Hola!

Sorry I can't always get on the computer so i am typing them on days and pasting them when i get the chance!

07-12-09
Mi es muy cansado…..
I have been up for over 40 hours now and have gotten 4 hours of sleep total. Ayacucho is a beautiful, but still sad from what I have seen so far. The first thing they give you when you head off the plane is a nice little pamphlet on Swine Flu, and all the workers in the airport wear surgical masks which made everyone a little nervous and it made it harder for me to understand what it was they were trying to communicate (not that my Spanish is that good to begin with). The stewardesses all wear these bright colored matching outfits that look like they had come from the sixties, and they speak over the intercom so fast that it just seems like one really long word.
Home base is extremely nice and I am sharing a room with three other girls. We have our own bathroom and shower, along with no hot water.... going to be very difficult for the next six weeks. We are sharing one phone and two internet hookups with 45 other people, so keeping in contact is going to be a definite challenge. As the weeks go on though, and we get closer to the end of summer, I am guessing that the number of people incoming will decrease as well as the number of those leaving.
The plaza is really the only partially developed part of town, as most of the city and streets are very old and worn. This makes the sky so beautiful at night, because of the lack of bright city lights. Thousands of stars that I may never have seen before are now clear. It’s wonderful. The marketplace is packed with all different kinds of knick-nacks and what not! And the fresh fruit looks so good that it is so hard to keep from eating it, along with all of the breads, cheeses, and pastries that the rest of the vendors sell. There are stray dogs EVERYWHERE!
The older volunteers bought us a fireworks display made from bamboo. I am really sad that I forgot to bring my camera because it would be so much easier to explain what it looked like! The man whom they had bought it from started off by firing the small fireworks into the air (the ones that don’t bloom but rather just pop) and then he lit this awesome contraption that he had been working on all day. It had all kinds of bottle rockets and fountain fireworks that would spin in circles as they let off streams of sparks. The finale was the best part, he had put a wheel on the top rigged with fireworks that when it finally lit soared into the sky spinning casting off massive amounts of sparks! It was amazing! Again sorry for not bringing the camera but we are hoping to do it again sometime soon, or even for some new incoming volunteers.
I am going to go sit up on the roof now and roast some marshmallows by the fire pit! I love you all!