My (Sam) experience shared some similarities with Aluinn’s, but also had differences that enabled us to come together at night and share. I had a lazy start to the day, with plenty of time before my workshop for the day. This enabled me and my group to walk around the town of Anduhuaylillas and explore the culture. After the short walk, seeing many stray dogs, we went to the local Jesuit school, Fe y Alegria. Upon walking in, there was a massive presentation going on, which I originally thought was a welcome party for us, which was terrifying. However, upon learning it was an opportunity for adults who didn’t attend college to obtain professional skills, it showcased how difficult it is for people to obtain the proper schooling and how different the career paths we tend to see in the states is from here. After walking in, we began our bakery workshop with local highschoolers, baking my personal favorite, carrot cake. There was a significant language barrier from the start, however that made the experience way more memorable. At the start, it was almost impossible to get anything done, we were all scrambling around trying to find the proper tools and begin work on our cake. Eventually we were able to assign roles to each person. I was in charge of dicing 6 of these relatively large carrots. While my role seemed minor, it allowed me to see how even through all of the struggles and difficulties we had getting there, we still made it work and powered through it to finish the cake. However, this was not the end of the struggles, the oven at the school went out right before cooking. This forced us to walk 20ish minutes to a local artisanal bakery. Amazingly, this was yet another blessing in disguise. We were able to see so much more of the culture by coming here. While we were waiting for the cakes to bake, we were able to not only share our own culture, in the way of hacky sack and dance moves, but also receive their culture. It showed an incredible bond that also went beyond words. After this, all of the groups went to separate afterschool centers, where despite similar experiences, it still gave unique insights into this incredible culture. Personally, I connected with a little boy named Jacob, who despite being half my size managed to showboat around me in soccer. While it may seem trivial, this further showed me how despite all of the differences we seem to have, there is an innate human ability to connect through shared interests and sport. After this, all of us joined back together to attend a mass in the town of Huaro. We walked into the church and were all immediately in awe of the beauty. But the actual purpose of us being there went beyond simply looks. The entire mass was in either Spanish or the local language, Quechua. While almost none of us were able to understand it, it wasn’t needed. The connection the local people had to the church was incredible. This was shown in one specific way to me, with two elderly Peruvian ladies, who despite being the only ones, sang all of the songs in Quechua. The language is incredibly melodic and didn’t require any faith to appreciate it. It was an amazing way to finish up this awesome day.