Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Week 4 at Pumamarca

Martes, 30 Septiembre
So upon return from the Inka Trail and after a good nights sleep and a shower... it was back to school the next day for some more manual labour. As we do not normally teach on tuesdays, it was a day for fencing and other random construction jobs. We're nearly finished with the garden fence, but we also took down the Kindy fence and were re-doing it again. This took up all of the morning...
In the afternoon it was spanish classes and in the evening it was the last supper with all the vols who finished their month with Peru's Challenge.

Miercoles, 1 Octubre
English class with the 5th and 6th graders. It is always very rewarding to teach these classes as the kids are very cluey. Julia, one of the other volunteers had sponsored Spanish-English, English-Spanish dictionaries. Our lesson plan for the day was to finish off the "I likes..." and then show the kids how to use the brand spanking new dictionaries for referencing. They were a little dissapointed when they found out that the dictionaries were not presents but were for the new library/ computer room that we had just finished painting.
Next was hygenie and then Phys. Ed. with the 3rd and 4th grade. As most of us were still pooped from the Inka Trail and didn't really have it in us to run around with the kids for an hour and a half... we decided to shoot hoops with the kids. As is usual with the young ones, it was a chaotic hour and half.
Being the last day up at school for 10 of the other volunteers who started in September with me... it was then time for the usual farewells and tears. The Director of the school gave a speech and then all the volunteers got cards, huge bunches of flowers, their certificates and 150 hugs and kisses each...
The mood was somber as we drove back down to the volunteer casa (being the last drive down for most) ... but the moods picked up when we got home to a house filled with Santusa cooking...

After a hearty lunch... Cathy, Mikael and me headed back up to Pumamarca for house visits. Our job for the afternoon was delivering and setting up beds for the two families of Marie-Luis and Elena who are sponsored by Project for life. Both girls are about 15 years of age and have about 4-5 siblings and each have to share their beds. So we set about carrying the beds and them together. After about an hour we done and finishing up when we were invited back to Louis' house.

Peru's Challenge had donated roof tiles to Louis so that he could build a better house for his family and in exchange he was helping Peru's Challenge with some construction work around the community. So, as a thank you.. Louis invited us all back to his house to see the progress on the house and for some thank you Chicha. So we all sat around and took happy snaps with the children of the casa and about 10 mins later we were brought big bowls of food. Unfortunately, the three of us volunteers had to politely decline as we had just had the huge Santusa lunch. When we were finally permitted to leave.... we were greeted at the entrance by about 20 people. Unknown to us... Louis and family had decided to have an impromptu inaugration of the house. Cathy and Mikael got to cut the ribbon.. and Mark broke the bottle of beer as is the tradition. They then announced that we were now the "GodParents" of the house. So Cathy, Mikael and myself are now proud "GodParents" of a house in Pumamarca.....

Click here for more photos from week 4 at Pumamarca...

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