Soritor and Waterfalls

You don’t know the meaning of the term “field trip” until you’ve ridden in an open backed truck with 50 students and a couple professors through the Peruvian countryside. We went to another away game on Wednesday , this time to a village called Soritor. The drive was like riding a roller coaster, screaming and laughing and all, only more exciting because in a roller coaster you actually know you’re safe (no worries m Mother, I’m never actually in real danger). But after a while we diecded we wanted it to be even more exciting, so we through in some pouring rain. Fortunately we had some tarps to hold over us so we weren’t completely soaked. Plus, I was the more popular in Soritor than I’ve ever been in my life. It’s the white skin. We were sitting in the bleachers to watch the soccer game, and before long we each had a circle of fascinated teenagers wanting to talk to us. One of their favorite games was “translate this word,” meaning they say a word in Castellano (what they call Spanish here) and you translate it into English. It amuses them for a remarkable amount of time. They also love to hear us talk and sing in English, singing especially. Jenny and I sang “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” and the Titanic song, we all sang the national anthem for them, and they got Caleb going well enough and long enough that if we’d been charging we would have eaten for a week (not that we can complain about how much we pay to eat, since we eat on less than $4 a day with all three meals at a really good restaurant)It was an interesting experience to say the last. We don’t get nearly that reaction in Yantalo, probably because they’re more used to volunteers here. When we got back we realized that we hadn’t told anyone we were going (we were gone all day). When we walked into the restaurant we got the Spanish equivalent of “Where were you, we were worried!” from our happy little restaurant family and the same from our cute little Mama Flora. It’s nice to have a little family here looking out for us. Other than that this week has mostly been teaching classes in the Colegio and our English classes. We did get to learn how to make lomo saltado, one of my favorite dishes here, so I’ll make it for you when I get home, family.
Today was probably one of my favorite days so far. I got to go swimming! We met up with the JAS and hiked to some waterfalls, where we spent a few hours swimming, jumping off rocks, jumping off the falls, building rafts, etc. I did get pretty burned, but it was totally worth it. I wish I could capture how beautiful this place is, in words or with pictures, but I can't. Anyway, it was a blast. Have a good week!