Chau pescau Peru

Well as I said goodbye to my students and teachers last week it was a tear jerking day. I had learned from the teachers as well as the students and they will have a place in my heart forever. We finished off our last weekend at home just hanging out and having a chillaxing weekend. We went out for a drink and then to La Lucha for the best chicharrón sandwich ever!! We all said our goodbyes and on Sunday I headed out to Cusco. 

I got to Cusco after a 21 hour bus ride and met up with a mutual friend in the bus station. She showed me to the house, her aunts, where I'd be staying the night before I headed out to trek for 5 days and 4 nights to Macchu Picchu. Gabi was very friendly and I felt so comfortable in her aunts house and even got to sleep in a big comfy bed before I headed out into the wilderness. 

I woke up at 3 am and got ready to head to meeting point by 340. We drove for 4 hours to our starting point in Mollepata. After breakfast and getting divided into our groups we headed out for the first part of our hike. I would soon realize that I should have trained a lot more. The first two days were hard because it was new and we were going all uphill. Our second day was hiking to our highest point, 4,650m, Salkantay. It took me 3.25 long hours to hike up but by the time I was up there, it was so worth it. Cold but worth it. 

The rest of our trek was downhill, which proved to be harder on my knees than originally thought. Day 3 was probably the hardest after all of us were sore and tired, but told it was our holiday day. We were entering the jungle area and it was mainly flat or downhill and only had 5 hours to hike until lunch and then drive to camp, relief from 10-11 hour hike day before. We arrived at our campsite in Santa Teresa and I loved this night. 

Santa Teresa was warmer and my sleeping bag+blanket combo didn't have to work so hard. Plus as soon as we got to camp we all got our suits and headed to the thermal baths to relax!! After our dinner, bonfire and dance party night it was time for bed and last day of walking. 

Day 4 started out with ziplining and ended with a 3 hour walk to aguas calientes, base of Macchu Picchu. We were happy to have a bed, shower and get to see the icing on the cake in the an, lost city of the incas. 

After 4 days and 4 nights we finally arrived to our destination. I only got 6 blisters and shot heels in my boots, not so bad for beating my feet up. ;)  Early wake up to be first in line at 4am and get up to the mountain to open gates at 6 am. Through the morning fog one could still see the wonder of the city built by an ancient civilization that simply disappeared. 

I spent 6 hours at this site exploring all and taking my time to soak it all in. After this amazing experience we took the train back to the next city and bus to Cusco. I left Sunday and arrived today in Lima. This is my last night and I have just had a lot of time to reflect on my trip. I have learned a lot about myself and about what I want in the future and sad to see this time end, but glad to get back and put what I have learned to good use. 

Thanks to all those reading this and chau chau for now. 

4th of July in Lima

Well besides being late everything is going well here in Lima. We had our 4th of July party at our house and had an American menu: burgers, potato salad, buffalo dip, guac, salad, alfajores, Jell-O shots with pisco (NOT recommended) and an American flag of fruit. 

Alfajores below

We played some card games and helped share our Independence Day with those here. I sang the star spangled at my school and shared a bit of how we celebrate it and what we eat, etc. They do have their Independence Day also in July (28) and they celebrate all month. They wear pins representing their country and fly flags in businesses and houses. Very patriotic. With all the people over at our house we got to spend some time with new friends, my host mom and bf never had blueberries!, and we played a few drinking games. We took fiesta upstairs at 2:30am and I went to bed and they continued until 4:30-5 am. Long nightlife here!

For the last few years I have not been home to celebrate a 4th and have been out of country now 2 in last 3 years so I've have fun getting to celebrate and share with others!!

It is our last week of our program and I'll be heading out to cusco on Sunday. I'll write again to recap this week before I head out!!

By the way thanks for reading everyone. So good to know these posts are being read and shared!!

