Wednesday morning we packed up and headed for Otuzco, a city in the Sierra. We’re actually the only FBT group that got to see sites in both the Sierra and the Costa so that was pretty exciting. Otuzco is an amazing town and I hope to have time to go back to visit, apparently there are some pretty crazy festivals in town. Anyway, the ride to Otuzco was a little less cool. It was a bus that curved and bumped its way up a mountain. This genius decided to tempt fate even more by trying to read over her lesson plan on the bus…..considering that I can’t even read on an interstate at home I’m not really sure what I was thinking. My entrance to the town was a little less than grand when I stumbled off the bus still clutching the plastic bad I had been trying not to puke in. I wasn’t the only one feeling a little green around the gills either, but we only had enough time to take our stuff to the hostel before heading straight to the school to teach.
So the solo classes were a little bit of an adventure for everyone. For my class the teachers combined two classes so I had about 45 9-10 year olds. They really were sweet kids, but I had a few boys that wanted nothing more than to strangle each other and then the rest of them want to talk constantly about everything other than hand washing. I did my best to control the class, but it just didn’t really work. I definitely have some work to do on my classroom management skills. The only time they were all quiet was when I pulled out my knife to cut the bottom of the bottle for my tip-i-tap. Though it was incredibly amusing, I don’t think waving a knife around is a classroom management technique I should use very often :-P I left my class feeling like I had dealt with some difficult children, but it turns out I got off easy. Brice, another trainee, had a class where the kids got up and starting jumping from desk to desk. Apparently there are some photos floating around, hopefully I can get my hands on one. Either way I learned a new word to describe those kids: chuqui. It’s pronounced like chew + key. I just assumed it was another new word for me until my Spanish teach started explaining about this little, scary doll that kills people in a bunch of horror movies……got it yet? That’s how Peruvians spell Chucky. Then, because there is never a dull moment in Peace Corps, one of the teachers asked if we could all just go give charlas to the other classes too….this time we divided into pairs and picked one of our two charlas to present. Kelsey and I decided to talk about the environment, which was great fun because one her activities was walking into the room with a huge bag of trash and tossing it around while having a random conversation with each other. We were illustrating the point that throwing trash in a classroom is strange but few people think twice about throwing trash in the street.
After all the teaching excitement we went to lunch in town. This was a different experience from the other two sites so far because there were actually multiple restaurants to choose from. Otuzco is a city of about 12,000 so there’s more there. It’s now time for another food update and this one might actually be the biggest one yet…..I tried cuy. Not only that, but I tried cuy that still had a head attached. Yes there is a photo, I promise. I won’t go so far as to say that I like the cuy, but i am willing to give it another shot in the future. Next time I would prefer that my cuy not be staring at my while I gnaw on it though. Anyway, after lunch some of us went on a hike into the mountains around Otuzco. So beautiful! While we were hiking I had another “I can’t believe I’m here” moment. Some days I just can’t believe that real life for me right now means I can go hiking in the Peruvian Sierra. I’m a lucky girl. After the hike I went back and took the most amazing hot shower I’ve had in almost two months. The water was hot, not lukewarm and there was legit water pressure. For dinner we decided to sample the street food. This is a huge no-no when first getting to Peru because it’s basically a sure fire way to get the trots until your stomach becomes more accustomed. We haven’t really been here that long ourselves, but there was no way any of us were saying no to papitas reyenas. Delicious! After dinner was another group meeting and more charla assignments.
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