Wéré ón góóglé éárth

13 July, Monday
“This one muffin a day thing just isn't working out.” Says Lindsay as she answers the door with a muffin in her hand, “This is my fifth.”

Check out where we have been via google earth by downloading the .kmz file at this link

We had nothing on our agenda today except the long list of NGOs we have yet to contact. Our goal is to interview and go on a site visit with each of them. So we wake up early this morning and try to be out of the house by 8:30. At 8:45, we are making calls to GTZ to determine when we can go on a site visit with them. Apparently, we are having a sleep over on Wednesday night! Yahoo! We also call the Architectos de la Emergencia. They tell us that they will call us back around noon so we can go with them on a site visit today to a region of Ica where they are building a few schools. By 9:15, we are on the road. So far so good.

We first stop by Cáritas' office which is right off of the Plaza de Armas. We are greeted by the front desk who is also trying to simultaneously deal with several community members who are trickling in from the street. Apparently they are hosting a meeting in their office to have a discussion concerning land titles with the community. She tells us to wait in the hallway where we read the news about an English volunteer working with a group of foreigners in reconstructing Pisco. We have our fears that it might be Pisco Sin Fronteras or M.A.D. because the description fits them perfectly. Yikes! After the director arrives, our meeting results with a scheduled visit to a fair that they are hosting on Saturday. We would have gone with their engineers today, but both are out sick. Que lastima.

Cruz Roja Española. We've so far worked with Cruz Roja Americana and Peruana as well as the International Federation of the Red Cross. However, the funding and projects are different from this Red Cross so we decide that we would like to have an interview with them as well. We get separated, and Brooke learns that her Spanish is now good enough to be alone whilst still managing to get to a said destination. Inside, the three employees who are working take time from their busy schedule to sit down and meet with us, complete with notebooks and attentive ears. They are excited to have some of the raw footage, give us brochures, and make an appointment with us for when we are in Lima in a week. Score. Two out of two.

The next place we want to stop is in Parcona, which is about three or four kilometers outside of Ica proper. The sun is hot today unlike other days when there are clouds, and Peru is cold. I guess it's winter so I should have expected it. The mountains and desert make the temperature swings in the morning to afternoon somewhat more extreme than would be expected. When we arrive, we search around in vain on Calle Tacna. Which exists, but without any NGO to be found. So we call the MCLCP office to determine what mischief is afoot only to be informed that the office is actually just off the Plaza de Armas in Ica proper.

So we turn around. By the time we arrive at 1 p.m., no one is present due to lunch break. We are feeling a little tired so we stop to make a few more phone calls to Casas de la Salud and APORTES to reschedule our interviews which were planned for Wednesday or Thursday. Thankfully, they have time on Friday. Again, we search in vain, but this time for tripods. For about fifteen minutes. Then we give up because we are being turned in circles. Then we return home to Lindsay.

Who is watching a Vin Diesel movie while munching on some Ahi de Gallina, milk, muffins, soup, and probably more things I can't recall. She tells us about her crazy adventures out and about (crazy, yet tame and entirely safe) to Plaza Vea and in the city. Her valiant rides through the streets, her skilled darting through shopping aisles, and sharp eyes for deals. Her ultimate obstacle, her dragon, if you will: the choice between muffins or animal crackers. The man standing beside her mentions that both are very tasty. True, true, Lindsay thinks to herself. But one is more moist and oh so much more delicious than the other, comments the man next to her again. And so...

Muffins it was.

We listen intently to her tale, hanging off her every word. And then we do some normal organizing, typing, uploading, branstorming. Because we just don't already have enough work to do for ourselves. We start to think about the site visits that we will embark on in the upcoming week and make up a worksheet to make sure that we extract all the information we can. Now we are making sure we are prepared for our next five full days with charged batteries and free hard drive space. Like Batman and his utility belt except now it's Adam and a backpack we've so endearingly named, Choche. Thanks for reading Choche, we miss you!
We have most of the things done that we need for the upcoming week. Now we will think about the week that will come after Cuzco. This is our home stretch of summers. Where we put out heads on straight and cross our fingers. We'll return to Lima for some interviews from a theoretical standpoint in clean offices far from the affected area. Then we will come back to the ground to get our hands dirty and have our camera's cup floweth over