The first week with the high schoolers has been an exciting one. Since the last blog, everyone has ran several times, gone to STRIVE Center, and embarked on service learning. We started out on Wednesday running an easy 20-30 minutes upstream toward San Salvador. Thursday was a slightly longer run for some in the same direction. Friday was an early start for everyone, especially the interns as they woke up at 5:45 to do short hills before picking up the high schoolers for their runs around 7:05.

In terms of STRIVE Center, several high schoolers went on Thursday and Friday to help the interns with physical education. Thursday’s highlight was a game of “Ship to Shore”, where the youngest student Eliot, just 5 years old, outran an 8 year old to claim victory. It was an exciting moment for all. On Friday, we took the kids to a synthetic soccer field to play Sharks and Minnows, as well as a game Natasha helped out with called “Mosquito, Bear, Fish”. Both were huge hits with the kids.

Also going on down here in Peru is the prep for the 2nd annual STRIVE Pisac 5k, held on Saturday. All hands were on deck preparing for this, whether it was all of the boys helping haul 25 kg bags of yeuso back to the hostel, Elizabeth helping the staff during core, or everyone practicing their stations for the big day. Hopefully, it will be a big success, and we are hoping to have more participants than last year (which was around 50). A great first week here for the high schoolers, with only more to come.