So, Lu, what the heck have you been up to? Just sulking in
the frustrations of development work?
Ha! No.
Here are some photos of the wawawasi (literally translated
from quechua, that means house-wasi for babies-wawa, aka preschool) remodeling
project I spent the better half of last week on with three French volunteers:
Jullian, Paul, Maxim, and ‘el gatito’. I can take very little credit for how
beautiful the wawawasi turned out.
I greatly enjoyed spending time with these fellers. You can
check out their blog at www.bzhenamerica.blogspot.com
to follow their 6-month, manly venture, from the Southern tip of South America
to the Northern tip of Alaska.
Loan, (a lovely little French lady) has become a good friend
of mine. Loan works for Steven and Mila and teaches French in Arequipa and
Coporaque schools. She coordinated her city class to come and meet her rural
class in a day of exchange activities today. A Swiss volunteer named Ana (who
was also present at the Women’s Convention Peace Corps held last week) was very
active in designing the day’s activities.
When the kids got off the bus they immediately assumed both
Ana and I were French, like their teacher, and spoke to us in French. Because
both Ana and I responded in decent-enough French we had the kids utterly
confused when we switched back and forth between English and Spanish. I have to
admit, it was quite entertaining. (Did I mention I am one of Loan’s pupils?
Tri-lingualism, here we come!- this is attempt number two, quechua has utterly
failed me.)
The most incredible feat of the day’s activities was that
after icebreakers, the hike, the art activities, and scavenger hunt, I could no
longer tell the rural kids from the urban ones. They actually integrated with
one another, and re-cliqued! A thousand congratulations to Loan for
accomplishing with these 10-year-olds what the rest of the world has yet to
realize!
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