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).