A Note from the Brothers

Hello all! We have two guest bloggers this week in the form of my awesome brothers! I've been having a wonderful time with them, and after I give you a little taste of what we've been up to, I'll let you read it from their perspectives. I would also like to put in a disclaimer that I did not make any corrections to their grammar, so excuse any issues (and I KNOW that there are issues because I wanted to correct them badly but didn't because the boys were making fun of me!).

Anyway, A&B are en route to Machu Picchu right now, having left bright and early at 6:30 AM. I arranged a full day tour for them with an English guide and all transportation and entrance fees and everything so that they wouldn't end up in Bolivia (seriously a possibility if Andrew continues to believe himself a fully competent Spanish speaker!). They have a long day ahead of them, but I think it will be beautiful and I'm sure they'll take lots of lovely pictures that I'll later share with y'all!

The first day the boys arrived, I took them to lunch at--of course--Victor/Victoria, where we had a super delicious meal, and then I showed them some of the main landmarks of downtown Cusco. Among our stops was an artisan market, where the boys learned the importance of saying "No gracias," and also bought some hysterically, flamboyantly colorful pants to wear for volunteer work! Eventually, we headed over to the Centro Bartolome de las Casas, where I had to meet up with a group from Missouri to show them the way from the CBC to the ProWorld office. I also took the boys to get their International Student Identification (ISIC) cards so that they could get discounts at Machu Picchu (and in over 100 other countries through 2012--they'd better start traveling more often!). I also showed them the ProPeru office and my apartment, and when we'd finally worked up an appetite for dinner, we went to Papa's, a cute restaurant run by a super nice lady, where we each paid about $3 for a three-course meal. The boys also shared a pitcher of chiccha morada (a drink made of Peruvian purple corn mixed with cinnamon and cloves and sugar and stuff), which I discouraged because I think it's kind of gross. They found it rather amusing, though, and particularly enjoyed the large quantity of pink foam that they had to work their way through to get to the actual chiccha.

On Friday, the boys had breakfast made by Sonia, the owner of the Llaqtayai Family House where they're staying. They've been raving about her breakfasts and her general hospitality on a daily basis, so if anyone wants to come to Cusco (hint, hint, nudge, nudge?) and spend $16 a night on lodging, give Sonia a ring! At 8 AM, the boys arrived by taxi to the ProPeru office (in the crazy pants), and we loaded into a bus along with Lalo and the students from Missouri. We headed to Pinancay (the community where I worked with Pittsburgh and St. Scholastica) and proceeded to several community homes to build clean-burning stoves. The clean-burning stove project is seriously awesome because you can see SUCH a difference in the households before and after the stoves are in use. In the "before" scene, we often smell the inside of the house before we see it. The smokiness is so strong that one student actually felt like her nose was going to bleed, and the walls were entirely black from the fumes. Women in Pinancay, and in many other rural Peruvian communities, spend a significant portion of their time indoors, along with their children, breathing in the smoke as they cook and essentially diminishing the capacity of their lungs. By building these stoves, made of simply barro (mud/clay), three tin rods, bricks, and a little metal "sombrero," we can drastically alter the health of the women and children in the community. What's more, the results are almost immediate. The stoves only take five days to dry and are then ready for use, and in a mere 30 days, we can measure huge increases in lung capacity among women and children. How awesome, especially for those of us who like to see the fruits of our labor ASAP! :-)



Anyway, the boys were a great help, and were teamed up with Krysten, a lovely Missouri student who luckily speaks far better Spanish than Andrew and Brian! While they worked at a few houses, Lalo and I were running all over the community supervising the work of various groups and ensuring that there were no major problems with any of the stoves. I'm really happy that we have been able to do so much work at Pinancay because I have begun to establish my presence there, and many of the community members now remember my name, entrust their kids to my care, and joke around with me more freely. It's a wonderful feeling, and it's going to make leaving the community very hard come July!

