Here we are again

The days got really short all of a sudden... I've been on the internet a few times, it's quite easy to find here. Which was a little surprising, since it's rather a poor country. But there are little internet stores everywhere. Really, everywhere. But even though they abound, time has been much shorter, and I've only been able to check my e-mail quick.

Last Sunday, Mau went really well. It was a big hit with my fellow students, and we played again the following night. I look forward to many more rounds! And anyone who may be interested in playing, do say so and I'll teach you. It's a game with a few basic rules and then every round another rule is added, and the confusion grows and the fun multiplies. It's great!

The work has been progressing well, although it is more challenging than I had expected. Most of the challenges have been the logistics of finding all the women that we are looking for. I love it, though. I'm a guy, so putting my map-reading skills to use is excellent fun! I'll write more specific details in a future post, but I need to get to bed soon since we're getting up at 5:30. Yeah, if my parent's knew I was getting up that early under my own power they might have health problems associated with shock!

A few details about what we're doing though: these first two weeks we'll be in 5 different cities (although only 3 each, because after the first city we split up into 2 partnerships) and in each city we have a list of 19 women we need to try and find. With each, we do a 10 minute survey about their food security in the household, such as how much hunger they face and their food situation. With four of the nineteen, we also do a more in-depth interview of 30-45 min. and talk about their life, the goal being to have a glimpse as to what their life has been like. And in each city, we also do 2 focus groups, getting together 5-10 women and talking for 30-45 min. about their community. All of these women are already clients of PRISMA, which is a partner of Freedom from Hunger based in Peru. It's a microfinancial institution, offering microcredit loans to women so that they can start or improve/expand businesses and get out of poverty. So it's a lot of information gathering, and then going over the information we gathered. Later, we'll write reports on it and give them to PRISMA. Our hope is to know in more detail the situations of the people and then be able to improve the services offered to better meet the needs of the people.

The food is quite good here. Not as much rice as one would think when one thinks of South America, but a fair amount. Here in the area where we've been working for the last week and a half there are a lot of potatoes, and they're pretty tasty. This past Sunday, my fellow student Chelsea and I were invited by one of the women we interviewed to eat at her house, a humble house in the outskirts of a small town, and we ate "cuy." Which is guinea pig. It was interesting...but not bad. It was similar to rabbit, which I ate in Spain. Chelsea couldn't finish hers - she had a guinea pig as a pet when she was younger, and it was getting to her! Especially since we were eating next to the place where they kept all the rest of the guinea pigs and they were squeaking. :)

All continues well so far, I hope to add more details on cities and experiences soon!