Chau chau 

Nasca lines

This last weekend the girls and I travelled to see the famous Nasca lines in Nasca Peru. We left after a long week of work and school and all of us passed out on the bus. I had a double seat to myself up until Ica (4 hours in) and then as I was in the back talking I noticed a lady trying to see if my seat was hers. I told her the number and she asked if I could move to let her husband sit with her and I didn't mind so I did. This also happened on the way home from Paracas except the guy wanted to sit with his girlfriend and his ticket was for the VIP downstairs so of course I was comfortable and had my own tv with selection of movies. :) 

Besides this bus trip our adventure got started as soon as we got to Nasca. My name was being shouted by a Peruvian man, our hostel guy, and we took two vehicles the 4 or so blocks to our lodging. We got there booked our tour for the next day and headed to bed. We reserved a triple and a double for ourselves and I was in the triple with Alice and Julia. Our room smelled like pea and chlorine bleach mixted together and we found ants on the floor. This wasn't all bad. We shut the bathroom door and laughed about the bugs, smell and the damn annoying roosters crowing all night. Seriously all night (must have been  be blind)! We woke up in the morning I took the one towel that was supposed to be provided for all and got in the Hot shower!! As I got out we got a knock on our door and it was Dani who stayed with Colby in the double room. She came in not happy and we would shortly find out why. Besides no sleep and girl problems she goes, "Guess who the f*** got bed bugs last night?!" Huge gasp from us all. 

This was the one she got a picture of and as soon as she felt the bite she went to turn the lights on, after telling her roommate, and they both saw about 20 or more under the sheets. They checked Colby's bed and only found 1. They both took scalding hot showers put their clothes in plastic bags and slept in the fetal position on top of the blanket on Colby's bed. When we found that out we were surprised that they didn't come to our room. By the am the smell was gone and the ants were harmless, compared to their experience. 

Dani went to the reception twice in the night and no one was there and in the morning we got ready as fast as we could and headed down to talk to them. As we met the lady on the stairs we mentioned it to her and immediately she said it was a bug that lived in the plants and didn't bite. After Dani tried to show her bugs that live in the dark during daylight she continued to not believe us. The hostel price was cheap enough that we weren't worried about being able to afford it or not. After about an hour, multiple phone calls, arrival of another worker, angry Spanish conversations between us all the girls did not pay for their bed and we headed out for breakfast. I did later write a review for the hostel and I think we would have felt better if they would have started it off with, "I'm sorry for the inconvenience lets work this out," or something similar. When we got to Paracas the picture shows what Dani now has on her body. Anti-itch cream to the rescue. 

Despite the adventure in the hostel we did get to see the Nasca lines, Palpa lines and the museum of Marie Reiche. 

The desert was awesome, warm and had fresh air that was a relief from being in the city. Overall the trip was good and I'm glad we went. 

Today in class I taught the verb to have and reviewed with my kids and it went very well. I also sang the Peel bananas song (peel bananas peel peel bananas, etc). I almost forgot but did share a bit of our history with the kids and sang the Star-Spangled Banner for them and they sang their national hymn for me too, so cute!! Too bad I forgot to record it or anything! :(

Time's winding down and I booked my trek and now tomorrow I'll book my bus ticket to Cusco!! Happy 4th to everyone, will write Saturday for sure to recap our 4th of July party!

Chau chau

P.s we didn't!! Didn't bring any bugs back with us!

Overwhelmed meets tranquility

I´m normally an independent person, doing stuff on my own, but at the moment I am feeling overwhelmed. The first week that I arrived in Lima I was by myself and met people along the way and just kind of flew by the seat of my pants. I was ok with this and knew from previous travel experience that I had to be flexible and go with the flow. Since I have started my program I have started to feel a little claustrophobic. Don´t get me wrong I get along with the people in my group well, but with being in the city all day, not really leaving our house, day in and day out the same routine I am kind of going a little crazy. I felt very stressed and needed to get out of the city for some fresh air.

