A Day In The Life

So I had a request from family to share a little more about some day-to-day things, so here's my first attempt at a "day-in-the-life-of" post. Unfortunately, today (July 23, 2012) was neither a very eventful day nor was it a day that I got to spend with Dana, both reasons why this is nothing close to a "day-in-the-life-of", since we are usually together and usually the day is busier. Nevertheless, I will share with you my day and hopefully the next day-in-the-life-of post we do will be more accurate. So here it goes:

Our hotel, el Hostal Union Real. We love it here, super good people and a great deal! The fabrication business underneath is also owned by the same people.

Well, we went to bed rather late last night, I can't really remember why, oh ya, I was writing a post and uploading photos. Anyway, the point is that because we went to bed late we both got up late too. This morning I didn't get out of the hotel until 9:15am or so, I'm usually almost at Oropesa by that time. Dana headed off to Cusco and I said goodbye and wished her a wonderful day. So I got to the bus stop (Paradero) which is only about a half a block away, and waited for about 20min for the next bus to Oropesa. To my surprise it was the same bus that Julie, Maltilda (another volunteer from France I forgot to mention in my last post), and Dario! it's so great to see these wonderful people, they are so great to work along side.

Waiting at the Paradero. Russ Poon, if your reading this, you may notice the Hitachi vest I'm wearing. Look familiar? You'll get this back one day!

From left to right: Me, Julie, Matilda, and Dario. Great people! Small bus!

The bus this morning was so full! Oh my goodness.... it was sooooo full! So I spent most of my ride squished on the bus. Bus rides are usually not bad despite being so crowded, I really don't suffer much because I'm at least a foot taller than most Peruvians so it's them that get to snuggle into my armpits, they don't seem to mind, that I can tell anyway. The bus ride is about 20-25 min on average I'd say. We drive out of Cusco through connected towns like San Jeronimo, Huasao, Saylla, and Tipon. Finally we arrived at Oropesa. We get off the bus in the town Plaza and then walk about another 15 min to Azul Wasi. I love walking down the dirt road to Azul Wasi. It really is so peaceful and beautiful, and occasionally stinky but that's ok.

From let to right: Gina, Matilda, Kaley, Julie, Dario, me. Arriving at Azul Wasi!

When I got there the little ones had already gone to school. We stopped to take pictures at the front door just because we all happened to be there. Today Jaime wasn't able to be there so that meant that I was left to direct a few things, which was totally fine. I had the group of high school girls water the plants in the greenhouse, and I think they did some weeding, not sure. Then I had them gather all the rocks they could from on the property. The reason was this: We have a septic tank that breaks down the sewer water and out of one tube comes relatively clean water and out another tube comes mud. The tank is 1000L, so you can imagine that it could potentially fill up within a few days and then all the sewer water would go directly into the canal and into the public water system, which isn't out of the ordinary around here but we wanted to make things as clean and sustainable as possible so we took the advice of Reyn, a medical doctor who has been here the last few days helping out, and started to make some dams in the canal to allow the settling and decomposition of some of the blackwater, and also to help with the filtering of any upstream viruses, diseases etc.

The girls working on the first of the dams, they're great workers!

The shower solar heater. Not a ton of volume but it will provide at least a couple warm showers a day. We're almost done!

The first dam, there's about half a meter of water where there used to be only a few inches. Hopefully it will work the way we hope!

This is the bathroom that we're almost finished. You can also see here the rest of the foundation  intended for living quarters, along with more bathroom/shower area. This is part of what we are trying to raise funds for. Help us and Donate!

Danny on the new playground. He tried at least 12 times to make it across, and he made it!

Danny, sunset, good times...

While they did that I decided to work on the solar shower we've been working on for the new bathroom. I had Jesus, the new 15 year old boy here, help me put on some of the roof pieces. We did that until the girls had to go and then I went down to finish up the first dam and pack it with some mud and grass. After that I spent some time with Danny, one of the younger boys. Everyone else was doing homework and Yuliño was pretty sick so things were fairly quiet. I hung out with Danny for an hour or so and then I went to chat with Alcides until it was time to go. We both missed the last bus back to Cusco so we walked down to the main avenida and took a cab for a couple bucks. I was back at the hotel at 7:00pm or so. 

So that was pretty much my day. Tomorrow will be a little more eventful since we're going to hike up to Tipon in the morning and then celebrate Dana's birthday with the kids at lunch time. We'll be sure to tell you all about it too!

If there is anything else anyone is curious about please mention it to us and we'll do our best to give you some detailed answers!