UC Davis Blum Center for Developing Economies

This is an entry from my journal on July 5th: July 5th, 2018 Yogurt at breakfast! No coffee though Came to the site and they’re still making the cage Finishing the script for education After lunch me, Semaj and Hannah got the supplies ready for the lesson and what we need We went to leave and we were locked into the Polideportivo! We decided that one of us would wait for Evan to come open it to put out the trash and bring the materials Hannah and I left while Semaj stayed but then realized the outside door only led to the backs of people’s homes and lots of dogs So then we just waited until Evan got there and took a moto down after we bought cakes and animal crackers!(after I found 2 soles in the bottom of my backpack) All the places we went to print were closed so then we went to Jorge and remembered he talks a lot (we only had ten minutes) We printed and got out of there in ten minutes thankfully but then we ran into Eliseo and he waved us over But he was offering us ICE C...

On June 25th, we had been there for less than a week, I was still adapting but getting used to the way things were. The day before we went to the market they had every Sunday and I ate Cuy for the first time while a stray dog sat and watched me, that was interesting. We had a meeting with the principal of the school for the lessons we would be teaching the elementary school kids. As far as the reservoir, the site was cleared and we tested the soil by doing a penetrometer test that reveals how strong the soil is. We used weights from the gym and a member on the team to figure out if there was any deformation of the soil. We were beginning excavation for the reservoir on the 25th and decided on a dome top for the reservoir because that’s what the Peruvians wanted and felt comfortable building even though we made all of our calculations and agreed on a flat top reservoir previously. I soon realized that it’s difficult to make plans there. The meeting with the principal was at 8 am and als...

June 20th was the first day the Engineers Without Borders Peru team got to La Huaylla, Peru. We were all very tired. We had stayed in the Lima airport the night before and didn’t get any sleep. It was a lot to take in since everything was so different. I had never been in a place where there were no English speakers. The infrastructure was very makeshift, looking like it might just crumble down during an earthquake. There were also stray dogs everywhere. We saw where we were staying, it was called the Polideportivo, it was an indoor soccer field surrounded by what seemed like hotel rooms. There weren’t many people living there, perhaps one family and one single man. The owner also kept guinea pigs caged by the field. We had met the Peace Corps. Volunteers in the area and Jorge, the head of the municipality who was in charge of the reservoir project, at the airport. My stomach had not adjusted to the food or maybe the water yet, and I was having stomach problems. We had three meals tha...