After our day of work on Friday, we were pretty dirty and pretty exhausted, so the boys went to their hotel to shower and I went to my apartment and we reunited in the Plaza de Armas for dinner. Friday also marked the first day of the Dry Law here in Peru. Because of yesterday's presidential election, it was illegal to buy alcohol from Friday to Sunday. Somehow, Brian, Andrew, and I managed to break that law on all three days, beginning with our trip to The Lost City. The Lost City in this case is not Machu Picchu, but a random, fairly creepy-ish looking underground bar that Brian read about prior to arriving in Cusco. He was insistent on trying it, and won Andrew over by showing him a sign that announced that an NBA game would be playing on the TV (it wasn't). And so it was that we ended up in The Lost City with a fairly creepy bartender, the there of us the only customers in the whole place. I have to admit, though, that it turned out to be a pretty great time, as the bartender gave us happy hour prices and we decided to try some traditional Peruvian drinks, including the pisco sour (yummy), something with pisco and milk (disgusting, in my opinion), something with pisco and mint (Andrew's choice--deliiiicious), and a margarita. We were planning on eating at The Lost City as well, but--surprise!--their oven was malfunctioning, so we only ended up getting drinks, and then headed elsewhere for dinner. When we went to leave The Lost City, the bartender had to unbolt the door for us, and we realized that he was probably trying to make the place seem closed because of the dry law. It looks like the Whitmans are some serious rebel law-breaker sorts! Muahaha.

On Saturday, we went back to the Pinancay community to build more stoves. The boys worked in the morning, but in the afternoon, they took some time to explore the beautiful country, and Andrew (the loco) decided to go for a RUN! He ended up encountering my sweet Analie, who was working in the fields with her mom and some other community members. Andrew also brought along one of his CDs and gave it to Luis, an absolute geme and also Analie's older brother! He was so appreciative, and I'm pretty sure that he'll have the whole community dancing to Andrew Whitman in no time at all! Saturday night, we went to dinner at a tiny little restaurant called Sumaq (which means "very good" in Quechua). There were only four tables in the place, and there was an oven right behind the counter where we could see the cook preparing all of the food. It was pretty neat, and felt almost more like a family kitchen than a restaurant. Andrew got to cross alpaca off his list of things to try, and Brian and I had steak and trout respectively, all quite tasty. Each meal also came with a pisco sour, which resulted in our second active breakage of the dry law!

Yesterday, I intended to go to my normal 11:30 AM mass at La Compania, but the church was padlocked! I guess the service was canceled due to the elections (though it seems to me that prayer would be only more necessary on a day like election day). I met up with the boys around noon, and I introduced them to Dominga, my dear friend who sells the bread made by nuns outside the Monasterio de Santa Catalina. The boys fell just as much in love with her as I have, and we took a picture which I'll share in a future blog when Brian Whitman hasn't absconded to the "real" Lost City with my camera! I took the boys to lunch at Juanito's, a sandwich place that makes a really unique sandwich called the Cuzqueno con Pollo. It's a pretty standard chicken sandwich except that it has two tamales on it, which just bring it to a super high level of awesomeness! Afterwards, I intended to take the boys to the soccer game that I had seen advertised on signs throughout my neighborhood, but it turns out that they were for a game the previous Sunday. I remain rather annoyed at this because if they had just put the numberical date of the game (instead of just SUNDAY), or taken the signs down before the following Sunday came, I wouldn't have been confused. Argh. Luckily, there's a game on Wednesday afternoon, and we're going to go to that. After our trip to the very empty soccer stadium, I took the boys to the San Pedro Market, where we bought some ingredients to make fajitas. We also went to the grocery store, where the boys purchased a six pack of "illegal" Cuzquena beer without any trouble...and so went our third act of law breakage! Then, I headed home and the boys decided to go up to Sacsayhuaman. Andrew obviously made the ridonkulous decision to run, while Brian more sensibly went for the walking route. They apparently agreed to meet at the stairs leading to the monument, but somehow managed to lose each other briefly, and then each returned to the hotel to look for the other, missing each other by no more than five minutes. In the end, Andrew ended up running eight or ten miles, but they made it back in one piece, and then came over to prepare and eat fajitas with Laura and me. We also made attempt numero uno at brownies (THANK YOU, EILEEN WHITMAN, FOR FOUR BOXES OF BROWNIE MIX. YOU ARE EVEN MORE MY HERO THAN YOU WERE BEFORE, IF HUMANLY POSSIBLE!). We managed to have pretty serious success in this venture, and proceeded to eat almost the entire pan in response to our long withdrawal! :-)

Now it's Monday, and the election is over and the boys are on an adventure and I'm here in the office getting some tasks accomplished and writing to all of you! At this point, I'm sure you've heard enough from me, so here are the un-edited comments of my wonderful brothers whom I love so dearly and am so happy to have with me here in Cusco!!!



