Today is my third full day in Cusco, and I am starting to become acquainted with the city. All of my flights went well this past weekend, with the exception of 2.5 hours of delays on my flight to Lima, and I arrived bright and early Sunday morning. After meeting the two program coordinators, Sophia and Ernesto, in Cusco at the airport, I was taken to my host family in the suburb of San Jeronimo.
San Jeronimo is about a 20 minute bus ride from the center of town and definitely not somewhere that tourists would venture on purpose. The area is very poor with only a few paved streets. It´s the kind of neighborhood where many of the households burn their trash outside. My home seems to be the exception, however. I share an attached, private apartment with another volunteer named Matt from Utah. The apartment is new and nice, and supposedly it has wifi, although neither Matt nor I brought a laptop. The only thing really missing is a heater. The apartment is cold at night, and colder in the morning. Oh, and the water randomly shuts off for a few hours everyday. The other thing about the city, and especially San Jeronimo, is the number of stray dogs. Walking from the main street, down the alley, and to my apartment (a 1-2 minute walk) means almost certainly passing 5-10 dogs.
My host family is a young couple, Alcira and Willington, with a fourteen year old son, Nilson. They have been incredibly welcoming and are doing a great job keeping me fed. As part of my welcome gift, I brought them some caramel-chocolate-pecan candies (I can´t remember what they are called) and a Texas Ranger ballcap for the son, both of which my mom was kind enough to go purchase for me before I left. The first big mishap in my Spanish communication came when I attempted to explain to them who the Texas Rangers were. I assumed that like Central America, Venezuela, and Colombia, baseball was probably a popular sport. To my suprise, in Cusco, no one plays, follows, or understands baseball. Barely having spoken Spanish in a year, in the process of this explanation, I at some point told them I played for the Texas Rangers. It wasn´t until hours later when they started asking my about it that I realized something had been lost in translation.
Later that day, I headed towards the Plaza de las Armas in the center of town. The area is a night and day difference from San Jeronimo. It has a very European feeling to it, and many of the Spanish buildings sit upon the orginal Incan foundations. There are a number of pubs that surround downtown, and with the high number of backpackers that come through the city, going into one is almost a guaranteed way to meet other 20-30 year old American, British, or Australian travellers. Once, I have the chance to take a guided tour or two of the town, hopefully, I´ll be able to give a better description of the area.
The next morning was my first day at the school. Ernesto, Sophia, and another volunteer, Nina, came to my home to take me to the school. Nina and I are going to both be teaching at a local school for the next three weeks. After that, I switch over to the boys´ orphanage. She is a junior at Boston University, is from New York, and arrived the previous day, as well. Each day we will be teaching English from 8:15 to 1:00 to four different classes, ranging from probably the equivalent of an American 4th or 5th grade class to high school freshmen. As we went to each class, we introduced ourselves and then answered their questions about ourselves and the United States. Between the two of us, we were only missing a volunteer from California to round out the big 3 American stereotypes. The kids seemed to be in awe that I was from Texas and was in law school, but what really made their eyes light up was when Nina told them she was from New York.
After the introductions in each class, we began teaching. The first class was a trainwreck. The second was an improvisational masterpiece. In the first class, the local English teacher, Manuel, who is kind of overseeing us, began by writing the words ¨will¨ and ¨going to¨ on the board and asking us to explain the differences in what they mean and how they are used. We both stared at the board and didn´t have a clue what to say. ¨Will¨ is more formal, but that was about as far as we got. Instead of given them a clear, helpful answer, we just rambled in and out of Spanish incoherently for ten minutes. Our chance to redeem ourselves came with the second part of the class--teaching directional prepositions. More specifically, we were asked to explain when and why you use ¨at, on, in, next to, etc.¨ in different situations. Trying to explain to kids why you say ¨I live on the right¨ instead of ¨I live at the right¨ (which is a closer literal translation to the way it is said in Spanish), is one of the most illogical things to teach foreign language speakers. At the end of the class, our two lessons could be summed up with ¨We don´t know the difference in using those words¨ and ¨You use this preposition here because we said so.¨ One kid raised his hand and asked Manuel what was the theme of this lesson. Trainwreck.
The second class was a lecture on how to add words for parts of the body to ¨ache¨ in order to say ¨headache,¨ ¨stomachache,¨ etc. Nina and I somewhat hijacked the lesson plan and turned it into a vocabulary and pronunciation lesson for the different parts of the body. I can´t tell you the proper grammatical rules behind ¨will¨ and ¨going to,¨ but I can tell you what we call ¨los manos¨ in English. The lesson even ended with Nina guiding the class in singing ¨Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes.¨
The third and fourth classes went smoothly as well, and today (Tuesday) the school is closed for some reason, so I have a free day in the city. Tomorrow should be interesting, as Manuel wants me to explain American Football to the class. It might be one of the most complex games to explain to someone who hasn´t ever seen it, but I found a cheap football to take with me and I´m sure it´ll be fun no matter what.
-Scott
P.S. Typing these posts in an internet cafe severely restrict my ability or desire to edit these posts carefully. So pardon me for all spelling, grammatical, and logical errors.
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