Your Generosity Keeps Making a Difference

Well, we might be back from Peru, but we wanted to make sure that you all knew that your generosity has continued to make a difference in the lives of the children of Inti Runakunaq Wasin. We've continued to stay in touch with Yuliana as well as the organization by email. I know you'll be glad to hear that Yuliana is continuing to take English classes and Mavel (her younger sister) is getting ready for her 10th Birthday on September 13th. We certainly wish we could be there to celebrate with her.

Inti is getting ready to open their second location. We were there for the inauguration party that they had for us, but take a look at these pictures. Just about all of the furniture inside is there because of your generosity.

We couldn't post a blog without pictures of the kids. Here they are performing a Hans Christian Anderson play. They practiced at least twice a week for this all winter long (our summer). Looks like it was a success.

Inti Runakunaq Wasin's New Website

Its up and we'll be updating it every month. Please check it out and add it to your favorites.



http://www.streetkidscusco.org/



Any feedback on how to make it better is definitely appreciated. Also, if you have any idea about how to get it listed on search engines - google, yahoo, etc. Please let us know.

Our Leaving Parties

Sorry its taken much longer to post these than we thought. We've been busy getting back to our life's in the US and have neglected putting up our final blogs.

Our last day at Mantay . . . It was a regular day of changing diapers and wiping noses. Another volunteer from Spain started recently, so we felt better that we were not leaving the kids alone.



We gave Sandy, the nurse, a picture album of the children and spent $400 of the donation money to buy crafts that we hope to sell in the states. We figured that this would potentially be a way to showcase their talent as well as get some recurring revenue for Mantay.

The parents surprised us by giving us each a book that they made and inside each mother wrote a thank you to us. It certainly was sad saying goodbye.



Well, we thought that we would surprise the kids at Inti and really show them how much they mean to us by bringing an Inti Cake, cards & pictures for each kid (Yuliana cried when she read the card), a scrapbook, and MacNcheese for the afternoon kids, but they certainly topped us.




The professors made us lunch and gave us each presents.


The kids had a dance party for us and a few of them had dances in honor of us. Then, many of the kids got up and talked about us and how thankful they were for everything that we did. It certainly was humbling and took all of our strength not to cry to hear these children get up and speak about how thankful they were. We had learned so much from these kids over the past 3.5 months.



Then, we were blindsided by Mavel - one of the girls that all of you have helped out. She is incredibly shy and it took a bit of time and a few ice creams to really get her to warm up to us. Well, she got up and sung a song to both of us. There was no holding back the tears at that point.





Her mother showed up afterwards with scarfs, t shirts, and empenadas for Jackie and I to show how much she appreciated us. This must have been close to a month's salary, which for her every single penny goes straight to food, so this certainly blew us away that she would be so generous.

There was certainly a good deal sadness all around and it was difficult to say goodbye, but Jackie and I know we certainly will return soon.

Our Send Off Bash

With only a few days left, we'll be sending our last blog next week from the US. Stayed tuned . . . the kids already ate us clean out of fluff, but this party includes Mac N Cheese (Kraft Dinner for those Canadians still reading this) and a summary of how your generous donations made a difference in these kids lives.

We can't thank you enough for how much you did for these kids as well as made our experience that much more meaningful for both of us!

Our Last Weekend . . .

Well, our last weekend was supposed to be relaxing - one last tour around Cusco, but it didn't work out that way. On Saturday, we spent the day making some last minute changes to the Inti website (we're hoping it is up and running next week - we're only waiting on a few more things from Inti).

We finished the scrapbook and wrote a few more cards (of course, there was 2 new kids at Inti this week - we hope no new ones show up on our last day).

Saturday afternoon we went to see the new Inti location in Santiago. Odeleon, a newscaster and neighborhood president, donated through his association the location, supplying a cook and paying for all utilities for 5 years. He surprised both of us with an inauguration party for us, because he felt bad it couldn't open in time.

There was no champagne, but that would have felt strange. Inti is a modest organization that has a staff that really does focus all of its efforts on the kids. The confetti and bottle of coke seemed appropriate. It felt a bit funny that a man that had done so much for Inti was throwing us a party as well as the fact that really the party should have included all of you that allowed us to buy so many things for Santiago (their furniture, all their books and games).

Here's the room that the professors will be working hard to turn into a place for kids

and here's the view

That night we took the professors out to dinner to thank them for all of their hardwork. We let them choose the place, so our good-bye dinner was Peruvian Chinese which was ironic, but actually pretty good.

On Sunday, we had another busy day that started out with getting sprayed by cement shrapnel from a close by construction site. They don't seem to close them off quite like they do in the states.

We went grocery shopping one more time for Yuliana and Mavel's family. Here's a picture of some of the groceries as well as the chairs and shelves that all of you were able to buy for them.



We spent the afternoon reading with Mavel and helping Yuliana with her English as well as jumping rope.


