Wet Hot Peruvian Summer, Part II

During the summer the municipality organizes summer school classes which we call Vacaciones Útiles which basically translates to useful vacations (kinda cool, right?). Last year, Amanda and I taught English and led an art class focusing on the use of recycled materials as seen here. This year my site mates, Ben and Lucia, and I decided to lead a class about different countries and cultures called Recorriendo el Mundo, or Traveling the World. We made each student their own passport, stamping it after learning about each country we were "visiting". We played games, tried food and learned interesting facts from places all over the world. Despite our often last-minute class prep, the kids really enjoyed themselves.

Lucia in teacher mode, she's amazing with the kids

Enjoying some pancakes and maple syrup after our lesson on Canada

During our lesson on Japan, the kids wrote the most adorable haiku poems!

Working on a St. Patrick's Day word search for Ireland

For Italy and France we talked about art and learned about the Louvre in Paris

The kids drew their own pieces and we enjoyeda visit to our own museum

Watching a video about Kenya while enjoying some guacamole, nutella and animal crackers (it was the last day of class)

Throughout the class we painted a map of the world right next to the map of Peru that Amanda and I painted with our students last year. There's still a few countries missing at this point but each week a small group of our most dedicated students (I think they mostly just find us strange and like being friends with the Americans, but I'll take it!) meet us at the library to help paint.

We used a projector to help us trace the countries. With all the tiny, random islands, it's much harder than you'd think.

Luciana (right) reppin' her tank from San Francisco's own The Stinking Rose!

Poco a poco, country by country

There's still a few countries missing and we'll go over the borders in black pen to clean it up, but we're getting there.

I rely heavily on my daycare teaching experience (basically my only real work experience pre-PC) but, man, it is way harder to maintain a classroom in a different language! Cultural differences aside, trying to teach a class when your students are correcting your pronunciation and word usage can be a little embarrassing. The one thing we have going for us is that these kids love summer school and like to do well in the classroom whether it's remembering the most facts or drawing the perfect picture. I love my time with the kids and their silly questions. When I walk through town it makes me so happy to hear kids calling out, "Hola, Teacher Jamie!" It helps shrug off the gross feeling left over from the creeps whistling and smooching at every female that walks by.

Summer school kids

The volunteers in my department, La Libertad, often work with an English institute in Trujillo called El Cultural. They have helped support us with fundraisers to help us with our projects, invited us to join them at their own youth camps and allow us to use their classrooms for our regional meetings. The past few Valentine's Days they have helped us organize a fundraising event to help us meet our community contribution for our youth camps. During the week of Valentine's Day, students, teachers and even parents bought serenades for their friends, significant others, classrooms and kids and throughout the Friday and Saturday a group of PCVs went from classroom to classroom singing love songs.

The littlest Valentine

In Peru, Valentine's Day is more commonly known as Día de la Amistad or Day of Friendship and has less of a romantic focus. Spending the day singing love songs with my friends to groups of shy and embarrassed teenagers was wonderful. Toward the middle of the afternoon three out of the five of us volunteers had to leave to finish up their own errands and it was just me and Zack, who's actually a volunteer from the department north of us, Lambayeque, but is so nice that he didn't mind coming down to share his musical talents (look out for him, he'll be famous one day) and help us raise money for our camp. In the two hours we were flying solo, almost three times as many songs had been scheduled than we had done the whole day! I was nervous at first but after the first couple songs a group of giggling girls asked if they could help us and joined in as our backup singers/dancers. It was too cute!

Our backup singers/dancers

By mid-February, my main project was finally entering the construction phase. Since July I have been working on a project to install and connect 20 bathrooms to the sewer system in a community called 15 de Abril, just on the other side of the Panamerican from the center of town. The previous volunteer, Gina, had connected 23 households to the system and I have been working with her counterpart to continue their work. It's been a long process of grant-writing, revising, organizing and executing a series of educational sessions and, finally, preparing for construction. Tears have been shed (surprise, surprise) but it's been an amazing and rewarding experience. My next post will be filled with photos and success stories, so you can look forward to that soon!