poco a poco

School band

I MADE IT! I survived my 2 weeks of solo teaching! Boy do I now have so much more respect for all teachers, as well as a need to sleep for the next week I'm so exhausted! My first week included a lot of yelling, like a lot, a lot of frustration and a fun new adventure! Remember when you were in elementary school and had a substitute teacher for a day? Remember how mean kids were to the poor subs? Imagine that times three, plus there being double the amount of students in one room, it all being in Spanish, and when kids feel like you are ignoring them they just get out of their desks and poke you until you acknowledge them. But, on the other hand it was super fun to actually be able to do what I wanted to do with my classes. I didn't make them copy everything from the really not helpful text book, I didn't care what their notebooks looked like and what they wrote down verse didn't, I worked on reexplaining things to get them to understand better, played vocab and verb practice games, didn't kick kids out of class for not having their books, and tried to make full use of the time we had together.

My second week was way better, I somehow did something right the first week, because they respected me 10 times more. I actually didn't lose my voice from yelling nor did I think a vain was gonna pop out of my head. A few kids even came up to me after classes and told me I was a really good teacher or they liked my class that day! So, that was pretty awesome. But, non the less still exhausting due to late nights preparing for the next day, grading tests and billions of notebooks.

Bonfire in the yard

Other fun things: Learned how to drive a motorcycle! Our friend Javier taught us a couple weeks ago. I was a natural of course, Lacie and Chantelle were a little bit more freaked out by the idea so he sat on the back praying for his life the whole time with them! But, now we're all quite good, especially Chantelle, she's had lots of practice! Also, learned out to ride side sandal on a motorcycle, kind of scary the first 30 seconds.

Santisimo had a march for education. Every class choose different costumes to represent different ages in Peru history. My class were Incas!

May is the month of the Virgin Mary. At school, everyday a different class brings flowers to present to Mary and prays the rosary in honor of her and the holy family. Each neighborhood also has a statue of the Virgin, our neighborhood Mary came to visit us this week. Monday night the community was invited to our house to pray the rosary, a woman and her granddaughter showed up to lead us in prayer.

We've gotten real tight with the priests of San Jose Obrero, the Augustinian parish here. Yesterday we went to lunch with a couple of them, where we drank wheat beer, yes WHEAT, we were excited and ate delicious spicy ceviche (raw fish cooked from the acidity of limes), arroz con mariscos (like spanish paella, seafood and rice), seco de chavelo (fried mashed plantains with dried meat and veggies), and cachema (a type of fish grilled and served with onions and tomatoes) ALL amazing!! Then last night after mass we went out with them to a bar for pisco sours, they paid!

Mother's Day is also a huge deal here in Peru! On Wednesday they had a special mass for all the Mother's of Santisimo. On Friday, they held a specially lunch for the teachers and gave the mothers presents. Also on Friday, there was a huge party in the school. The mothers were greeted by the senior boys in suits with roses ready to escort the mothers into the party. Then each grade level choose students to sing a song, read a poem or do a dance in between raffling off baskets of random foods: pasta, milk, yogurt, crackers, etc. Today, I went to my host families for a special lunch of baby goat and rice.