[Written last night (Sunday)]
Hey Everybody!

It’s Andrew. I’m excited to provide you with a new perspective of Peru from a man’s eyes! I just finished a two and a half hour run and walk up to Sacsaywaman, an Incan Ruin right outside of Cusco. It usually would take me about 15 minutes, but unfortunately Brian got lost and I went on a running rampage to find him. Fortunately, we ended up back at our Hostel with Sonya, our host, and neither of us were too worse off.

Our trip to date has been amazing. Let me fill you in on what we’ve done and what we’re doing. We are staying at a small house on avenida alta with our awesome host Sonya, who has a daughter Isabel, and a helper Maria. They are all amazing. Sonya makes us breakfast every day, and each day it’s been crazy delicious. My favorite was an omelet with peppers and garlic. We’ve been eating amazing food every day and been having amazing adventures too. One of my new favorite things to do is haggle with taxi drivers, which has been a blast. Brian and I left a few taxis on the spot when they tried charging us more than 3 soles, which is ridiculous.
The best trip we’ve had yet is visiting the small village of Pinyankay, where we built ovens for Native Peruvians. I’m pretty sure I can say it’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever been. Building the ovens was very rewarding, and I learned a couple Qechua phrases to talk to the families too (only two, what is your name and how are you, but I got some respect for them). Brian and I also made a new friend, Christine from Mizzou, who was really cool and a beast at Spanish (props to her for a Lord of the Rings reference, saying the village reminded her of Hobbiton). I was constantly on the prowl for some chicha, the corn beer of South America, but unfortunately didn’t get any. Still got a few days though!

The coolest part of the trip by far was when I went on a run in the village. It was very humbling when I got to ten minutes in my run and had to stop and dry heave for a while. But anyway, on the walk back with Brian, we ran into a ton of people from the village taking a break from the fields and they invited us to share some potatoes with them. I did most of the conversing, although I probably didn’t make sense, but in the end we found out that one of the little girls was the one and only Ana-Lie, Sarah’s favorite village kid! It was awesome to explain that we we’re Sarah’s brothers and she immediately became crazy attached, even crying when we had to leave. It was just awesome to see these people be so welcoming and nice and still be able to share a few laughs and potatoes with people who are from a totally different world.

The food has been incredible as well, and super cheap! But I’m going to let Brian take over for me and hopefully he can describe a bit to you.
Hey everybody! Missing you in the U.S but we’re having an incredible time over here in Peru. Andrew covered most of the big events thus far, but everything has been great from the people to the food to the sights. The people that we built stoves for so were so incredibly grateful and some of the nicest people we’ve encountered (at least I think so, we couldn’t really understand what they were saying and our Spanish is quite subpar). Andrew told me that the other night I spoke in my sleep and said “mucho gusto” which means nice to meet you, which I think says a lot about the people I’ve met here so far.

Tomorrow Andrew and I are getting up at 6:00am to head over to Machu Picchu for the day! We’re very excited and we’ll try to take some awesome pictures so that everyone can feel as if they were there too. We’ve also been considering white water rafting trips and bungee jumping at some point, but Sarah remains adamant that she’ll only watch if we go bungee jumping. There are so many things to do but so little time! On Wednesday we’re going to see the Cusco soccer team play, which I’m pretty excited for, although I’m still hoping to play in a pick-up game with some Peruvians.

At all the plazas here we are constantly offered massages and entry to various restaurants. Sarah told me there’s a shirt that says “no gracias” on it, so I’m definitely plan on getting one before I leave so that I can get my point across. The second day here we went to a little market to try and find some Peruvian deals. A woman was offering Andrew a scarf to which he responded “ No gracias, muy caliente”. Andrew thought that he was saying “No thanks, I’m very hot”, but apparently in that context it meant that he was aroused. The woman, Sarah, Andrew, and I all got a great laugh out of it. That’s all I’ve got for now, but here’s Sarah who plans to proofread all of Andrew and I’s work! Chao!