I began teaching my weekly English classes (the one from the last blog was the class I taught before vacation). I really enjoy teaching, especially teaching languages, so it's been relatively easy for me to put together classes and time goes quickly while I teach. My kids are sweet, and some of them have been showing progress in English fluency already just by speaking with me. Though while I love teaching and my kids are good people, they tend to rarely do their homework, be late to classes, or not show up at all. For example, when we had class scheduled for the Friday before and Monday after Cutervo's 101st anniversary, no one at all showed up. It's been immensely frustrating at times, no matter how much I'm told that that's just how life works here.
I've been putting a good portion of hours into working with the Kutiri youth center. We now have a blog (kutiri.wordpress.com, go check it out!), and we've been getting some very helpful individual donations. We do game nights, educational charlas (workshops), art classes, movie nights, and yesterday we pulled together a rather large Halloween party. We got to show lots of Peruvian kids traditional Halloween stuff like bobbing for apples, carving pumpkins, and dirt pudding--it was greatly successful, I'm so proud of everything Chris, Katherine and I have been able to accomplish. I even got to carve this crazy green pumpkin they've got here, the kids and my host family loved it. However, it's been exhausting (a lot of children talking to you in Spanish all at once will take it out of you), and sometimes difficult (that many children in a room at once is not usually orderly). But I really love working with the kids, and I know that the kids love our center. Why? 70 or more kids between 10-18 come EVERY NIGHT. We've hardly been open a month, so it's easy to see the need for constructive activities for Cutervan kiddos.
Baños del Inca
In between all of that, me and Chris took 3 days to travel to the nearest big city, Chota, for a despedida (or good-bye party) for the Peace Corps group that's leaving this week. It was fun to hang out with the volunteers, they've got so many stories in them, believe me. Afterwards, we traveled to the local capital Cajamarca (all of this was hours upon hours in busses mind you). There we bought games for the youth center with our grant money, enjoyed the local cheeses and some real Taiwanese food, and took a dip in the Baños del Inca hot springs. Cajamarca = seriously my favorite I've been to in Peru.
Other miscellaneous happenings: skinned a guinea pig (I couldn't kill it; I was very vividly reminded of why I am usually vegetarian), and got to participate as a judge for my school's food festival. The kids had to present in English, so we rated them on taste and English, and I tried 20 different traditional Peruvian plates, including cow hoof, cow stomach, and pig neck. My favorites are the fried bread and cuajada cheese with molasses, and a jam made from a fruit called berenjena. Other than those, I've been baking a lot--check out my favorite things at my new food blog here: Sojourner Food
Oh! And for other updates on our adventures (including lots of Halloween pictures with kids bobbing for apples, pizza, and oatmeal raisin cookies), check out the other Katie's blog here: http://illmeetyouinperu.blogspot.com/
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