Mathilda's Peruvian Gap Year Adventures

Friday 21^st March

This week has been a productive and fun week. I have now been in all the different classes and know the kids a lot better (except it’s still very hard to remember everyone’s names). I now also have a schedule for each of the week: Monday – Physiotherapy

Tuesday – Inicial

Wednesday – Primaria

Thursday – Funcional

Friday - Physiotherapy

This will probably change, but it helps now to help as much as I can the teachers. I chose to keep rotating between the different classes as I enjoy working with all the kids for now, but I might focus on just one class later on.

This week was really fun as I did a lot of new things. Firstly, I helped in Funcional, which I had never done before. The kids in that class all have very different levels, so sometimes it’s hard to be able to help all of them. Therefore, I think it’s useful for me to be there and focus on just a few kids who might need more help. It was a big week for Funcional as on Wednesday we went to the market all together to buy some chickens! I had never been to this market before as it is a bit outside of Urubamba, but it was quite big and lots of people were selling animals. It was easy to spot us in the market as all the kids were wearing bright orange Arco Iris shirts. We bought 20 chicks for the school and each Funcional student will have to take care of one. I think this is something really useful for them to do as it gives them a sense of responsibility. It was also fun to go on a short field trip with them, as I had never done that before. They all seemed so happy that day, which was so nice to see.

I’ve also been helping in Primaria quite a bit, which is always so fun because I love all the kids in that class. On Thursday, we played with puzzles and Legos. I’ve been spending a lot of time with Leonel, the most adorable kid in the world. He is deaf and therefore cannot go to mainstream school, but is incredibly smart and funny. We also went to the park this morning with Profe. Miguel (the PE teacher) and played around for a while. They seemed so happy to run around and play some football, jump in hoola hoops, etc. Benjamin is another boy from Primaria who is very sweet and insisted on carrying all the equipment back to the school bus by himself. He managed with the hoops!

Really fun week overall, and I love being here more and more each day! This weekend I’m going for a hike and camping one night, so I am extremely excited. More about it in my next post :)