Outside the building in the courtyard was this old lady. I couldn't pass up the opportunity to take a picture of her. She has something pinned to her sweater and a key hanging around her neck. I asked her for a photo and she said yes. She sat there with her arms in her lap as I counted, "1, 2, 3" to snap the photo. At the very last moment she raised her first to her chin and gave me her best boxing pose. It was really unexpected. I loved the fact that she still had the joy to be a devious prankster at her age.
We climbed to the top of the center (view below) to the classrooms of the older children. If you've been paying attention to past photos you'll probably recognize the red shirts and some faces in this crowd. "El Presidente" was on lead guitar and with several of the other students that were the beneficiaries of our fundraising efforts. They played a couple of worship songs for us in their classroom. We sat along the back wall and tried our best to clap along and pick out the select words in Spanish that we understood.
After the center visit we walked a little farther up the same street to a small soccer complex that would be where we had lunch. The staff had prepared for us Pachamanca, a traditional Peruvian way of cooking (and dish) that literally means "hole in the ground". You've probably seen this before at a luau or perhaps some other event. The basic technique is the same: 1) heat up some stones in the fire, 2) bury the stones with all the food in the ground. Considering how much effort it takes to prepare, Pachamanca is usually reserved for special occasions. We watched them uncover our lunch from start to finish. First they removed the top layer of dirt and plastic coverings. Inside, the first thing we saw was some sort of greens that they had covered everything with for seasoning (we didn't eat them). The next layer was completely covered with Lima beans. The cooking staff removed the beans by hand. Farther below were buried other food items such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, a sweet corn meal that had been cooked inside a corn husk, and chicken placed near the hot stones. It was all very good...like a combination of grilling food with the softness of a crock pot I didn't try the chicken because I had been served chicken for the last 7 meals and I couldn't eat any more. Before I forget, practically every meal we had on this trip came with Coca-Cola, Coke Zero, or Inca Cola...a very sugary sweet drink that looked like Mello Yellow and tasted like bubble gum or cream soda. It's the Peruvian national soda. Luckily, we all had water bottles with us if we preferred something else to drink.
After lunch a couple of us tried to jump in and play soccer with some of the kids. However, that lasted only a minute or two until the group was headed back to the bus for our next stop of the day. But before we left this project they presented us with gifts, most notably traditional Huancayo and/or Peruvian winter hats. You can see them in the photo we took with the couple that owned the facility that we ate lunch at. I think that they were founding members of this church...at the very least been part of the church for decades. I don't know the story behind the complex, but it was open for use by the church and all of the church kids. While we were eating lunch there must have been two dozen young boys playing soccer behind us.
