My Experience at Huancaro

I remember feeling nervous on my first volunteering day at Huancaro - I thought the kids might be shy or not interact with me because my Spanish wasn´t great. However, I had nothing to be worried about because as the taxi was driving up the big hill up to the school, I saw 4 or 5 kids running right beside us with huge smiles on their faces…and they were so excited to give us hugs and kisses as soon as we got out of the taxi – even me, even though I was new! After that, the day flew by.

The general day goes like this:

We arrive at the school (at 9:00) and the kids wash their hands and faces…

They eat breakfast that we bring for them…

They grab their toothbrush & brush their teeth…

The kids bring the benches back in…

School begins…

Breaktime!

School time again…

School ends (at noon) with the students getting in line and

answering a question to receive a piece of fruit…

...and we walk down the hill to get a taxi, but still have fun along the way!

A couple of my favourite memories so far:

Some kids in the class were having trouble with their ¨right¨and ¨left¨. So, Berta (the Peruvian teacher) tied yellow string on each of the kids´right wrist...after that, when she said ¨right hand!¨ or ¨left hand!¨, the kids knew which hand to put up. I loved it. And so did the kids.

Obviously it is difficult for kids to concentrate for a ong time. So, when Professora Berta feels the kids need a break, she puts on a song (always the same song so the kids know it well!) and we have a dance break – walking around the tables in a circle, jumping up and down, waving our hands in the air, etc. Sometimes the kids get so into it that they end up yelling the words which is tough on the ears, but always puts a smile on our faces.

During play time, the kids have grown fond of me playing tag with them. They love running away from me and (of course) I love being able to run around with them! I also tried to learn how to play marbles with the boys in our class...I sort of understood the game – not quite – and my accuracy with the marbles was definitely not as high as the boys.

The kids, as may be expected, are in love with cameras. As soon as they see one, they want to get in the photo...once they are all grouped up, instead of saying ¨cheese¨ to make themselves smile, they say ¨Whiskeyyyyyyy¨and start waving their hands at the camera.