Prefe Briana!

Top of Chulucanas! I'm a giant!

 Wow! Where do I begin with my last couple of weeks...?? Guess life finally got busy, maybe even too busy!! I'm finally in a full on day to day routine, causing time to just fly bye! My weekly schedule looks about like this:

Back half of our house, my room is on the left!

Monday: Wake up at 5:30 to work out and have 2 hours to myself before I have to be at school at 7:30. I have three 1.5 hour classes (2C, 2A, 4B) with an hour and half break between my 2nd and 3rd period classes. Most of my teaching time is spent pronouncing words over and over again, stating significance, writing examples on the board and attempting to make students actually listen to me. I get home to Lacie and Chantelle where we make lunch together. Most of which consists of a lot of vegetables, chicken, and rice all mixed up in a pan with really good unknown spices. Siesta time is often spent with random visitors (mainly friends, yes we have friends, TONS actually, most of which guys and non of which call ahead of time nor understand what overstaying their welcome means) or university students needing things translated for them including their physics or statistics books (why the teacher just doesn't use a book in SPANISH is beyond us!).

Looking out towards the street of our house!

Tuesday: 5:30 wake up, 2B class, then off to the University for my 45 minute English class to a group of Argrodustrial students. My university classes are spent speaking more English, but also spent repeating myself over and over again, working on pronunciation, and doing listening activities. Then I am off to the Seminarian to teach 10 Seminaristas an hour and a half of the most basic English you can imagine. I walked in the first class and asked how much English they knew, got a blank stare so asked in Spanish and was given the answer of "Hello," that was all they knew. So we started with the ABC's! The sad part is all of them took 5 years of English in Secondario school, similar to what I do everyday. The problem is with their school system, after all is said and done they get about 45 minutes of English class a week (after teachers are 15 minutes late, take 10 minutes to plan what they are going to teach that day, 15 minutes to lecture about who knows what, and the last 5 minutes to chill), often times by a teacher that himself doesn't speak English, no wonder they learn nothing! Tuesday afternoon is spent similar to Monday with dinner at the Bishops house!

View from the Obispado of the street, plaza, and Cathedral

Wednesday: Can't get up at 5:30, too tired, get up at 6:30. Have my 5A, 3A, 5B classes, back to back, home by 1:00. Normally go out to lunch Wednesdays, for 5 soles ($2) a person, why not occasionally splurge! Have I told you how amazing food is in this country?? Wednesday night, often times we find someone that wants to feed us, yes people here love to cook for us, it's amazing! Then before bed we have our weekly community meeting and prayer.

Thursday: 5:30 wake up, breakfast normally consists of a banana with peanut butter (we have a PB obsession here), yogurt that you drink, the 18 sole ($7) box of cereal we bought in Piura with milk you buy warm, or a hard boiled egg. Head to school for my 4A, 4B tutoria class, then 1B, done by 11:50 :). Thursday's we go to Chantelle's host families restaurant for free lunch, so good! Then I have 4 classes that afternoon in the University!

Sunset over Chulu!

Friday: Attempt to wake up at 5:30, my walk to school takes me about 12 minutes, consists of saying "buenos dias" to every person I pass and every moto driver asking if I would like a ride. I have my 4B PFRH (persona, familia, relationes humanas) class, 3B, free block, 1A. The afternoon is spent like Monday and Tuesday.

Weekends here for most don't begin till Saturday night, so that is the night to go out, and we've sure done a good job and making sure that happens every week. But, Friday we often spend drinking on streets with friends, having friends over, going to watch Peru play Chile in the most popular club in Chulucanas with the owner, who we've made friends with. or staying in to watch a movie with a bottle of wine! Saturday day lately has been spent exploring Puira (where there is a Starbucks, Chile's and Pizza Hut), other small pueblos, the country side, the rivers, or cooking with friends. Sunday is spent recovering from not getting home till 6 am, church, and drinking more. But, unlike most Peruvians we do have to work on Monday's and don't believe in just not going due to drinking too much all day Sunday.

Drinking green mango juice for St Patty's Day!

Other fun facts of the past couple of weeks...I got bit by a dog, we lost electricity for a few days so had to cook with headlamps, we still lose running water often, our roof leaks waterfalls, we have a river in our street 4 feet deep when it rains that we have to swim through to get to our house, I have an infected bug bite on my arm that required a trip to the hospital, our internet goes out, the list continues but so does life here! It's all just part of the adventure, right?