight!

Surprisingly, downtown Huaycan (consisting of one main road) actually has a decent nightlife. We went out last night and got some beers. It is so cheap to get anything in Huaycan so it makes going out really affordable.

Pirated movies are sold on the street for 2 sols each (approximately 70 cents)..so we bought The Social Network and a few Adam Sandler movies.

Another detail: The majority of people in Huaycan are under 5 feet tall here. They all have really tan skin and black hair. It’s a town of midgets. People look at me like I’m some giant…or monster.

For those of you who have not heard about TOM’S shoes, it is a shoe company with a socially responsible mission. For every pair of TOM’s shoes that is purchased, one pair of TOM’s shoes is donated to children in need. I have always thought this was a great program, but I had never seen the positive results in real life. Yesterday, my co-teacher Holli was wearing her pair of TOM’s shoes and 7 year old Mariana came up to her and showed her that they were wearing matching shoes! I thought it was so cool that you could actually see the benefits this little girl got-a pair of shoes for her own!

The people of Huaycan are very stricken with poverty. Just the other day, one of the girls didn’t show up to art class. When we asked the other children why she didn’t come, the response we got was that “she didn’t have any clothes to wear today”.
Yesterday I was helping out with “Collage class” and I was helping one of the little girls with her collage. She was smiling and I realized that all of her baby teeth were rotting away. She had gaping holes in the back of her mouth and I wanted to cry. They are all such happy kids. The kids are always smiling and grateful of the lessons that they get from LLI.

That’s about all for now, but I will try and keep writing as much as possible!