SPF 100+ : Works Like A Charm Except When You Miss A Spot...

Hi there, friends!

I am so ridiculously POOPED from today's day of work. It was a doozy! I wanted to share some of the highlights before I go to bed (and yes, it is 6 PM here in Peru, and yes, I think I am pretty seriously close to bedtime). I like lists, so I'm going to make a lil' list of today's triumphs, pitfalls, joys, and sorrows for y'all. Ready, set, here we go!

1. One of my recently developed life goals is to age beautifully, and I believe that a good bit of that comes from developing only beautiful "age lines," as opposed to sun-induced wrinkles. With said goal in mind, I brought along not one but TWO aerosol cans of SPF 100+ sunscreen from the US. And I applied it to pretty much every exposed part of my body, repeatedly throughout today. In fact, I believe that I have applied it every single day since my arrival in Cusco. Today, though, I neglected a certain lovely spot that one might politely deem the "small of my back" but which actually translates to "lower back/upper buttocks." Little did I know that a small bit of my back was open and exposed to the sun as I bent over with a shovel or a pickax, allowing a rather thick line of sunburn to appear, and become increasingly red as I repeatedly neglected to care for it. My problem is this. Can I achieve the goal of aging gracefully if I have a wrinkly upper buttocks? I rather think not. A travesty indeed.

2. I don't mean to brag, but I'm pretty sure I provided a good deal of the entertainment during today's project. To quickly outline what we were doing, we (the PITTers, Lauren, one PITT professor, Lalo, and I) traveled to a rural community about forty minutes outside of Cusco, and worked with the community members to dig a series of lines in which we will later insert tubing that the community can use to more thoroughly irrigate their farmland. Unfortunately, there was a bit of a divide between the community members and the volunteers, largely due to the fact that not many of the PITT students speak very much Spanish. To try and facilitate a bit more interaction, I joined a group of local women in their digging spot and proceeded to become the unintentional class clown for a good portion of the day. It all began when I thrust my pickax into the ground and the women all started snickering. I looked at them and it really was rather amusing. They were all so much stronger than me when shoveling, yet most of them wore sandals and skirts, and some even had babies on their backs. I, on the contrary, wore snazzy rubber boots and had a classy water bottle attached to my beltloop (which probably weighed down my pantalones a little and exacerbated my sunburn). Anyway, the women started snickering, and I turned to them and said, in Spanish, "Are you LAUGHING at me?" And they all CRACKED UP. I guess they thought I was clueless about the fact that I was their entertainment, but I was quite aware, and when they realized that, it all just became even funnier. I continued on and said, "You know, ladies, you can laugh at me, but I'm not accustomed to this altitude and I am going to get huge muscles from all this work and go home to the US looking like superwoman!" At this point, they were seriously roaring, and I was roaring myself at how much I was amusing them by my inability to use a pickax! Once they realized that I spoke enough Spanish to understand them, we started talking a bit more, and our digging session actually turned into a partial language lesson. I taught them how to say, "I'm tired" and "I'm hungry," and they taught me how to say "I'm tired" in Quechua, the Andean dialect spoken here. For the intrepid reader who may wish to learn Quechua, your phrase of the day is..."I'm tired." "Zai coruni." That spelling is probably totally off, but after quite a bit of practice, I have mastered the pronunciation--it sounds like "zah-ee cor-oo-nee." I have also come up with a mnemonic device to remember this phrase. When I am tired, it is nice to have a Corona, which sounds much like "coruni." "Zau coruni." And that's your Quechua lesson for today, folks. Get ready for tomorrow! At the end of our work day today, I was telling some of the local men that I had learned a phrase, and I said "I'm tired" in Quechua, and one of them responded in Quechua, saying "Canda munani," aka "I love you" or "I want you." When they told me what it meant, I just laughed, which again cracked everyone up. Apparently, I am funnier than I thought! :-)

3. In the mid-afternoon, we took a break from our work to eat a snack prepared by the local community members. They cooked us pachamanca, which is Quechua for "earth pot." According to what I've read, pachamanca is typically served for special occasions such as festivals, fiesta days, and harvest celebrations. When I reflect on it, today actually felt like a harvest celebration--sort of like the Andean equivalent of an Amish barn-raising. There were women preparing the food while children ran around in the hills and the men and the ProWorld volunteers got down and dirty with the shovels and pickaxes! Anyway, the translation of pachamanca is significant because the method of cooking basically involves making the earth into a cooking pot. Potatoes are the usual base for the dish, but other foods, including corn and beans, go into the pot as well. The items all go into a hole in the ground that was earlier filled with hot stones, and then the whole mixture is covered with aromatic leaves. The method of preparation is seen as an act of respect for "Pachamama," or Mother Earth. Not only was it an honor to be able to sit and eat beside the community members, but it also tasted pretty darned good! I sat and peeled my warm potato in the sun and just ate it like it was a piece of bread, all the while holding my sweet new friend, a little Andean girl named Analee, and resting after a hard day's work. It was a pretty authentic experience, and I'm excited about joining the community again tomorrow and on Monday and Tuesday, despite the hard work and the laughter at my expense!

4. On the way back to Cusco, I sat next to my pal Peter, a Pittsburgh junior(?), and made him tell me his life story. The poor guy wasn't sure what hit him at first, but eventually he played along and another PITT student, Grace, joined in. I made them tell me one defining moment in their lives for each year of their existence. It made the van ride much faster, and was also quite interesting. Had I not forced them into the conversation, I wouldn't have discovered, for example, that Peter had an evil nun as his preschool teacher, or that Grace traveled to Italy twice with her high school a capella group. Pretty awesome!


So that was today. It is truly fascinating to see the way that these people live and how incredibly different it is from what I have come to know as "normal." It was such a joy to find that in spite of our differences, we could still share in a good meal, the completion of a difficult task, and a good bit of laughter! Of all the reasons for which we travel, this one is, to me, one of the most crucial and wonderful. What a wonderful thing to see, even for a moment, that we are all living this same life even though some live it in the Andes, others in the jungle, others in countries covered with snow, others in the tropics, and others in a small suburb in New Jersey.

Thanks for tuning in, readers, and now I must make dinner before I become unable to keep my eyes open! Photos coming soon!