The Amazing Race

We have officially begun training! Yesterday we started around mid-day and did a half-day of training mostly consisting of ice-breakers and get to know you games. Today we had a full day of training starting at 8:30. But before the training, I went out with other supervisor and we bought 24 pieces of bread for breakfast.  That only cost 2 soles… which is the equivalent of less than $1.  That plus a little peanut butter and jam, makes for a great breakfast. 

Post breakfast we spend the morning learning about budget, our partner agencies and ran through some samples problems that we would have with our volunteers and how to address the issues.  We have four partner agencies that will be supporting us on our projects this summer.  These include: Plan, CEDEPAS, Prodia and Enseña Peru.  They all are associated with various causes, but the general themes are youth education and empowerment, gender equality, sustainability and agriculture development. 

For Lunch we ate at a ‘Menu’.  I am not sure if I have explained ‘Menus’ before, but they are restaurants that are located all around the city where you can get a large quantity of food for very cheap.  The one we went to today would be considered nicer since we got a starter, the main meal, juice, and jello for dessert.  The main meal always includes either rice or potatoes or rice and potatos.  Also, today we didn’t, but normally the starter is a soup of some kind.  We have been drinking the water in the city and so far we all seem fine.  We only have one member of our staff get sick and it was most definitely connected with food.  Supposedly the water in the city is relatively well filtered.  We will see how our water drinking experiment holds up. Cross your fingers for us!

After lunch, we were sent out on an amazing race to find places and things in the city.  Some included, the tackiest toy we could find at the metro (Supermarket), our project directors favorite café, vegetables from the outdoor market, a specific type of graffiti on the streets, our Amigos bank, the local emergency clinic, and a gorgeous church at the top of a very steep hill. 

 La clinica de emergencias! 

 We had to rely completely on asking the natives on the streets for directions, which definitely sent us in circles at times.  Once we even asked a security guard for a bank that we had been looking for, for about 20 minutes, and he pointed his finger directly up.  We had asked the security guard of the bank we needed to find.  He tried to keep a straight face, but all he could do was chuckle at us.

To access the church we had to climb a LOT of stairs, and it took us way too long because we were out of breath with the altitude.  In the picture about, that is only about half of the stairs to get to the top.  I have set a personal goal to be able to walk the stairs before the end of the summer, without needing rest breaks! Right now that seems like quite the feat!

For dinner, we cooked in for the first time! My co-sup and I made pasta with a ton of veggies.  It actually worked really well, and made me feel at home! I hope we cook as much as possible on the weekends, because I am getting very tired of potatoes, and soup and lentils already… Buenas noches!