Trek The Planet

A couple months back I had the chance to volunteer with Bridges , a program that helps build basic infrastructure in impoverished areas in Lima. I learned that people who don't have other places to go set up makeshift homes in the hilly outskirts of Lima. These makeshift communities offer a very hard life, even access to clean water means carrying water on foot from further down the hills as water delivery can't make it up to where these communities have sprung up without better roads. Without basic infrastructure the social programs that aim to help with community development don't apply. It's a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation, until the community qualifies as a legitimate community the help to make living conditions better are not available. This is where the Bridges program comes in. From building stairs to make access to hillsides better and improving dirt paths into navigable roads they help set up the basics to get the makeshift communities qualified as

Yikes! We have been really good at not keeping up with the blog, and especially so since there have been so many bloggable moments! A quick catch up! Kevin worked a lot, we went to Maine for Christmas/(South American) summer break, went skiing at Bretton Woods, Abby broke her leg (not while skiing!) -> surgery -> crutches for months, we GOT ENGAGED!, back to Peru for the second half of the semester, Abby is learning to walk again. Life in Lima has been different without the ability to move around as easily as we'd enjoyed last year but we've been up to the challenge (with a lot of help from our friends). Kevin learned how to make the ATM work in Spanish so we can still pay for stuff, the grocery store does delivery, we take more cabs, we've learned to navigate the health care system. It's working. But where has the time gone? It doesn't feel like I year but our time in Peru is down to just weeks now. This has us thinking about what's we'll be