Another Week in Peru

So, this week was mostly just busy. I had been teaching in the Jardin with Melissa (here are a couple pictures of the Jardin), but the foundation let her go on Monday, so it’s been just me for the rest of the week. And I’ll admit, the first day was hard. I was fighting tears as I went to the last class. But the rest of the lessons have gone much better, and it’s been great. It is really time consuming because I’ll decide at 7 or 8 at night what I’m doing the next day and proceed to find 20 pictures of families in my Ensigns and make copies to use in teaching Mommy and Daddy, or to draw, cut out, and color a life size preschooler to use to practice body parts. It makes me feel like Mom : ) It’s fun though. I now know the names of almost every child between 3 and 5 in the village (there are 96, I believe), which is fun when I’m walking around. I’ve also been learning a lot about effective ways to maintain discipline. We’ve been teaching night English classes for anyone who wants them, and I’ve started teaching some linguistics classes to the English professors. We also get to teach pretty regularly in the colegio (which is just a school), though mostly on topics that the teachers don’t want to teach on, which makes it interesting for three Mormon volunteers to be doing it. It’s been a good experience though, We learned how to make ceviche this week, which is really good (and very clean and safe at our restaurant for those who know what it is ) We also discovered this week that we have access to a bike through the foundations, so we’ve started going out in the evenings. I usually ride and Caleb and Jenny run, but Caleb found another bike for 90 sols (about $30) that he and I are going to go in on together so we can start going on trips. It’s beautiful to go out in the late afternoon here. The weather has been perfect at that time of day and the sky is beautiful. We follow different roads out of town and go through the countryside. It’s incredible. I’m really falling in love with this place. It’s so beautiful and I really enjoy working with the people. But no worries Mother, I’ll come home : )