For this trip I wanted to take in all the sites and do what I could while here. I teach my kids about Peru and the Nasca lines and was hoping to go there for myself. Well the other group members had the same idea, so we bought our bus tickets on Wednesday. The original plan was to buy our tickets and then head to the center for a ´birthday´ dinner, a few days late, to celebrate; however that is NOT how it panned out. After our class finished at 1 pm we met up with our director and at about 2 I finally tried to book my tickets, but met a dead end. Each time I tried, 3 times, I was met with an error page and we finally went to the mall to buy our tickets. I asked the lady at the mall if my card would be charged, she told me that if I received a code yes, but otherwise no. I felt relieved until I checked my bank account. I had been charged for those attempts and now had 3 extra tickets. I contacted my bank to see if they could stop the charges, but was told they couldn´t. Hopefully they will realize that it was an error and not charge my account, currently pending.

We finally made it to Nasca after a stressful Friday, one teacher didn´t show up, miscommunication. As we got to Nasca our agent at the hostel picked us up and we were now able to rest and get ready for the tour of the Nasca lines, Palpa lines and the museum we had just booked. Our experience in Nasca will be my next post as it will take some time to fill in.

After Nasca lines tour we traveled to Paracas, coast town, and finished our trip. This city is such a welcome and a break from our city life that I do not want to leave. We got to Kokopelli hostel, HIGHLY recommended and just relaxed. Slept like a rock, welcome after Nasca trip, and spent Sunday reading and having time to myself to think and reflect. Love waking up to the ocean! Nothing better as of now. We are off to Lima and back to work in the morning. Stay tuned for our story of Nasca.

Better day

With all the nerves I worked up on Monday night I was relieved that I was not met with frustration and or any animosity feelings when I arrived at school on Tuesday. I got there about 930 and I got to teaching about 10:00 am. I was planning on doing a quick review of the alphabet and then going through our 8 words we learned and playing a pictionary game to add to the review. I also had planned a mini lesson of numbers, which they already knew, and we were going to play a game: bizz buzz. This didn't go very well because the students were gone after 45 minutes. I had mentioned that the material we are supposed to cover in our short time would be too much and all of us are on different pages on what to teach and when. After this lesson we ate lunch and then headed to our meeting with the teachers, since we had a short day. 

View from outside my school

Our meeting with the teachers went better and we actually worked on a basic conversation for them. We went through it together and had them repeat after us and then we broke up into small groups to practice together. For me this worked very well, worked with my cooperating  teacher, fourth grade teacher and another teacher (not sure what level).  Each of them practiced the conversation with me where I lead them into it and then they took on the role themselves. It was cool to see them doing this with each other. For the hour we were there we practiced this and I tried to phonetically write out the conversation in Spanish to help them on their pronunciation. When they went back and reviewed it, it worked well! I did not add vocabulary as some others did because I didn't want to overwhelm them and wanted them to feel comfortable with one thing first then add to it to make it more complex. Also that afternoon at our afterschool program I made a song with our conversation that we will use next class with our teachers. I used the tune of a song I taught to my 7th graders this year!

After Tuesday things went well and we came into Wednesday ready for classes. I was excited to have another one of our previous classes because I really liked one teacher and got what he was saying. Today I was kind of sad that it did not go as well. However our 2nd class today was new and very interesting also. Our teacher took more of a sociological/philosophical approach to the material and drew us in. His main focus was to ask ourselves and challenge ourselves to see the problem in front of us, narrow it down, find out who exactly is involved and face the reality that is in job. I got myself asking questions about this program that I have asked myself before and while on this trip: who am I?, why?, what am I doing this for?, by asking these questions I can come to a conclusion and hopefully get all of what I desire instead of parts and bits/pieces. We were asked to think about what is actually possible to do in what's left of our program, after we opened Pandora's box. So I am going to gather some information from my teacher, from above questions, and bring it to class Friday to add to our focus. 

Besides this I have now booked tickets to Nazca, Paracas and back to Lima for this weekend. We leave Friday after class!  Also I got to talk to my professor and work on a research project of his, self-efficacy of teachers traveling abroad. Finally I found out yesterday that one of my friends is coming to Lima in about 2 weeks and he'll be here for a week, Santiago for a week and Cuzco for a week too. I was glad to hear it and also I gave him some contact information of a good friend of mine in Santiago who can help him out!! 

