Out In The Wild

This weekend we were given the opportunity to go on a trip, guided by three guys who are starting a tour company. We paid for our expenses, but they got us good deals with the people they knew, and we didn't have to pay them for their "guiding skills." The trip, which was estimated at around 150 soles, was a steal so pretty much everyone in the house decided to go.

We left on Friday, and headed for Canta. A small town in the mountains that doesn't see many tourists. We got to Canta, in about 4 hours which included a few stops. One of which was to see a Saint Rose of Lima Wishing well. When we arrived in Canta, we are a light dinner and headed to bed. We woke up at 5:30 on Saturday morning and walked 45 minutes to a local farm, where we got to milk cows. It was nothing like I expected, but wasn't actually that hard! Then a van took us back into town, where we ate sandwiches for breakfast and got ready to go horseback riding. I somehow ended up with the biggest horse, and was a head taller than everyone else. We rode for about five hours, to the top of a mountain to see some pre Inca ruins. The rid was a ton of fun, because we weren't on a path, so we actually told the horses where to go. It wasn't one of those rides where the horses know the path so well you could ride with your eyes closed. You definitely wanted to watch where you were going, because we were on the edge of a mountain, going straight up for most of the way!

Once we got to the top, we ate lunch and explored the ruins. Then, we got to watch a shamanic ritual, giving thanks to Mother Earth. After this was over, we very carefully headed down the mountain to the car that was waiting to take us back, since riding horses in the pitch black would be rather difficult.

We got up the next morning, to leave bright and early, and in typical Peruvian liking, we were told the man who was going to drive us back had to do something else in the morning and couldn't actually come until 1:00. So, we had a few hours to walk around and soak up the sun (which we never see in Lima thanks to the covering of smog/clouds). We ended up going to a waterfall and just laying out in the sun, and had a lot of fun!

We got back just in time on Sunday for dinner, and then I hit the sack rather early to get ready for volunteering the next day.

Today, I went to Pachacutec to teach my 6th graders. This is the first time I wrote out my own lesson plan and taught it. It went really well! I think that they are starting to retains some information, because most of them remembered what I taught them last week without much reviewing. I introduced simple present verbs, and suing them in simple sentences (I run. You run….very simple). But, they were writing them themselves by the end of class, so we're making progress! One of the teachers would only let us teach for 30 minutes today instead of 45, because they were working on math, so I guess I need to keep working on them to have their full support. She almost wouldn't let us in at all. I'm trying to think of a kind of "peace offering" to bring to the teachers for the lass room, but I don't know what they might need…any suggestions would be awesome!