By now, you’ve probably realized that some of these posts are really long. Don’t worry, they won’t all be this way. I just feel that for the first week in a new country, it’s really important to explain all the details, just to give you all a clear idea of what life is like. As I continue this blog, the posts will be shorter and more concise, not because I have less to say, but because more of the details will be inferred.
Today I again woke up at the new normal time of 6:30am. However, it was a little different since today is my birthday! I am so excited to spend my birthday in Peru, though I do miss my family and friends back home. Before I continue, I have to say that waking up early really isn’t that bad. As long as I go to bed early enough and get a decent about of sleep, it really isn’t bad waking up that early. Anyways, today was like any other day: I woke up, ate breakfast, and headed off to the ProWorld office. From thre we took our bus to Occoruro and started our days’ worth of work.
Today, I worked with a family on building an alacena. From the presentation we had on Monday, the alacenas didn’t look like they would be all that tough to build. I mean, come on. How hard is it to build a shelf? However, I soon realized that this would be a lot more difficult than I realized. The alacenas are composed of four different compartments, although there are only three shelves that are enclosed. Each level has adobe bricks on each side, with the width of the alacena being about 120cm. I feel like I should make something clear: adobe bricks are REALLY heavy! Each one must have weighed at least 40 pounds, and coupled with the uneven textures and the fact that we didn’t have gloves, I realized that it was going to be a tough days’ worth of work. The process of building the alacena was relatively simple: after each adobe, a layer of barro, or mud, was slathered on top to serve both as glue and to level out the uneven textures of the adobe bricks. Thus, this was a project that literally required you to get your hands dirty.
The first layer of the alacena consists of three adobe bricks on each side. Initially, we had a little bit of trouble making the heights on both sides even. However, using some ceramic roof tiles, pieces of wood, and the mud, we were able to even it out. After the three adobe bricks, we laid down the first shelf (this was just wood, nothing fancy). The next two three layers were all the same, two adobe bricks followed by a wooden shelf, with mud in between each building block. As we started to build up our alacena, it started to get really high. Each adobe brick is about 15cm high. Thus, after nine bricks and the wooden shelves, our alacena was a good 1.5 meters tall. This doesn’t seem like too much until you realize that we had to put the top couple of adobe bricks on top of mud while not being able to see where we were actually putting them. Thankfully, by working together, we were able to complete the construction process.
Next, we smoothed out all the uneven surfaces on the adobe bricks. This includes both the outer and inside surfaces. To do this, we used mud to conceal the breaks between the bricks and used the roof tiles and wood to fill in any unstable areas or gaps. After we finally finished, we washed off our hands and went to go talk to the lady who lived in the house.
For our hard work, the lady gave us a bag of freshly steamed corn. I was really thankful for this, as the residents of Occoruro are extremely poor. It is impossible for them to repay us in money (honestly, they don’t need to repay us at all, since we are volunteers), but they insist on repaying us in agricultural crops. Sometimes we will get a couple of potatoes, and other times we will get some corn. Completely disregarding the fact that I might get sick from eating the corn, I dug in. Definitely not a mistake, as the corn was absolutely delicious. As I mentioned before, the Andean corn has bigger kernels and has more substance. After going through an entire ear of corn, I relaxed in my seat on the bus and headed back to Cusco with everyone else.
When I got back to my host family, they had a surprise waiting for me. Not only was the entire extended family there (about 20 people), but they had also gotten me a cake. But that wasn’t even the best part. Lunch today was steak, rice, salad, and French fries. Everything was delicious, but it was even more special that everyone had come over to celebrate my birthday with me. This only reconfirmed my initial observations that meals are a social time, and that family is extremely important. After lunch, we cut the cake, which was pretty awesome. It was a chocolate cake with three layers, each separated by a layer of fruit preserves. I definitely tasted raspberry and strawberry. On top of the cake, there were peaches and a cherry perched on top of whipped cream. After devouring a slice of the cake, I was so full and tired that I had to rest for a bit before my Spanish class.
In between lunch and Spanish class, I went to a couple of the museums in Cusco. Today, I went to the Popular Art Museum and the Regional History Museum. Overall, I wasn’t all that impressed with the Popular Art Museum because it was rather small and didn’t really have a huge variety of art. However, the Regional History Museum was really great. It had a large variety of art and sculptures, and I felt that it really covered the entire of the history of the area pretty well. After exploring these two museums, I went to Kuna, the premier Alpaca shop in Cusco. However, the prices were a little too high for me (around 400 Soles for a sweater), so I guess I’ll have to find another place to buy Alpaca clothes.
Spanish was again relatively simple today, as we just reviewed my homework and studied some more of the present tense. By the end of the class, we were studying the preterit tense, which was definitely an improvement. After class, I came back home and had dinner with the family. Dinner was a simple chicken noodle soup Peruvian style, with different spices and condiments. After this, I relaxed for a bit before going to bed.
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