Tonight we are going to celebrate at 12 for our mom's birthday tomorrow. We bought her flowers tonight! Chau chau for now. Nos vemos mañana. 

Overstepping a little?

Today as we got to the school I was not sure what was planned for me to do. I got there when they were doing mathematics class. They were doing multiplication tables and writing down the numbers that Miss Norma, teacher, was dictating. This was surprising challenging for some of the students even in their own language. After the dictation we wrote sentences to figure out multiplication. 

The students have to copy a lot of stuff down into their notebooks and then do the same problem with different numbers in order that they can relate the formula to different numbers and sums. We taught them the trick with multiplying by 9s, using your hands. 

Today was a shorter day and they left at 12:00, which actually ended up being closer to 1:00. After class we had a meeting with the teachers in our school to discuss the possibility of a mini study session with them in English. We talked about what they wanted us to teach them what would be the most beneficial. Different teachers had different opinions on what to teach and I actually think the majority of them do not have the desire to learn English. I personally would love the opportunity to practice a new language if given, but I don't know when these adults would use the English so I can understand their hesitation. They want their kids to learn some vocabulary, pronunciation and basic sentences, but with only 8 school visits left I don't know how much we can really do. They cannot expect their kids to learn the language, but to only get some repetition in speaking and listening as well as reading and writing through activities with us. 

The thing is, similar to what I mentioned in an earlier post, we do not have a lot of time to teach English as their schedules are already filled to max as it is. It was mentioned that the teachers should suspend their lessons and take advantage of having us here for the kids and get the most out of it, but I don't know how I'd feel about that if I was in their place. As a teacher I love teaching my content area and it is a little difficult to give up my students to someone else, even a sub. I understand we are only here for a total of 12 class days and originally thought we would be teaching everyday all day, but not what we found out and now our schedule is a little confusing. 

Today we talked and I kind of felt we had the same conversation with multiple people and that we were talking in circles. Not everyone is on the same page in our program. Everyone has different expectations of what we are to accomplish here, even us volunteers. We are taking classes and have to do two projects for that and then go to school and teach English for however much time given and whatever theme given. I did try to clear up my schedule with my teacher today; Mondays 9:30-11 and Thursdays the same, because the other day we are there is busy with computer class where kids are in and out if the classroom. I was ok with this because it was more than 1 hour 1 time a week and I am flexible with what teacher has to offer. This changed this afternoon after a conversation again. So now I am supposed to be teaching for I am not sure how long and the teacher is supposed to go along with it. This is the part that I am a bit sketchy about. I would feel like someone is trying to step on my toes and that as the home teacher I am getting told what to do in my own room. So I'm nervous for tomorrow to what will happen. I have a good relationship with the teacher and hope that this change doesn't upset people. Oh by the way all our kids leave early again tomorrow and have tests Wednesday-Friday and need to study in class...so?

Tonight I finished my cards to teach numbers tomorrow and am going to review our activity from last class and then go on to the new material and play activities to keep then engaged!! I hope we can figure this out and do or best for this community while we are here. A ver. Tomorrow will tell. Off to bed. Wish me luck!

Chau

Teaching English for the 1st time

Well it's been a few days since I've posted, so I'll get right on that. Thursday was our 2nd day with the kids and it was very different than the first. We decided to leave a little later from the college and arrived about 930 at our school. As soon as we got there I got to my classroom and the teachers told me that it was time for English and that I was going to teach the alphabet. They already had the alphabet on the board and I just added the end of the song; now I know my ABCs..., and I was off. 

The students I have are about 8 years old and some know some words in English/ numbers but cannot actually relate it to something when they see it. For example I have a girl in my class that can count to 30, but if I showed her a number more than 10 she probably wouldn't recognize it. I am so excited to teach these kids a bit of my language, but the fact that I came here and only have 11 days with the kids and of those days we get 1 day a week and 1 hour that day to teach English. 

So Thursday I got to my class and taught the alphabet song, they took out their alphabet cards and we constructed words that I dictated letter by letter. We did some 3 letter words and I would walk around and monitor (something I haven't seen a lot of here) and we did a few challenging words that were longer. We went through the pronunciation of each word and the translation into Spanish. Something that was a review for me was to write in cursive! I did a good job though. I wrote words we did in English, Spanish, and tried to write the pronunciation. It's a bit difficult to think of pronunciation when there isn't a sound like it in their language. 

After I did this in my 3rd grade room I went upstairs and did the same in one of the two 4th grade classrooms. Look at that good cursive!!

I didn't mind this too much and liked having kids motivated and energized to learn, but the structure and organization of the classrooms and lessons are a little bit frustrating. We were told that we would be teaching English to our students at this school, but we were not told that it wouldn't be a lot. These teachers already have a schedule and are  fitting English into their schedule now , so we have to work around this. My teacher is working with me to kind of take advantage of having us here and getting the most out of us as she can. However she is telling us what we are teaching without much planning time. I would love to plan a lesson to teach to my kids and use in my class, but with some disorganization the ideas kind of just come up whenever. For example we taught the alphabet last time and will be teaching the verb "to be" next class and not sure what else. Now I would probably do it a different way; alphabet first, colors, numbers, and probably a basic conversation, but I'm going with the flow.

 

So as this next week approaches I have been talking with the girls in my group and we have all come to similar conclusions. This is not a US school and the organization isn't entirely there, but they do mean well. We are going to hope to give some input on our teaching as well as get an idea/schedule of what we will be asked to teach and when so we can be a little more prepared. 

Besides our English teaching classes we have been taking classes at the college and they have gone well. We just finished our teaching English class and have had one class of the history of Peru and one class dealing with the social change and education in Peru. These classes have been very informative and interesting. For our TEFL class we are asked to do a project that we will work on with our kids at Villa Salvador. I chose to practice numbers, colors and already know we are doing the verb to be, so I will have my students do a self portrait when I'm done with the course and describe themselves with 3-4 sentences. It doesn't seem like a lot, but with 9 more class days and not sure of how much time it is more than enough. The rest of the week we spent doing some sightseeing. We went to the centro and the girls did some souvenir shopping and I maintained control!! Oofdah that was a bit tough, now I would like to go back and buy something now. 

So our food we have been eating mainly consists of rice, bread and other stretches. I am pretty sure that some clothes might not fit on way back home. :) Well anyway I am not sure what happened but myself and the 2 girls I am staying with had an interesting Saturday. I had eating some Domino's pizza the day before and was thinking that it wasn't setting well with me since I woke up 2 times to go to the bathroom Friday night. I got up and still didn't feel the greatest, but before class I felt better. When we got to class I asked the girl I shared the pizza with how she was feeling and she said never better and I was stumped. Ok so the crazy part was, after class we wanted to get some supplies for our classes so we all walked to the mall to grab some stuff. This is about a 5 minute walk from campus and 10 minutes from our house. The girls that I am staying with and I eventually got our stuff (longest time in a grocery store EVER!!) and walked home. I was wearing a sweatshirt and was swearing profusely. I had to go to the bathroom and the girls told me they did also. Well we had to walk home and the whole way back while swearing and trying not to think of this, all I thought about was Bridesmaids. I was saying please make it home, don't have an accident like that! Hahah embarrassing no?! Well we all did make it home, ran to the bathroom ( I ran downstairs and other 2 upstairs: 1 had to wait) and felt a little relief. Afterwards we had a laugh on how it affected us all at the same time ( but not me, I had it the night before)! We took some medicine and were all cured by that night. This picture sums up how we feel and how the rest of our group feels too. Admit it, it's real life. 

Saturday we went out with our family and chilled and then tonight we did the same. We watched the USA play in the copa mundial and I was so excited when we went up 2-1, but not excited that with 1 second left Portugal tied the game. Argh!!! Hopefully we can stay ahead of them, sorry Ronaldo. Also the girls and I made tacos for our family with homemade guacamole! Scrumptious. 

So I am on my 3rd week here and off to 3 days of teaching and 2 of classes this week. Keep on reading and I'll keep in track of updating! Chau chau