Monday: We woke up and walked the two blocks up the street to the Maximo Nivel offices. They´re the ones that are running our program and where everything is based. We had our orientation and learned the name of our placement which is Pronoel Ayarmaca, it´s a government-funded preschool that has about 20 kids and is very poor and understaffed.
After orientation we went next door to Patas, which is Maximo´s tourism partner, and signed up for Spanish classes and for our Machu Picchu trip for next weekend! AUGH! Stoked about that. As we were waiting around, one of the girls from our orientation came up to us and said that since we said we were from Utah, she was wondering if we were Mormon...we said yeah, and she said, "oh good, me too!" So we were pretty excited about that and we´re going to go to church together this Sunday.
We headed back to Yoni´s, had lunch, got our stuff together, and headed BACK to Maximo to email family and stuff for a little bit, and while we were there, we met these two girls from Canada named Annie and Lauren and got talking, and since we had nothing to do that day, we decided to walk up to the western end of the city and check out the Plaza de Armas and all the little tourist shops and such up there. We had a great time and got to know them pretty well, and they´re going to come to Machu Picchu with us! Woot!
After spending all day up there, we went our seperate ways, and Kass and I decided to stop at this HUGE souvenir shop just down the street from us, and we each got a sweater and a bag - both made from alpaca :) The best part? It all only cost twelve American dollars. Oh yeah. Lovin Peru and their "Soles". We had dinner with Yoni and the gang, and watched videos of Matt and Jen´s bungee jumping adventure they had on Sunday...it looked SO painful! We also watched this absolutely ridiculous Peruvian game show that´s on at dinner every night, it´s super funny. Can´t remember what it´s called though...anywho. We just sat around and talked and it was great.
Tuesday: Today was the first day of our program! We headed up to Maximo and met up with Andrea and Andreas (yeah, funny, I know) since they were going to come with us on our first day and show us how to get there and such. So we got on this little bus and rode for about twenty minutes to the opposite end of Cuzco to this tiny little preschool with about 20 kids. The teacher is named Ruth and she was super nice - we think, considering we have no idea what she was saying. She could well have been cursing at us. Haha jk :) But the kids were ADORABLE. Oh my goodness. She told us they wanted to sing a song for us, but when she tried to get them to start, they were all too shy except for this one little girl named Melani, and she sang for us all by herself! AWWW!!! So we just pretty much have to play with them and color and help them write their letters/numbers and stuff, pretty easy! Today we just played "catch" with them...and by catch, I mean, like ten kids grabbed a ball and chucked em at us while we desperately tried to catch them all and toss them back. It was great fun. (I have to quote my dad here, I was telling him about it today and he said, "Though I can't wait til some oober cute (SO CUTE) little child of innocence looks into your eyes and says something in Spanish you can't understand and then unloads their native peruvian breakfast on your shirt." Too true. It´ll happen, I´m sure. hahaha)
Also the weather up here is pretty weird, it´s really hot around like 10 or 11, and since we´re so high up, the sun is really intense. But then the sun goes down at about 5, and as soon as it goes down it gets SUPER cold. Ridiculous. Another super weird thing to get used to in Peru is...for you squeamish ones, just skip ahead...you have to throw all your toilet paper into the garbage instead of in the toilet. Ew. Ew. Ew. And yes, that includes your used paper. Nasty. haha anywho, so now we´re just waiting around for Spanish class to start, and then we´ll probably just chill around the house tonight and organize our room and such. I´ll tell more later! Ciao!
P.S. I apologize for the lack of pictures. Believe me, I´ve tried. The internet at Maximo is super slow and it´s not letting me upload any right now. Tomorrow or Thursday we´ll go to an internet cafe and hopefully it´ll work there. I´ll keep ya posted.
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