San Ramon Secondary School

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Had my first day of school today. It was much more productive than I thought it would be. I taught a class of about 30 students English descriptions. We went over eye color, hair length, height, weight, etc. It became very interactive, and was a lot of fun. I think these kids are younger though, so maybe I was actually teaching at the primary school. I don't really know, because nobody speaks good English. Spanish is actually their 2nd language, as Quechua is their native tongue.
After my first class we had recess where all the kids gathered around and bombarded me with a million questions that I could not understand. We made do with my broken Spanish and their broken English, but hand singles seemed to work the best.
My 2nd class was even younger kids, around 8-10 I would guess. We did a Q&A first, they wanted to know where I was from, how old I was, was I married, do I have a girlfriend, do I have children, have I been to China (don't know why), have I seen the White House (which made me realize the movie Casa Blanca means white house, never really though about that, but then again, never seen the movie either), do I know George Bush, and have I ever met Michael Jackson. You know, normal questions for 8 year olds in rural Peru ;-)
They do have a computer room with 15 IBM desktops running Windows 2000. I was quite impressed. They do not have Internet at the school, however some of the students are here in the Internet cafe now, so they do know how to use it. One of my students had a cell phone today! I don´t know how that´s possible, since this is a public school and the families have no money, but there it was hanging off his belt loop.
The computer teacher seems a little intimidated by me or many just territorial about his computer room, so I doubt I´ll be doing much with that.
Tomorrow I am going to work in a home for street kids and orphans before going to the school. That should be interesting and sad at the same time.
One girl here is working at the prison. 90% of the inmates are women, and their children live in prison with them until 3 years old. I don´t really understand it, I´m trying to find out more. But there is a market and everything in the prison.
Well, gotta run. We are still working on getting the Machu Picchu trip together...so we need to go to the travel places before we have our lecture on Ayacucho History and The Shining Path Movement.

Thank you for all your comments and e-mails, I read them all, just can´t respond to all because of the slow Internet.

Talk to you soon,
Kevin

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Photos

San Ramon Students
Some of my English students