Here's Jackie and their Mom going head to head . . .

We stopped by our apartment to show the kids and they quickly convinced us to watch Scooby Doo with them. We gave them a photo album of our time with them and a few other gifts and they gave us each a bible. This family has been extremely gracious for everything that all of you were able to do for them. Their mom continues to call us Papi Lindo and Mama Lindo, which roughly translates to "Father and Mother Beautiful".


Then, we took them out for a good-bye dinner at Pizza Libertad where our favorite waitress gave us a Andean Chess Set. Mavel was finally able to get her Alpaca. The 3 finished their meals, helped us finish our pizza (they tried pizza for the first time), and each had fruit for desert. Kids in Peru certainly can eat.

Our Final Week . . .

. . . has been a whirlwind, so we'll give you quick updates of each day.

Tuesday Night . . . we went to Jack's Café for our last dinner there. Jackie is a big fan and we know Jack would like it not only for its name, but that it serves breakfast all day long.

An 8 year old girl, Melissa, came up to us to see if we wanted to buy finger puppets while we waited. We said no, but invited her to dinner. In the end, she was a good salesgirl and got us to buy a puppet. She lives up in the mountains with her aunt and comes down to sell finger puppets at night. Her two year old nephew came waddling in too and helped finish off the french fries and even tried to sell a few puppets to a neighboring table. Of course, we forgot the camera, but we ran into her on Saturday at a market.

On Wednesday, the entire country of Peru went on Strike - not kidding. The cost of living has been rising, but wages have not. No school, work, taxis, buses, or Collectivos today. For the first time, Jackie and I were able to walk down the middle of streets - usually we are holding our breath trying to cross them.

There was a few stores open, but the owners stayed by the doors ready to shut it down if protesters came by.

Plaza De Armas had the biggest protest that we´ve ever witnessed. It stretched as far as we could see down one of the main streets (Avenida del Sol).

Many of the signs were pretty creative. We guess people often compare the president to a rat. A few protesters decided to make signs out of a skinned rat to make their point. There was a number of signs pointing at our esteemed president as well.

We used the day to finish up the cards and scrapbook that we are giving the kids. Tour groups and volunteers come through Inti and they always take pictures of the kids, but the kids never get any of the pictures. Anyways, we figured that we would write a card to each kid and give them a picture and then leave Inti with a scrapbook of our memories. We forgot to calculate how long it actually takes to develop 70 pictures and write 70 cards to the children though.

We finished off the day at Libertad our favorite pizza place. Our favorite waitress, Carina, is a single mom with 2 children (ages 4 and 12), so we gave her a bottle of vitamins. We thought this would be our last trip here, but I think she convinced us to come back one more time.

On Thursday and Friday, we picked Mavel up after lunch and brought her to Inti and then took her home at night. She´s one of the girls that we are sponsoring. Usually, we run a few errands and maybe stop for ice cream.

Here´s a picture that doesn´t have anything to do with this blog, but we thought it was worth showing. Anyone think they can beat 20 mattresses in a single car? I´m sure there are a few people in Peru that would be up for the challenge.

On Friday, we started the toothbrush project, which amazingly was not chaotic. A big thanks to Caitlin and Arthur, a man we ran into on the Olympics fieldtrip, for donating all of the toothbrushes. We bought a year's supply of toothpaste and this bookshelf to hold the toothbrushes & games for the kids. Before, the games were held in a back room, so unless we remembered to bring them out, the kids usually would forget about them.



Oh, we've said that the vitamins have been a success - this picture proves it. Hopefully, Berkeley & Jenzen agrees and decides to donate vitamins in the future (they'll certainly be getting a copy of this picture).

Food In Peru

Well, food has probably been the hardest thing for us in Peru, so we figured we needed to write a blog about it. Before coming to Peru, we thought of food being good or bad based on taste. Now, all we seem to care about is whether or not we will get sick 5 hours later.

Here's the corn (chocla) - it’s the largest corn we've ever seen.

Here's a typical meal in Peru - guinea pig and trout.

Before



After

and your wondering why we get sick?

Even better than the food is the attempt at English translation on the menus. We've come across Meat Substance on the menu and a Fats Food Restaurant (we're hoping they meant Fast Food).

Here´s Coca Tea, which is a Peruvian drink that they say gives you all sorts of powers to deal with sickness and the altitude. We just think it tastes good.

Beers come in all sizes here too. But it seems like there is a correlation between the size of the beers and the glasses. The bigger the beer, the smaller the glass they give you.

One of the best things we've come across is the fruit drinks. You can get them almost anywhere, but San Pedro's Market is the best. They sell a fruit drink that has just about every fruit, vegetable, and even a beer. They will mix you up the Jugos Especiale, which has 6 glasses ful for $3. Sounds like a deal, but we've been sticking to the Jugos de Naranja (Orange) y Mango.