By Alisha
Chota celebrated its 456th anniversary the beginning of this month. I headed out to the parade to take part in the festivities. Since the Plaza is still under construction the parade was held near another park on a street that had almost no room for people to stand and get a glimpse of what was happening. Additionally, the parade "route" was literally only one block long. Luckily I am an almost a foot taller than the average Peruvian and was able to see over the crowd that had gathered to watch the parade. Above is a picture of one of our community partners, Carmen, and her daughter who had just participated in the parade.
Micah and I continue to enjoy our time spent at the children's shelter. We feel like we are getting to know the kids and plan to develop some more formal workshops and activities to do with them during the upcoming summer vacation. One of the younger kids, Ana, loves animals and had me take a picture of her with every dog and chicken she could get her hands on.
Yesterday we spent a good portion of the day at the shelter for the baptism of three of the kids. It was a really nice ceremony and the kids were really excited about their big day.
After the ceremony we ate a serious amount of aji de gallina!
In about a week we will head to the coast to our three-month (in site) conference. We will meet up with the other volunteers from our training group to share our experiences thus far and have the opportunity to celebrate Thanksgiving together. We are really looking forward to seeing everyone, to enjoy some time away from the rain, and to check out the beach.
