dangerously close to becoming vegetarian...

Too bad Red Robin is my favorite restaurant :) but I had two experiences this weekend that would turn several people against meat. First..at my placement on Friday I was walking around with a little girl named Geraldine when the cook asked us if we'd help peel the green beans. So we sat outside and did that for awhile, but the cooks helpers didn't come that day so she asked if I'd take Geraldine back and then come help her make lunch. So I did..it was actually pretty fun, she was cooking for 100 people and I've never seen such a big pot of soup! I helped roast the peanuts and stir the soup for awhile. Then, she told me to work on the meat. She took out a huge bucket, reached in, and came out with 6 sets of lamb HOOVES. They were still connected and had the skin on them. So i was looking at the complete legs of the lambs minus their fur. Never seen anything like that before. She had me cut off all the fat and the hoof skin and put it in as flavoring in the soup. It was a little rough...and I'm glad I wasn't eating it.

Next...I tried cuy! aka guinea pig. We went to this tiny little town an hour away from Cusco because apparently they have the best cuy. We rode a bus, which dropped us off on the side of the highway lined with restaurants offering cuy, in the middle of nowhere...we were then attacked by restaurant owners offering us their cuy...We chose one of the restaurants, ordered 2 cuy for 5 people and it came to us on a pile of noodles and potatoes. Head, teeth, paws, everything. We took pictures and then they cut it up right in front of us. I had 2 bites and that was enough for me...honestly it just tastes like chicken but the presentation was just too much for me!!!! Everyone's been commenting on my facebook picture of the cuy reminding me of my pet guinea pig and all their pet guinea pigs. My friends in Costa Rica told me it looked like one of my favorite little dogs named Tupi from there. Soooo..needless to say I couldn't look at it haha :) After we had our cuy we started walking along the highway towards what we thought was the town (getting honked and yelled at because who sees 5 gringas walking down the street on a regular basis?) and when we got there, it was the wrong town. So we just hopped on a bus to go home and realized the town we wanted was the other way :) oops! We went back to Cusco and got some ice cream...much better than any animal.

Now I'm off to the jungle until Friday! We're leaving at 4:30am tomorrow and will be back about 5am on Saturday...no internet, no electricity and lots of bugs! Please pray for us!! I'll post pictures when I get back :)