Hola todos! I'm here reporting to you from Huaycan, Peru-just 40 minutes outside of Lima. Its pretty dusty over here-a.k.a. i am covered in dirt on the daily. Huaycan is a really poor shanty-town that is surrounded by incan ruins. Theres one main road called "quince" where theres millions of street vendors that sell anything from pirated DVDS for 1 sol each: equivalent to about 30 US cents to soft-serve ice cream, to pig intestines or chicken feet. Its very inexpensive to live here to say the least.
For those of you who don't know what I'm doing here in this little city, I'm volunteering for an organization called LLI which stands for Light and Leadership Initiative. It's a non-profit organization that primarily services the children and women of Huaycan, Peru-they are the underserved part of the peruvian population and suffer because of it. However we also have adult education classes that include men. We hold classes in english, french, mathematics, art, chess, physical education, english conversation, computers, literacy, and private tutoring for free to those in Huaycan. The program is relatively new, we have the two year anniversary in about a week. The kids really love coming and learning-and they are super cute-I will post pictures as soon as I can! Saturday I taught an adolescent english class-there were two 15 year old boys and two girls around my age. Yesterday I taught an english class to 6-9 year olds (we also played soccer outside for an hour) and it was a lot of fun! Later on in the day I taught math to 6-9 year olds as well...just addition and subtraction, i'm no math whiz over here! Last night, we held an adult conversation class that was pretty fun...met a lot of peruvian people around my age, so thats always fun!
I am living in volunteer housing in Huaycan. There are 8 people living in LLI house. Theres the house manager- Sarah, me, my roommates Gladys and Holli, Chris, Mimosa, Ellie, and Lauren. A lot of us are americans but Ellie is from England and Mimosa is Finnish. It's pretty awesome and everyone is really nice and chill!
At first, I had a few difficulties switching so quickly from speaking portuguese everyday to speaking spanish everyday, but I think I have got the hang of it now! A few details about life in Peru: you can't flush your toilet paper down the toilet, so we have to throw it away in the trash can...dont worry, the trash gets taken out daily. You can't drink the tap water-yay for bottles! I live in a dusty desert-like area...so i have dirt on me 24/7.
Food i've tried so far:
Tacu Tacu: A rice and egg mixture thats rolled in a log shape then fried-really good!
Inca Kola: soft drink that tastes like bubble gum
Alfahores: Cookie sandwich that has molasses/caramel in the middle, dusted in powdered sugar-delicious!
Theres so much more to write about, but I am definitely enjoying what I'm doing here, so many adorable little smiling kids!
Hasta luego!
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