Peru - Day 3

Can I just say this place makes me baby hungry??  These kids here are just amazingly yummy and I just want to squish all the babies!

OK, I'll backtrack.  Today we went to village number one.  The one we were planning to go to proved to be impossible due to rain and us not being able to get up there.  So we ended up at Collotaro which is a little village south (I think) of Cusco but it's not very remote.  It is a village of about 50 families.  Just a little ways up from a decent sized town.  It's actually lower elevation than Cusco.  We ended up doing quite a few things including bracelet making, haircutting, lots of frisbee and soccer with the kids, rocket stoves, WAPI's (water purification tools), gathering some history of the village, and helping out with any other projects they had.  They actually had electricity and a pretty decent looking school.  We were there about 4 hours and did enough to make us very tired!  These kids were amazingly adorable and much more open and smiley and approachable than the village I went to the last time I was here which made it really fun!  We handed out lots of hairbows, candy, beach balls, a new soccer ball, other little trinkets, granola bars, chap stick, and more.

This is one of the first girls we gave a hair bow to.  She actually warmed up to us pretty quickly.

When we first got there, they drug out this ancient looking speaker and announced that visitors were there.  I think they just canceled school and all the kids ran up to where we were at the community center.  Loved this picture of the row of girls.

This is Barb teaching all the kids how to make simple beaded bracelets.  They loved it!

OK, stop it!  This baby is just too delish.  They usually hide their faces but not this cutie, munching on some kind of fruit.

RARELY do you get an adult villager to smile at you so this picture is priceless.  I probably took 40 pics of just this one baby.  Talk about chunky and squishy!  Every village also has a different hat for the women.  It is how they distinguish where they are from.  I thought this lady's hat was very cool.

Mark blowing bubbles on the moms and kids.  They were cracking up!

This kid probably had more pictures taken of him today by everyone in our group than any other object or person.  He was the cutest little Downs kid ever.

I think Erica got about 7 haircuts done today.  I loved the double chairs to make him high enough.

I mean, the dirty clothes, the dusty bare feet, the chapped cheeks, munchin' on some corn?  Amazing.

This is pretty much what happened any time we got anything out of the back of the pick up to give the kids.  Shannon was handing out socks and all the kids just scream, "Para mi!"

Can't wait to see what tomorrow's village is like.