Kenny - Monday

Today was our first complete day in Patacancha, Peru, which is where we are building the greenhouses. At breakfast we ate some really interesting food, I’ll leave it at that. This is our first day working and as leader I get to decide the groups of two. I take Alexa, Gio gets Sachi, and that leaves Lucy and Henry. Alexa and I stay working on a greenhouse that is almost completely done; it was just missing a few things such as the plastic cover and the PVC pipes that hold up the plastic. I end up going with Valerio (owner of the greenhouse) to get the plastic, which was in another home that was quite far away. The plastic was pretty heavy and its hard protective casing dug into my shoulder. Rewardingly Valerio and I managed to climb up with the plastic. Oh, it’s hard to breathe; I forgot to mention that. Adela and the other people are trying to figure out ways to efficiently put on the plastic. Due to the language barrier cause by Quechua, the native tongue, Alexa and I are just sitting there doing nothing but at the same time trying to understand what they are saying. I realize that we are wasting time; therefore I ask Adela if we can go to another greenhouse to see what the other LFA students are up to. Mr. Visser gives me the choice of picking either Gio or Sachi to stay with Alexa and I. I chose Gio because when it comes to physical labor, he would be more of a help to me than Sachi. We start digging up the dirt that will be used to stick the adobe bricks together. Pretty much the day was successful; we got a good amount of work done. Henry, Gio, and I spent the night talking about all sorts of things without the interruption of a computer, a text, or any another technological equipment that we depend on as a society. It was really awesome to hear what they had to say and just seeing that it took being 5000 miles away from home, in the middle of nowhere, to hear some of the things I did was totally worthwhile. Visser told us Peru would change us or have an impact on us and I think that statement really made sense by the time I went to bed. I learned to appreciate what I have in my life and after 4 years of hanging out with Gio and Henry, I had never thought our conversations were as real as tonight’s conversation.