This weekend I milked a cow for the first time! I stayed with another Pitzer student in the indigenous community of La Esperanza. The community makes a living through selling embroidered goods, their crops, domestic house work, and carpentry. Their backyards are not gated off by their neighbors, but are open fields. Our family had cows, pigs, chickens, cats, and a newborn litter of puppies. We went to the cemetery on DĆa de los Muertos with the entire extended family. The next day, we hiked up Imbabura Volcano through the fog. At night made humitas, or corn tamales by grounding fresh corn into masa and wrapping it in leaves from plants outside. It was a great trip filled with lots of indigenous cultural knowledge!
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