A week of strikes in Cusco

UPDATE: The kids loved the food we got from one of the more fancy restaurants in Cusco...we were scared they would not like it because it is quite different from what they are used to...fortunately they really like it so we will nowadays take the leftover food from the buffet dinner every day and take it to one of our schools!!! Below the picture of kids having lunch...

This week was relatively quiet for us. The strikes started last week and we thought they would end there, but they went on all the way till Wednesday the following week. The university students did not like the increase in bus prices so they brought the whole country to a halt - especially Cusco. So we spent three days in the center with various activities indirectly relating to the kids. Fortunately some sort of tentative agreement has been reached and for a month things should be peaceful.

Some time at the center gave us a chance to make a small movie about the kids in our schools.



On Friday we started our search of sponsors for our charity event in Club Cusco for the 27th of September. This leaves us go to all the top restaurants and pubs of the city, meeting a lot of different people with very different reactions to our proposal. But we almost never had to leave with an empty hand, e.g. we managed to land an agreement with one of the restaurants to give us their leftover food for our kids. Today we got the food for the first time and it is a bit too fancy - lets see how the kids react to it as we have noticed in the past they do not like changes in their diet...

All in all until now we have managed to fundraise USD 1600 for which we would like to say thank you to all the donors. We are of course all the time hoping for more...

Finally we had a really relaxing weekend with our awaited lie-in hours. Third time this year we had the luxury to dine at a HOME, thanks to our newly established local network. We had an excellent dinner with vine, a long chat with our friends from the US. On Sunday Rita climbed the mountain close to our home with Amelia, one of our volunteer to visit Sacsayhuaman, one of the Inka ruins around Cusco. Though we do not have altutude problems any more, it does feel like being an old bone, running short of breath after a 100 meters walk uphill.

In Cusco as usual during the weekend there was a parade and fireworks...and our bunny became much more brave - running around the house and stealing bananas from the kitchen and dragging them all the way to his nest...