Potato Overload

Ruby in front of her house

Last week I had the opportunity to spend four days in the Andes Mountains helping out a family in a tiny pueblo called Umasbamba about 45 minutes outside of Cusco. I went with four friends and we stayed upstairs in their volunteer house. The mother, Rafaela, and her two daugheters, Luz Miriam and Ruby (ages 14 and 8) were home with us all day working on their farm. Each morning Rafaela would make us breakfast, which was always some form of pasta, potatoes, soup and rice. Which we also had for lunch and dinner… They own a potato farm so I’m pretty sure I consumed more potatoes that week than I have in my entire life :) After breakfast we would go with her to cut alfalfa and feed their cows. She let me cut some but it only lasted about thirty seconds….apparently I was too slow. We would help make lunch, pick vegetables, and go for walks. Rafaela weaves bracelets and bags to sell so her and her daughters taught us how to make bracelets, which thankfully kept us occupied for hours inside since it rained every single day…ALL day…meaning we couldn’t do too much work outside.

Ruby and I!

Luz Miriam and Ruby were the highlight of the trip for me. Ruby is eight years old and was already holding our hands and talking to us ten minutes after we arrived. She is so cute!! She took us for walks and hung out with us in our room teaching us their native language, Quechua. We learned quite a few phrases…but decided we should probably perfect our Spanish before we tackle another language J

They asked us to make them dinner one night, so Rafaela took us back into Cusco so we could buy ingredients…we decided to make them a Thai dinner. We were pretty tired of potatoes so fresh vegetables sounded realllllly good…but the family wasn’t impressed. It was a little spicy for them and lacked potatoes :) We joked on the way home to Cusco that lunch was going to have potatoes. We were right. But don't worry, we've recovered, and are already back to eating french fries...it didn't take us long.

Soccer with Luz Miriam and Ruby

Since then, I have been back at the daycare!! We went back this Monday to a whole new crowd of kids. Schools start up again in Peru on March 1^st, so the daycare is starting a curriculum for the now 40 kids they have. We’ve done a lot of arts and crafts and danced to kids songs. But the number of kids has more than doubled so things are CRAZY. Every day when I walk there with my friend Shawn, we stop at the door before knocking and all we hear is screaming and crying :) The days are a little more structured now that they have the curriculum so usually when we get there the kids are working on a craft. At 10:00 we help wash their hands and hand out snacks…which is a difficult task because their snacks are in their backpacks and I have no idea whose is whose. So there’s a few minutes of chaos as the kids run around trying to find their food and yelling to me that someone stole their snack. There’s one little girl, the smallest one there, who always wanders out of her classroom and into the others. If there’s food on the tables, you can bet she’s going to steal it and eat it no matter who it belongs to. After snack time we listen to kids songs, do some more crafts, work on puzzles and attempt to clean up the mess that mysteriously appeared after snack.

This is how Peruvian women carry
EVERYTHING...babies, alfalfa,
groceries, rice, etc...

Everything is continuing to go well! I can’t believe it’s already March! We’re hoping the rain will start to ease up and it will start to get warmer…especially because I’m going on a four day trek to Machu Pichu in two weeks. I also hope it’s starting to look more like Spring for you all at home!!