Nina and Kyler here checking in!

 

Wednesday started off with our now normal daily run. We gathered at 7:45am and split into running groups.  Once everyone who had the energy arrived, we each set off.  Our morning runs took us through the beautiful Sacred Valley as the sun was rising over the hills around us. After a tasty breakfast at the hotel, around 9:00 we set out for the school, excited for our first full day of teaching.  In the morning we worked with the primary school kids, who were brimming with excitement and energy and gave us all hugs.  We found their enthusiasm and curiosity inspiring, making each and everyone’s first experience teaching the best it could be.  All that the kids wanted to do was learn, and they expressed this desire by their impressive concentration when learning subjects such as the alphabet and numbers.  When the time came to leave we were sad to go but were looking forward to seeing what our afternoon classes in the secondary school would be like.

 

After lunch, our lessons with the secondary school classes started. The secondary school children with whom we worked, varied from ages about 11 to 15.  Most of them knew a lot more English than the primary school children, so we reviewed advanced concepts with our classes, such as counting up to the thousands in English and some grammar. Although working with the secondary school children was more challenging because they were older, we still loved our first day teaching. We came back from the school tired but pleased with the work we’d done with our classes.

 

Thursday morning we headed to school after our morning run and our nutritious breakfasts of omelettes and really good juice.  Our younger kids were angels, perfect in every way, always interested and wanting to learn knew new things, like the parts of the body and the colors, teaching us at the same time many knew things.  The afternoon was easier for many of us than the one before it, because we had understood how to hold the older students’ interest.  They loved making and playing with paper airplanes after drawing their dream houses with all of the different parts labeled in English.

 

After school, our group was challenged to a soccer match by a group of secondary school boys.  It was a lot of fun and we actually won a game, though we lost the other, so we are planning a rematch on Monday. When we arrived back to the hotel, we headed out on our afternoon runs and ended the day with a great dinner and a movie before resting up from the long week.

 

Friday, was a holiday at the school so although we attended we did not teach.  As we walked in our students ran up to us embracing us and pulling us every, which was a great award for the work we had done thus far.  Our time at school was spent watching the kids and their parents play games and eating great local grilled pork.  After lunch we left and went to a silver-smith’s shop, where we were shown how the jewelry was made from raw material and how to differentiate real silver jewelry from fakes.  Now, we will all be able to tell when the venders are trying to sell us the cheap stuff for too high a price allowing the girls better retrievals from our shopping trips!  We ended our day with a run, dinner, and a game of monopoly cards (and, of course, a girl-talk for the girls.)

 

Saturday began with a long run for most of us.  Some groups ran about four miles, while others went as far as eleven.  After breakfast, we drove into Cusco for the day trip.  We first split into two groups to visit the Cusco chocolate museum and get massages.  Afterwards, we visited Cusco’s bustling food marketplace, where we had traditional Peruvian food for lunch of ceviche and alpaca steaks among others, and bought fresh produce.  After touring the main square, we then headed across town to visit a different market that sold almost everything you could want to buy, from fake Nike running shoes to flat-screen TVs.  We made several purchases and put our bargaining skills to good use.  After arriving back at the hotel, we ate dinner and relaxed to prepare ourselves for Sunday’s hike to the Pisac ruins!