chosica

Meeting the teachers

 The 20th of May, we took a colectivo to Chosica, almost an hour outside of Lima. Our first stop was the school at which we'd be spending the rest of the summers working. San Carlos is a charming colegio that consists of a three story building with four or five classrooms on each floor, a one story building with a couple classrooms, a two story building with one classroom on each floor, and three offices. Outside, there are a playground and basketball court/concrete soccer field, both nestled amongst the buildings.

 Teachers and traines 

That night, we met our host families. I have two host sisters (one is three years old and the other attends the colegio at which I am teaching), a host grandmother and grandfather, a host mother, and various other family members that live kind of in our house. I say kind of because the house I'm living in is a really cool combination of buildings, rooms, and hallways. I think it was originally two houses. I have my own room on the first floor with adjoining bathroom. The other trainees live with other families in Chosica, and we have our HQ at Dante's (our boss) house. This is where we spend most of our time if we're not at the school.

Aleno y yo teaching at San Carlos

Monday through Friday, we have one to three classes a day, where we focus on teaching the children English. These classes are regular grade level classes that we divide into beginners, intermediate, and advanced, and teach in groups of two. We mix it up so all the trainees get a chance to teach with each other as well as a chance to teach each level of student. It's very different from beginners to advanced. The advanced students can usually carry on simple conversations in English, while most of the beginners need to hear a fair amount of spanish. Then, on Saturday, we teach four classes which have been mixed between the grades so they are divided into pre beginners, beginners, intermediate, and advanced. These, we teach as one group. These classes are focused more on taking care of yourself and your world, which is fundamental to our project (English Impact). There, we use more spanish than during the week because getting the message across is really important.

agua, carros, y tonos

Con Ale, the wonderful VPICX GDCP! 

Friday evening, the AIESECers (@ers) took us to a parque de agua in Lima. This park had a many different fountains shaped in cool designs lit up with lights (that may have been redundant). It was so beautiful. At the end, they had one huge fountain that had projections of samples of different traditional dances from Perú. You could see the ladies and gentlemen in their beautiful outfits twirling away in the jets of water.

At the race track

I spent the next day at a race track with Gaby and a bunch of kids from the Best Buddies program at Pacifico. We drove an indeterminate number of hours (probably two or three, but I spent a lot of it dozing) and ended up at some track in the middle of who knows where. I was confused for a long time because I thought we were going to watch a race, because, you know, we were at a race track and stuff. I found out about six hours later that we were just hanging around the track while they set up and practiced for the race that was the next day. Which explained why they were literally constructing part of the building we were in. While we were in it. It was a very relaxed atmosphere because the people in our group made up the only people that weren't constructoin workers, drivers, the teams of the drivers, or officials. We were able to go down and walk on the part of the track where the cars pull off to refuel. While we were down by the garages we looked at the cars and meet the drivers. One of the drivers we took a picture with is apparently very famous in Perú. I think he did some sort of advertising/modeling or something in addition to being a good driver. Racer. Conductor of the automobile. Not sure what they're called.

Welcome Party. There are lots of guys. 

That night brought the last trainee and the welcome party/birthday party for one of the AIESECers. Most of the trainees had their first ever salsa experiences, and of course, we learned a few roll calls. Btw, Latin American roll calls are so much faster and fancier than American ones.