In the second week of December, one of the other volunteers at the center I work at had the idea to bake loads of cookies to sell in the streets for Christmas. Coinciding with our excitement about having an oven, she and I spearheaded buying ingredients and throwing several baking parties at our house. Our poor oven held its own, although since there are just three general settings (and no temperatures), it was a bit of guesswork at the beginning. We used up a whole balloon of gas in 9 days (there are supposed to last for months), but I guess that is what happens when you have the oven on for four hours a night! It was fun having other volunteers over, and everyone got into the spirit, making their favorite kind of cookies from their country. We had no-bake chocolate peanut butter cookies, regular chocolate chip cookies, sugar cookies from Denmark, coconut cookies from Germany, banana bread\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6we all subsisted off of broken cookies for a while, but we also sold a few thousand cookies and made a significant amount of money for the center.<\/p>\n
Every year in Cusco on December 24 there is a big fair called Santurantikuy that is held in the main plaza. People come from all over Peru to sell handicrafts, food, and general supplies. Many of the volunteers also dressed up that day and went out into the Plaza selling cookies. The goal of the sales was not only to have fun and make a bit of money, but also to promote the project and the restaurant that is attached to the project. In that we were also really successful: the restaurant reported making three times the amount of money it usually makes in the weeks following our efforts.<\/p>\n
The Christmas season also saw us attending tons of parties. Although, many of these parties were also \u00e2\u20ac\u0153work\u00e2\u20ac\u009d: they were parties that we were throwing for the kids in the project. We were also preparing the kids to do presentations on what they had been learning about December holidays around the world. One group presented on Hanukkah, another on Chinese New Year, another on Pongal (Hindu), another on Christmas in Russia. We had a series of events at the restaurant and at the school where they presented their plays and we gave them treats, gifts, and clothing. We also had a party for the volunteers, and we attended a party for another friend\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s project. We did a gift exchange and we received some movies and candy and a beautiful scarf.<\/p>\n
As some side notes: Sometime in the middle of December, we went to a futbol game, where we got poured on! There are photos from that attached to this post too. Also some photos from New Year’s Eve, where a bunch of us went to the Plaza and tried to avoid getting hit by fireworks.<\/p>\n
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