A little down time

We had over a week in between returning from Tony's and starting school, and it was a period of re-adjustment for me. Coming from Chaclacayo back to Las Delicias is certainly not as shocking as coming from the US was at first, but it is still a change--from green parks and paved highways in the mountain valley to the dusty streets of a pueblo joven. We had little to do that week, and we were both starting to get restless, especially when we heard from our fellow volunteers in Kenya who have been working at their official assignments for two months now and are well into the swing of things. A few of the things we did while waiting for school to start:

Got rid of the head lice, listening in the process to tons of salsa on the radio while combing through each other's hair. A lot of salsa, it turns out, is very explicitly about sex. "Don't take off your clothes, I want to do it myself" sounds odd to that upbeat salsa sound of trumpets and percussion.

Went to a meeting of the "volunteer network" in Miraflores. There were about twelve non-Peruvian volunteers there, mostly in their late teens or 20's, gathered for a little support and sharing and ice cream. I loved it because not only did I have a lot in common with them, but we all spoke different languages and had to communicate in Spanish, nobody's native language, to understand each other. There were 5 English speakers, 3 French speakers, 2 German speakers, an Italian, and a woman from Japan, all laughing about the weird things Peruvians do and the reasons we love this country. It was awesome!

Met up with Miguel, a friend of one of our friends from home who grew up in Peru. He's super nice and took us to a Pizza Hut in Miraflores, which is much nicer than Pizza Hut at home. We had pisco sours with our vegetarian pizza. Afterwards we walked around Miraflores and found a park-plaza where people were out dancing salsa at night--so cool.

Visited Catherine's sister's husband's sister and her family, who were incredibly nice as well and took us to a wonderful restaurant in Pachacamac so we could try lots of different Peruvian foods. We drove by big stretches of desert with Inca ruins on the way, low rock walls worn down by hundreds of years of sand and sun. The next week they invited us back, and Catherine went, but I went to the beach with some friends we met in Chaclacayo. The Pacific Ocean has bigger waves than the Atlantic! (or at least this beach had bigger waves than Bethany Beach, Delaware) but they break farther out, so you can swim around in the surf as it comes washing in. The mountains, which looked like huge sand dunes at this point, came almost right down to the shore, so you'd be on the beach with a huge cliff rising straight up a hundred yards behind you. It was hazy and the sun only came out for a short while, but there were few people and big flocks of seagulls that I enjoyed running at and setting aflight. On the way back came another very authentic Latin American experience--the car overheated, and we had to wait until some people stopped to help us with the appropriate mechanic tools to get us going again. Luckily there was a lot of traffic going back from the beach at that point, so it didn't take that long to get moving again.

Attended teachers' meetings the Thursday and Friday before school started. Catherine and I were not impressed by the discussions--the biggest meeting we saw was a workshop on how to plan lessons according to a certain model, but it did not seem to be working at all. There was supposedly a "transverse content" that would last all year and be worked into each lesson, such as "self-respect and respect for others," but then the discussion got bogged down in "abilities, sub-abilities, and sub-sub-abilities" that the students would demonstrate, each supposed to have its "proof of achievement" which is basically a bureaucratic way to ask if the student gets it or not, and there was more time spent on determining what the sub-sub-abilities and corresponding "constant necessity" were than on actually planning anything. Proof, I suppose, of the silliness of some of the things people come up with in trying to make sure that education is happening the way it should. But that's not to say that the school itself is unimpressive--it is actually astounding, considering that the people, with the help of Fé y Alegría, have built it up from nothing but dusty hillside, just like they build their houses and neighborhoods. The building is an open rectangle with a courtyard, gardens, and playground in the middle. The kids come in their uniforms every day to study math, Spanish language and literature, history, English, religion, art, and other classes, and the older ones have career-oriented workshops one afternoon a week. Catherine and I are hanging out in certain classrooms for the time being, getting the feel of things before we start up our projects like an English club, a book club (yay!), a choir (whee!!), and maybe an English class for the teachers. All of which has yet to take shape... for the meantime, I'm teaching some pronunciation in the English classes, and I've gotten some nice "thank you"s instead of "sank you"s out of the kids, so so far so good.