Martes (Tuesday) and Paola

Today was only my third day of teaching.  I'm getting more comfortable at it, but I have so much respect for all of my teachers.  It's hard to come up with something interesting to teach them each day that isn't too much of a review.  They really need work on pronunciation, although they write everything pretty well.  I still didn't have a whiteboard in the classroom, but I bought a notebook yesterday of Fresita (Strawberry Shortcake) and used that to write down the lesson.  The little girls said they were envious of my Fresita notebook.  ;)

I really wanted to learn the students names, so I took pictures of them when they came in the classroom and made sure I matched them with their name that they wrote down for attendance.  Some of the names are quite different from English names, so I was having a little bit of a hard time remembering how to say them.  Anyway, I thought I would share a picture a day of one of my students.  They were so cute when I took their pictures.  Some of them smiled shyly and some of them looked like, "What the heck are you taking my picture for?"  The girl I'm showing you today is Paola.  She is a good student and isn't one of the ones who acts up.  She is very sweet and smart.  I was sitting in the seat next to her yesterday since we have a very small table in the classroom where I am teaching them.  Today, someone wanted to sit next to her and she said, "No, that is where teacher is going to sit."  Such a sweetheart!

Paola, a student from my class of younger students at the school in Concepcion.

Today after the morning class, we took a combi back to Huancayo instead of a taxi.  Tino said that the taxi takes 30 minutes from Concepcion to Huancayo, a combi (like a small van) takes 45 minutes, and the bus takes an hour and twenty minutes.  I asked him how much the taxi costs since he said tomorrow he can't come to the school with us.  He has money from the government that he has been using to pay our transportation, so we don't really know how much it costs.  Anyway, he said that a taxi was 3 soles per person.  That's like a dollar per person for a 30-minute taxi ride.  Insane!  If taxis were like that in the US, I doubt anyone would have a car!  

I stayed at home this afternoon to try to get familiarized with photoshop and dreamweaver.  I'm slowly remembering what I learned about creating a website.  If anyone has any pointers, let me know!  I was just reading up on tutorials and it is slow going.  I did get some things accomplished though, so I felt good about that.  

I had my second Spanish lesson today.  I don't think I talked to much about my Spanish lesson yesterday, but she said that they had karaoke here in Huancayo.  I asked the other volunteers if they would come with me and they said they would come to watch me make a fool of myself.  I'm hoping that Leslie, Tino's niece and my Spanish teacher, will be able to come with us sometime.  My second lesson went really well.  I'm glad to be able to have some time to practice Spanish in a continuous conversation.  She was helping me with some of the verbs I have a harder time with, which is exactly what I wanted!  I have to write a story for my homework, so I have to get started with that soon.

After dinner, Ylva told me that Tino was going to take her to get yarn on Thursday and that I should come since I wanted to start the weaving lessons after her.  I'm so excited because I'm sure the yarn will be much cheaper than I can get it in the US and it's alpaca wool.  So nice!  I can't wait!  So sue me that I'm getting so excited about getting cheap wool to weave and knit.  :)

Backtrack to Last Night

Last night Tino had a talk with all of the volunteers and it turned quite hilarious by the end.  He was asking everyone what they thought needed to happen as far as discipline at the mountain school.  They have a lot of energy and end up talking to other students, rocking in their chairs, and standing in the windows.  The other volunteers also said that the kids would disrupt the other classes when they had their five minute break, so Franci said that there should be a bell for all the classes to get out and come back in.  Emil said we could get a cowbell and then Max said that we could put it around Emil's neck so they could hear us coming up the hill.  Everyone was dying laughing.  

After the group talk, I helped Tino with his English.  He asked me about the bell and asked if it was a "campana de vaca" (cowbell) that they were talking about.  I told him he was right and he said, "I thought I was following it right, but I wasn't quite sure."  Then he told me that they use those bells for alpacas here.  Then he was asking me questions about items in the kitchen.  If anyone can tell me what the piece of furniture is called that is in the kitchen and has glass in the doors so you can see the dishes, let me know, because I was at a loss for what this was called.  He was so excited though and kept saying we should stop and then he would ask another question.  We didn't leave the table until around 10:30 PM.