My First Day Teaching: May 20

    I woke early, as usual, and  met up with Kaitlyn since we would be teaching together today. On the bus to the school we were excited but a little nervous. Would the kids like our lesson and how could we teach with such a language barrier? Well, it turned out a lot better than I thought :) The kids were so excited to see us that lessons really did not matter, the fact that we were there with them, happy and excited and sharing in this experience was enough.

     Our lesson started off with reading a story, Jack and the Beanstalk. It was a lot of fun and really cute since the book had the story in English and Spanish so as we read the English part, the kids took turns coming up in front of the class to read the Spanish. What really impressed me was the reaction of one child (we were teaching grade three and four). He raised his hand and asked me if the story went like this ... and began to recall all the events of Jack and Beanstalk. He was adorable and from the few words I could pick out, he seemed to know the story off by heart :) After we read the book together, we told the kids they would each get their own “frijoles magicos” or magic beans. They loved the entire process, getting stickers to design their cups and when we told them to line up to get their three beans it was impossible for them to remain in line since they all wanted desperately to get their beans first. Though we were supposed to teach five classes, we soon learned Peru does not really run on schedules. At one point all the boys in one grade had to leave to play games so for one class we taught the girls as the boys trickled out, and then the girls left so we went with the flow and soon the boys returned so they could hear the rest of their lesson. Phew!
 We came back from our lessons tired, but quite happy :) We had a little bit of free time before we ate dinner and had our reflection period. Therefore, Alexis, my teaching partner, and I decided to prep for our lesson the next day by counting out dream catchers and going over the Spanish words needed to ensure at least some of our lesson was understood (lol). After dinner, we all shared our experiences teaching. Then, Raoul told us he would be taking us to Branco, a beautiful town that mimicked Italian Villas. It was spectacular! You could see the ocean, a band was playing for us and we all joined in dancing and singing to La Bamba. We also walked along the "Bridge of Sighs" called that way since so many proposals have taken place there.
Raoul then told us a story of how he helped in a proposal on the bridge for two of his past volunteers how had taken part of a mission trip together and had fallen in love. Too cute :) Afterward, he brought us to a little restaurant where we enjoyed delicious kabobs (that is until we found out we were eating COW HEART!) but I will admit, it was very tasty ... ek! I also tried Peruvian Beer (very good too). We were all 'happy' when we returned back to our retreat centre and were ready for the next days adventures.