Peru! Week 1

As this posting will be the first in a long series of adventures this summer, I wish to begin with a brief comment that the main purpose of this blog is to provide myself a motivation for taking pictures and to make some sort (heaven knows how well I write in my journal) of record, and not, as some may assume, a method for “showing off” or “bragging”.  Mostly.

This last scholastic year I participated in a class whose purpose it was to design engineering solutions for some minor to important problems faced by the rural people of Peru, and then travel there for implementation.  My team of six was assigned to develop a cheap yet reliable water pump.  This initially seemed pretty dumb, considering the people it was for (the Uros floating islands) are surrounded by water.  But anyway, Peru!

The main Plaza in Cusco. Nice, touristy part of town.

Some slightly awkward GEO engineers looking over Cusco!

 We flew into Lima, then the next day to Cusco, where we would spend four nights.  The projects there were for a little village in the mountains, and not for my group, so we helped out and did stuff.  Like figure out those One-Laptop-Per-Child laptops and teach them to the teachers.  And move dirt. 

A pretty lame LAN party

Some kids

The place was like Hobbiton, in a Peruvian kind of way

A stove designed in like a day or something (the original plan fell apart)

And then I got woefully and horrifically sick for two days!  And we traveled to the village at the base of Machu Picchu!  More Peru stuff coming sometime in the future times!