The Zoo: May 18

We woke up bright and early, at 6:30, in order to have time to shower (my hair never dried on the trip due to the insane humidity in Peru) and eat breakfast, before we picked up a few students from Ramiro Priale school as we would be taking them to the zoo. We were supposed to "adopt" two kids each for the day, but when we got to the school there were so many cute kids I couldn't decide which two to pick and ended up not having any since they were all taken and the numbers were lower than originally estimated. Thus, Nicole had mentioned that there were going to be ten students with physical disabilities and advised that those who had worked with physical disabilities would be best to sign up. Yet, I decided I was in Peru and I was wanting to get the most out of my time here, so why not help out in that way! It was one of the best decisions I could have made. We would be meeting these students at the Zoo.
On the way there we had a lot of fun with face paint. As you can see the girls were super excited!

 

(They took this lovely picture of me with my camera. The girls were definitely creative, and that green face paint for lipstick sure didn't taste the greatest, but I rocked this look for the entire day at the Zoo. The girls were such cuties)

When I got to the Zoo there were only four students with disabilities, a little less than expected, but that was alright, because those who signed up to spend the day with these lovely individuals definitely needed to pair up. I joined Sandra and our girl's name sounded like New York with a Spanish twist. It was eye opening to see how little infrastructure was set up for those with physical disabilities, so it made the day a little difficult when maneuvering around. There were no ramps and some of the exhibit walls were so high the students were unable to see the animals from their wheel chairs. But, that did not stop us. We had fun seeing monkeys, giraffes, zebras and all sorts of other animals. Our lovely lady's favourite animal was a guinea pig (unfortunately we were unable to see one). She loved to tell us vamos (let's go!) but also told us to slow down (despacio) when she wanted to see an animal longer, and she also let us know when we were too far ahead from her friends. She also wanted a picture with every animal in the Zoo. She was awesome!

After a hot, but fun day at the Zoo, after we said our goodbyes, Raoul took us to an ice cream shop! My strawberry ice cream was delicious and could rival that of Italy's gelato. Afterward, we returned to the retreat center and had free time. A few of us started a Frisbee match, we were not the greatest but it was a lot of fun. It was Raoul's birthday, so after dinner we ate chocolate cake. We then proceeded to have a debriefing, and discussed in two minutes, to a partner, how we felt and released anything we wanted to get off our chest.

That night, we got to experience Churros. The best dessert ever! Here Charissa is eating a chocolate Churro while I attempt to eat a caramel one!

We stopped at the "cat park" named so because there are so many stray cats wandering around. There was also a lot of art work for sale and there we tried Picaronis (a doughnut made of squash topped with sugar cane honey)

We also stopped at restaurant with an outdoor street side patio and tried the national drink of Peru, Pisco sour! Let me just say, it was very strong! Imagine sipping on tequila and that pretty much sums up the drink. Needless to say I could only manage to drink half of mine. Pisco is made from grapes, and as you can see in the picture there is a white foam on the top, which is made from egg whites. We had a great time as we toasted Raoul's birthday and chatted.

When we returned and had an update on the next day's events we went to be exhausted but excited.