Friday, September 26, 2008

El Trecera semana a Pumamarca

Week three and we're finally getting into some sort of routine......

Lunes, 22 Septiembre
1st and 2nd graders english on the monday as usual. Our lesson plan for the day was numbers and colours. So we chanted the numbers from 1 to 10, ran around the classroom in a train and tagged colours and threw balls at each other in an attempt to teach the young ones their numbers. After doing the 1.5 hour walk up to the school that morning... it certainly was no easy feat. But its made it all worthwhile when I was walking across the field and one of the 6 year olds came running up to me yelling..."amiga amiga.... one two three four five".

Martes, 23 Septiembre
Another one of those days where we get nothing done. It was "Students day". We weren't scheduled to take any classes that day and the fencing was under control. Most of us spent an hour or so in the kindy class watching them dance, eat, sing and then dance around the piñada. At about noon, all the kids came out of class and set up their chairs around the field. The teachers of all the grades and the principal of the school put on a couple of dances of the children. But no, it didn't end there. All the vols were sitting around watching the show and we got dragged onto the field for a dance too. And then of course.. there was the piñadas for the rest of the grades. These were set up on the stage and somehow all 150 kids were able to squeeze onto the stage and under the piñadas ready to pounce on all the goodies. As is traditional, most of a kids had a go at hitting the piñada blindfolded. There were a few of the inevitable thuds as some of the others got hit instead of the piñada and of course all of us have the piñada song tune stuck in our heads as we very quickly realised that the whole piñada thing can be a very very very long affair.

Miercoles, 24 Septiembre
A productive day at school with english for the 5th and 6th graders. We started class with brainstorming words in english for animals, food and colours and then got each of the kids to stand up and frame sentences with "I like ... ". We took it a step further with the 6th graders and got them to make little booklets with things that they like which they will read out in class next week. After this, we had hygiene as usual and then more festivities as it was Mark's (volunteer manger) birthday and Beth's (volunteer who has been here for 3 months) last day. The kids again brought their chairs out to the field and then there were speeches and more speeches and flowers and more flowers and cake (1 cake was amazingly enough to feed all 150 students) and then both Mark and Beth stood and endured 150 snotty hugs and kisses from all of the children.

Jueves, 25 Septiembre
At home all day today..... only had cooking classes with the lovely Santusa and Spanish classes. The menu was Qinua soup, Aji chicken thingy and milo caramel cake. We all helped Santusa... peel the onions and potatos, shred the chicken, cut the cheese, skin the beans .... and 3 hours later we all had a feast. The Qinua soup was one of the best I've tasted so far... and the chicken.... to die for! The cake... even better.... we were practically licking the caramel off it.. I kid you not. And then I spent most of the afternoon and evening packing and stressing about tomorrow....

.... the 4 day Inca Trail ...
wish me luck!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

All the best to you (my little baby), I hope you can make it to the Inca trail ... take it easy, dont stress too much ...