Profe

After my week with 3 year olds I knew that I never wanted to work with any kid under the age of kinder, unless they were my own… and only maybe. After some frustration with the administration not being timely with their communications and instructions for my next project, I finally got to go to my site for the next two weeks.
Imagine this scene, you walked into a room and you see a 16-year-old girl, scary I know! Well, times that by 43 and you have the number of 16-year-old girls I met today…that’s right, that’s almost 1 million teenage girls…terrifying. Why did I walk into such a hostile environment? I’ll tell you, I am charged with the task of making them listen, not only listen…. learn. I am there to teach them English. Here’s the thing, they want to listen, to want to be there, and most importantly they want to learn! It’s like a dream, all educators wish, hope, dream, and/or sell they souls for a classroom full of eager students. This means the students have already done half of my job for me. These are cognizant teens meeting me half way, how could I be so lucky. I came away from my morning with a new glow to my demeanor, which was something I really needed this morning. We had a half an hour recess at 1015 and I was immediately grabbed by some students to come play volleyball, keep in mind they had only known me for less than an hour. I had a great time, every time I did something well they were all very supportive, or course when I messed up, they made sure I knew that I had messed up. The icing on the whole morning was when I had to improve a small lesson and it went over perfectly. They were amazing, my goal is to learn all of their names, and so far I know a Jenny.
This afternoon I started an intercambios program where I meet with a local who is studying English and we spend half of our time practicing Spanish for me and the other half with English for her. We were paired by aged so we have many similar things to talk about. Our first meeting so today so we mostly only talked about this like how many brothers and sisters we have, our jobs and what we do on the weekend. I was able to help her practice a presentation she has to give for work, which is in English because she works for a tourism agency. I have asked her to take me to some of her favorite spots in the city for our meetings so I can practice my Spanish while also exploring the Peruvian side of Cusco.

No volunteering or intercambios tomorrow because it is a national holiday, Peruvian Impendence day. I am excited for all of the celebrations. I’m going to make sure I act as American as possible

Random factoid: I impressed my house chef because I went to an all Peruvian dance club and was the only gringo there it was a ratio of 300:1

La Cultura Cura