Unexpected Service

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Today we woke up very excited for another day of service. We got on the bus, arrived early at the other home only to find out we were going to have to wait an hour for a bus to take us to our site. Once the bus arrived, the childcare people were all quite excited to see our children again. How our service works is half of the day we are in the three different sites, and then in the afternoon we meet up and go to the community center where everyone else is working. We realized once we began to go up into the mountains that we were going straight to the community center. This was confusing because we were supposed to go to the orphanages but the combi driver (combi is what they call the buses we take) said that we were all supposed to go to the community center. When we arrive both groups - teaching English and childcare had nothing to do since there were no children there.

Not wanting to sit around and do nothing, I decided to help the construction group. This turned out to be a great experience. I love doing construction things (hence the previous service in New Orleans) however that experince could not prepare me for what I was doing all day. I spent the entire day hammering and splitting bamboo. This was for the purpose of creating the ceiling of the three new school rooms that they are building. This process works like this: find a good size bamboo. Hammer the knots (each section has a knot in it). Once this is over, peal the bamboo apart - splitting it so it can be wired and nailed flat to the pieces of wood. Other construction group memebers were working on the flattening, nailing, and wiring part of the process. I did this for about five hours, and it was a good change of pace, however hurts your hands. There are various injuries you can get from this - I came away luckily with only a cut on each of my thumbs. Most people were not so lucky, and had bamboo splinters which I hear hurt very badly.

It was very disappointing to me to not get to work with my cute kids, but I really enjoyed myself working with the construction crew and a few others from the other groups. Our work went very quickly, minus the couple times that it began to downpour, and we would have to move under the roof of the school to aviod getting soaked. That is one thing that I miss about home - the predictible weather. In one day in Peru you must be prepared for weather of any kind from hot, to warm, to cold, to freezing, to rain and sun. I have learned to bring numerous layers with me wherever I go.

Overall our second day of service was great for me despite not seeing our kids. I can´t wait to see them on Monday though - tomorrow we have a service at a different orphanage 40 minutes from Cusco. It should be fun! I´m still enjoying the culture of Peru. Driving is scary, but I´ve heard not as bad a Lima which is hard to imagine. One cab ride, we were almost hit by a bus, and then in the same ride shared a lane with a bus. Two cars one lane is typical here, and everyone is constantly honking their horns. I think it´s their version of the turn signal since they never seem to use turn signals. The people are amazingly friendly though and I really enjoy them.

I was very proud of myself when we went to the grocery store and the cab driver tried to over charge us 5 soles. I told him no - diez, and he just laughed and said okay. You feel kind of bad since 10 soles is only 3 dollars, but even ten is a lot for the short cab ride. Anyway, to date the biggest culture shock is knowing that I´ve been somewhere they do not have primary education. It´s quite a wake up call, and I´m glad we are here helping their community to reach that goal.

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