The Day of Fruit

On Tuesday, we began our morning with a large fruit bowl of bananas, apples, papaya, oranges, and grapes covered with yogurt (and bread on the side of course) for breakfast. Our host mother, Mery, does an amazing job preparing breakfast for us every morning. After breakfast, we gathered our things and walked to Yuré's house for our daily literature class. This day's lesson focused on Jose Carlos Mariátegui and his varioius economic and political ideas concercing Peru. We had a very interesting discussion on his essays published in Siete Ensayos de la Interpretación de la Realidad Peruana.

After class, the women in Yuré's house prepared a delicious meal of spaghetti covered in beef and vegetable sauce. Everyone enjoyed the meal very much, and we finished with a bowl of bananas for dessert, and that wasn't the last of the fruit!

After lunch, we stopped by our homestay to pick up the toys we had brought for the children at the orphanage. When we brought them to the Director of the orphanage, she was ecstatic! We had a plethora of school supplies, stickers, play dough, stuffed animals, toy figurines, card games, and much more to donate. After sorting the items into piles to take to each home (casita) of at least 10 children, we each brought a bag of toys to the mothers of the homes. These mothers, the caretakers of the orphans, are absolutely incredible--they not only work at the orphanage for 12 ours each day, but have families of their own to support. For instance, one of the mothers, Timotea, has three children of her own, and she supports them by working as the head of the home of the oldest boys at the orphanage. It is touching to see these women care for the children at the orphanage as if they were their own. 

Anyway, we brought the bags of toys to the individual houses. Most of us had good luck distributing the toys or simply giving them all to the mother of the hosue. However, when I arrived at the house, the mother was not there, and a giant swarm of little hands attacked my bag of toys (and me). It was quite disorderly to say the least, as many of the children got a hold of all the toys in the bag. Thankfully, though, most of the children were happy with these gifts. Afterwards, we played with many of the kids on the playground--jumping rope, on the swings, playing volleyball, or simply running around. We all had so much fun and didn't want to leave!

Later on, after resting a bit, we attempted to go to a well known restaurant near the main plaza; however, it had changed into a different reaturant, so we improvised and went to Gustitos de Loli. This small restaurant had many different meat and pasta dishes. We got to try rich lamb, ravioles, and pork. The students finished the meal with a chooclate chip cookie, but we were all jealous of the strawberry dessert enjoyed by Doctor Shaw. She had the right idea: to end the day just how we started it--with fruit!

A photo of the outside of the Orphanage:

Angie with her lamb dinner:

Angie, Doctor Shaw, and Beth with their lamb dinners:

Mike, Angie, and Amy with their ravioli and pork dinners: