COUNTRY: Peru
PROGRAM: GapBreak
PROJECT: Teaching & Building
WRITTEN BY: Elizabeth McInerney
Hola Amigos! We have officially been here for three weeks today, and it has been full of many adventures the past two weeks- exploring Cusco sites, getting our hands dirty in construction, and having laughs while we teach, create and play with the beautiful kids of Guillahuata.
We have began to get into a routine with our volunteering. Meeting at the Laundry (Tricia and Leias house) because it is mid way, where we walk down the main street to meet Nico and our bus driver. We struggle but appreciate our morning exercise, where we we are often met by a random tour guide who visited a few mornings trying to communicate to us using his Spanish (we don't know why he tries). We also saw a cow being walked passed just a few days ago which was pretty random. Our drive is a bumpy one, where we get to see the outskirts of Cusco, and where the children's families live. It definitely makes us realise how lucky we have it at home in Australia. Each morning we are greeted by the smiling faces of kids, often coming up for a high five and yelling "BUENOS DIAS AMIGOS" - with exaggeration of the syllables.
We teach Art, English and PE every week. Alex, Cat, and Marianna make the kindy kids laugh and smile with lessons trying to make caterpillars and playing duck, duck goose. Tricia, Nathan and Leia are always amazingly prepared and creative with their lesson plans for grade 3 and 4 making mobiles of their favourite things and successfully teaching english greetings. Nick, Freya and I have successfully taught our 12 gorgeous kids in grade 1 and 2 the colours in English, after first would show the kids a green card and they would just yell out RED. But they always got yellow right! Our first PE lesson was crazy, when Nick got out matresses to play high jump they would just pile up on them, or when actually attempting high jump fly like a super hero and land on the ground after the mattress. But each group has come to love the kids, although our lack of Spanish can be a barrier (thankgod for Nico).
Construction, although sometimes challenging, can actually be pretty relaxing after the kids. Over the past two weeks we have finished one job- redecorating a classroom. We firstly had to sandpaper all the walls and the roof which was exhausting and very dusty! A lot of us turning white (even Nico), and getting dust in our hair. We then painted the roof white, where we all ended up getting a few splatters of white paint on us. With me it was more like rain because of the amount of paint I put on my brush (ooops). We then all enjoyed painting the walls yellow with our roller brushes (a colour which was definitely an improvement from the "weird orangey pinky dull colour" - Freyas words), and the bottoms of the walls a brown-orange colour (which none of us liked). We had to scrub the floors like Cinderella, which then just ended up dusty when we sandpapered it after... :S but the next day we came it was varnished- so the room was done! It definitely looks so much better, and we all felt very proud. Other jobs we have done included painting the outside of a classroom white (where freya, nathan, alex and I enjoyed putting paint on each other), cleaning off and preparing bamboo for the roof of a kitchen we are now working on - where the boys have began to thatch the roof. We are definitely seeing progress.
We have also enjoyed ourselves in the afternoons and weekends doing our own exploring. We bought the 'Boleto Touristico Del Cusco" ticket which allows us in 16 sites over ten days. We have had it for nine and majority of us have three left. It has been awesome to go to museums and learn about the history of Cusco, learn traditions of royal mummies being taken out of the cemetery and involved in drinking, dancing and feasts during festivities. At Chinchero we saw how the women colour the alpaca wool to make the jumpers that so many of us have bought, as well as a beautiful Spanish church. Here Alex tried to convince me the plastic jesus was the real Jesus and he was buried in Peru. We saw some tradition Peruvian dancing and heard the Quechuan language as they sung and danced in some colourful, extravagant costumes - with one dances involving the women whipping the man and the man kicking her back (with a man accidentally kicking her skirt up). We have then been to numerous ruins including Saqsayhuaman ("sexy woman") which was awesome at twilight. Here we explored caves, and Nick thought it would be funny to hide in the middle and scare all of us girls in the pitch black - majority of us screamed, especially since it was so tight and we couldn't see a thing. At Moray we meditated in the middle of old farming ruins, also attempting to take a jumping photo where we all would of looked a bit funny by on lookers. All up we have been very busy taking various bus rides and lots of photos being our touristy selves. We also were able to fit seven people into a taxi, which is our record so far - which involved Nathan lying ontop of everyone.
So far on the trip only Marianna and I have been sick, where I "enjoyed" three nights in the Clinic with Salmonella. The group was amazing a visited which definitely helped with the home sickness which comes with being sick. Thankfully I am recovering out of the clinic now, and hoping no one else gets sick. So we are all behaving with our food choices and hygiene!
Xoxo Cholo (slang for Peruvian) girl
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