I literally have not a single article of moderately-clean clothing to wear.  I scavenged the least-smelly items from my laundry bag four days ago and gave the rest to Sabina´s niece to wash but it´s been raining so she hasn´t been able to.  On top of that, I drew ‘’worm’’ in the charades game at school today so my already-suspect-three-day-old outfit had to endure my wriggling around on dusty floor boards.

But today was my last day teaching in Paucarabamba.  I read a story called ‘’El Gusanito’’ about a little worm who dreams of climbing to the top of a mountain and the other little bugs laugh at him until one day he turns into a butterfly and flies to the top.  Afterwards, I told the kids to draw their dreams.  When they sat struggling above their blank sheets, I pushed them to think hard to come up with something.  But when I went back to my desk, I found myself sitting equally confounded above my own blank sheet. I ended up sketching a house with a vegetable garden and fruit trees and a kitchen full of people cooking together (and peace and love and harmony dude).  Don´t get me wrong, clichés aside, I still think that would be fabulous.  But I don´t think that counts as my Dream…

But for now, I´m transitioning into a new project with the Peruvian National Ministry of Agriculture.  Part One of the project will involve learning about the best practices of cuy (guinea pig) raising and then going to more isolated communities to show the people how they should keep their critters in cages as opposed to the kitchen floor.  Part Two will involve starting a Panadería de Pan Integral (basically a wheat bread bakery) in the pueblo of Maras which is one of the major wheat producers in the Sacred Valley (but they export all their crop and buy white bread because they are unaware of the nutritive differences).  So it will be my job to figure out how to construct a bread oven, make the bread, educate the people on why they should eat it, and set up a sustainable local business.  Seeing as how my expertise on the matter is on par with any suburbian soccer mom who tells her kids to eat their crust, I think I´ve got my work cut out for me.