Blogs from Ayacucho, Peru, South America - page 24

Tonight is my last night in Ayacucho. Well, that is IF my flights all go as planned. I ended up having a problem with my return flights being canceled on me, but I think I have it worked out. If anyone ever decides to book travel on Travelocity or Yahoo Travel, please reconsider! So this last week has been exciting, but not very productive. It has been extremely hard to achieve any progress with the students, or with anyone else in the community. Today is their Independence Day, but the celebrations have been going on throughout the week. There was no school today and most businesses were closed. We went down to the main Plaza for the celebrations today and it was pretty out-of-hand. Guns being shot in the air, cannons going off, and police trying ... read more

So today is Friday, and you could tell by how excited the kids were today. I don´t know why it´s such an exciting thing for them, being that they took yesterday off of school because there was a soccer game in town. Even though they were so excited about the weekend, we still have a great English lesson today. Yesterday I went to a few different placement s (since my kids were at soccer). It was nice to get around the town more and see what the other volunteers were doing. I now walk everywhere, instead of taking the bus. You get to see so much more and interact with the people that way. So, if you can´t tell, I am pretty beat and don´t have a whole lot to say today. But I leave tonight ... read more

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 ... read more

I went to Machluchula (the villiage in the highlands) to pick up the nurse, and then we were off to Pumawasi (another Quechua village in the highlands). But getter there ended up being more of a challenge than expected. Not only was the rode only a path, but there were so many crevices in the road that we all had to get out and pile rocks into the crevices so we could drive over them. Then the van got stuck multiple times, so all three girls got out to push the van. It reminded me of winters in good ol' South Dakota. Pumawasi village was a very different experience from my other trip to the highlands. It was extremely poor and only had 80 people or so in the village. When they say us, they all ... read more

I went back to the Centro de Salud las Nazarenas today, even though it was the holiday honoring the Pope (which in Spanish is something like Pape or something like that). Word must have got out that there was someone from the States working at the clinic because people I didn't even know would shout from the windows on the second floor of the clinic, "Daniella, Daniella!" It definitely made me smile. It was an interesting day at the clinic. A woman came in with her baby today and remembered me becaue I had given her baby the nebulacion the last time, so she asked me to do it again. Her baby has asma (athsma) and has to come to the clinic two times everyday. It is quite a walk for the mother! The interesting part ... read more