Arrival in Cusco/Calca October 11

I arrived in Cusco on a sunny Sunday morning, the flight into the airport was very thrilling, I could see the red houses with tin roofs glistening in the sun. At first, I thought it was cars, but then I realized there are not that many cars in Cusco. I was met at the airport by Kikulla and the ride to his home by taxi was down, Cusco is aprox. 10,000 feet and Calca where I was going is in the Sacred Valley of the Incas and is lower, there were some spectacular views on the ride from
the airport. I just knew I was going to love it here.

I was greetly warmly by Aida and I found out I was going to have my own room, I expected to share a room. Aida and Kikulla serve lunch to tourists who are visiting the area with a guide. I was invited to have lunch with a couple from Washington D.C. with their two guides. They were celebrating thier 10th wedding anniversary with a 10 day trip to Peru.

When I walked through the door of Aida´s and Kikulla´s home, I stepped into a beautiful garden, their home is laid out like the adobe homes in New Mexico with a big courtyard down the middle and gardens on each side and living quarters on both sides of the kitchen, it makes for a lot of privacy. My room is facing the garden and also the surrounding mountains. I love to get up and sit outside in the morning, I am always greeted by the sun and their two German shepard dogs, Rufo and Neily ( I am not sure about the spelling).

On Monday, October 11, Tanika (my teaching partner from England) and I went to meet the Director of the school where we would be teaching. We began teaching on Tuesday morning.
Quechua is the first language of the children, spanish their second and we come in with english their third. Nobody in the school speaks english. We prepared a lesson plan. We decided we would do a review of what they had learned before from the previous volunteers who left lots of notes at Aida´s and Kikulla´s home.

One of the teachers told us the children knew what we were presenting to them, we did not find that to be the case but decided to move on to a new lesson on the weather. We teach each class from 3A, B, C, 4A, B,C, 5A,B,C and &6A,B & C once a week. We have 45 mins with third and 4th grades and 1.5 hours with 5th and 6th grades. Teaching is hard work !

Most of the classes are interested in learning, we have one or two classes that resist. The teachers are getting more involved and that is a big help. We start by explaining everything in Spanish and then moving to English.