First week in Huancayo

Day 0 (September 2nd):
We arrived at the house just in time for a birthday party. It was Jessica´s birthday, so there was cake and other sweets. There were 3 volunteers in total: Ian, Jessica and Laura. Not only volunteers live in the house with Tino (director of Tinkuy Peru), but eight members of his family as well: Tino's mother, his two sisters, his two nieces, Leslie and Jacki, his wife Marie, and his two daughters Pilar and Angela. Also, Mabel (extended family) and Lydia (cleans and cooks) live there too. There´s plenty of room because the house is very large. In high season there can be up to 20 volunteers at once.

Day 1:
Brian was sick in bed almost the whole day, so we didn´t do much. Paulien was mostly getting information.

Day 2:
In the morning 2 new volunteers arrived: Jed and Sebastian. Today we checked out the different classes. It is a 30 minute walk uphill to the schools, or a bus ride. Many roads aren´t paved, so it´s really dusty and we get a dust tan. August is the dustiest month, so that should start getting less. There is a government run school with classes in the morning (9:30-12) for children 4-6 years old. There is a teacher there, but the education is poor. In the morning volunteers teach at this class as well. The Tinkuy Peru mountain school has classes in the morning (9:30-11) and afternoon (3:30-5) for different groups of children ranging in age from 3-15. There are around 67 students in total, but the amount that show up each day is different. Many of the children at the school are either orphans or have a step-parent or don´t get enough attention at home. When we arrived we got greeted by the kids with a hug and kiss, which is normal here (also, when saying goodbye). The female volunteers are called "miss" and male volunteers are called "teacher". The kids are very cute, but a bit dirty. Many have dirty noses, hands and clothes (the children in Cabo San Francisco were cleaner). The dirty noses are probably because of the high altitude - we´re around 3200 metres. It´s sunny and warm during the day, but cold in late afternoon and night. We didn´t teach today, since we were mostly observing and helping Laura. Afterwards the teacher gave a lesson and we were surprised to see what she was teaching: she actually showed the children what burns (eg paper and plastic) and what doesn´t without mentioning, for instance, that fire is dangerous or that you shouldn´t burn plastic. After lunch we taught the youngest class at the mountain school, making paper planes, coloring, practicing numbers, etc. Teaching is difficult because there is a large range in skills in each class and our spanish isn´t super good.
Brian went out at night with all of the others drinking a local drink called Pisco Sour. Paulien had to go to bed early, because she was sick now (probably altitude sickness).

Day 3:
Paulien felt a bit better, but had intestinal problems now and therefore could not go to the morning class at the government school, since there is no bathroom there). It was the last day for Jessica and Laura, so there was a going away party arranged in combination with one of the students birthdays. There was food and dancing and all of the kids were clean and dressed up. The food was really healthy for a kids party and afterwards all of the parents and teacher drank beer. In the afternoon we took the students from the mountain school on a field trip to the zoo and then a playground. There were 27 children and they loved it. The children are really affectionate: always wanting to hold your hand, give you a hug, etc. That night we went to see a band playing Peruvian music with lots of different instruments, with one person maybe playing 3 instruments in a song (flute, pan flute & saxophone).

Day 4:
On Saturday we (Mabel, Marie, Jed, Ian and us) went to visit a ruin in a nearby town Ñahuimpuquio. Up on a nearby hill that we climbed up, there are ruins from 800 BC built well enough to withstand many earthquakes and years of erosion. After that we went down to the lake and went around on some paddle-boats. The boys won the race obviously, especially since the girls didn´t consider it a race. For lunch we had trout prepared two different ways on a stove heated by eucalyptus branches. Ian and Jed ordered more food than they could eat, so it was fed to a dog with blue eyebrows (painted). Then we walked to a nearby town called Chupaca, we pronounced it Chewbacca (like in star wars), to a local market. In Peru they have 3,000 different kinds of potatoes, so almost every meal has some kind of potatoe (except for breakfast). Paulien got welcomed to the town by two different guys. From Jessica and Laura we heard that that kind of attention was normal. After being blown away almost by all of the dust, we took a bus back to Huancayo. When we got back we saw people on the street dressed in traditional clothing dancing. We went close to take a photo and got dragged into the party and invited to dance.

Day 5:
3 volunteers left this morning (Ian, Jessica and Laura). Luckily, Ian is coming back in a week or so. We checked out the market in Huancayo and bought a blanket that people use here for carrying things on their back (in the local design). It was a really big market, but that is not too surprising in a city of 300,000 people. Not much else interesting that day.

Day 6:
Two new volunteers arrived (Gemma and Scott). In the morning there were only classes at the mountain school. There we gave our first real classes. In the afternoon we went on a field trip, because there weren´t that many children, which is apparently normal on a Monday. Also, Sebastian wanted to checkout "Torre Torre" on his last day. It´s a series of naturally formed reddish sandstone pillars from which you get an amazing view of the surrounding area. Unfortunately, we don´t have any photos of it, since we didn´t bring our camera, but we will go back and take photos. It´s less than 10 minutes away from the mountain school. The children are fearless and run on the crazy dodgiest parts (even jumping gaps with 20 meter drops). Many children have broken shoes or shoes not suitable for hiking. Needless to say this field trip would never be allowed in Canada or Holland. Then we went into town to buy some books for the school - we managed to buy the whole government curriculum for grades 1-6 in math, science, social studies and 1 other subject. This was really needed, since the children are mainly taught English and math by the volunteers.

Day 7:
2 volunteers left (Jed and Sebastian) to fly back to the United States. Together with the 2 remaining volunteers (Gemma and Scott), we gave classes in the morning and the afternoon. Mainly teaching at the government school is very tiring, because the children ask for help often and have problems with many of the tasks. In the afternoon Paulien couldn´t teach, because she was still sick with intestinal problems, which got worse.

General:
Paulien is called Paulina in both Ecuador and Peru.
Sometimes we speak Dutch by accident. Brian when he´s speaking Spanish and Paulien when she needs to speak English. Speaking Dutch can be useful, however, when we want to say things that we don´t want others to understand. We have to be careful though, since there are Dutch people everywhere!
In certain spots here there can be a lot of garbage, just like in Ecuador, but the town itself is very clean due to people cleaning it up. In Ecuador we saw many times that the bus driver would clean up the bus by simply throwing everything out the window - no matter where the bus was.
We are here for another 3 weeks.