May 29

Today was another busy day, although, I did get to sleep in, which was really nice. 
We didn't have anything official to do until a meeting we had at 2:30. But all morning I 
worked on our poster for our presentation about brushing teeth. The conference thing is 
tomorrow! We have to catch a bus at 6 am! It's not going to be fun. Nor pretty. 
At the meeting we had today, we met with a guy from some nonprofit her in piura. He has 
some projects he wants us to help with and they are so cool. They involve teaching 
nutrition classes for some, dental hygiene classes, health promotion classes, and a 
special project for me! All of this is happening in a town in the mountains about 5 hours 
away called las frias. It is more rural than any other place we have been so far. The 
project he has for me has to do with promoting healthy homes. Because a lot of the people 
on this town can't read, this organization has created an illustrated brochure kind of 
thing to teach women how to have clean and healthy homes. There are about 18 
illustrations within six categories. The top ones indicate the ideal home, and each below 
that are kind of like steps to get to that ideal state. Guess who gets to do those 
illustrations? Yep. Me! I'm really excited but also really nervous. I am supposed to make 
illustrations of an "ideal" home for women who have never even seen an 
airplane. Their idea of an ideal home is, I am sure, extremely different than mine. The 
guy is planning a trip for me to las frias sometime in the near future so I can go see it 
and maybe talk to some of the people there and get an idea for how they see things. It's 
going to be strange I am sure. This is a chance to gain a different perspective of life 
and of the world, one of the reasons I wanted to do this trip in the first place. 
The meeting went long, so we were almost late for our project today at the all boys 
orphanage called hogar de christo. Today we were only supposed to teach the older boys, 
but the younger ones didn't have school. So we taught both groups. This was difficult 
because the two age groups are at very different levels of English. We ended up splitting 
into to groups. The older boys just wanted to learn more verbs and we taught the younger 
boys more numbers. I am impressed by these boys. They are so eager to learn and to 
participate. They wrote everything down we put on the board. I really love all of them. 
They just remind me of David and Steven. Just silly boys, they are the same in every 
country. There is one actually that is so much like David, he could be his Latino 
doppelganger. What I like the most about that place is how they act so much like a 
family. They are just a giant family of boys and one little girl,the jefe's daughter. I 
am really glad we found them and that I get to work with them. Also, it's helping my 
Spanish so much! 
Anyways, that's all I have for tonight. We have a long day tomorrow! But it will be good, 
I hope. I love you! 
Amber 

This is the group and a couple more at the dinner last night.  The government guy is in 
blue plaid at the front.