Thursday, June 25, 2009

ProPeru second week

So I´m coming to the close of my second week here in Urubamba, Peru. Things have been going really well so far. My project is working with children in Frida´s Place which is a kind of afterschool program for the kids to come to. A lot of the children have to travel pretty far to get to school, so Frida provides them with a place to stay. My assignment is to teach them as much as I can about the environment.

I was pretty intimidated by my assignment since my spanish isn´t great. The ProPeru office has a binder filled with really good environmental lessons by previous volunteers that were taught in schools. However I was nervous to try and go into too much depth with them since I wasn´t confident in my ability to explain the concepts, or in answering any questions the children might´ve had. So another volunteer and I came up with some other basic lesson plans to do with the children.

The first couple of days we learned that the children really liked coloring, maps and books. We tried to structure our lessons around this knowledge. For one of our first lessons, we had flash cards of different land forms, like mountains, forests and beaches and asked the children to identify them. We then asked them where on the map these places could be found. The children really seemed to enjoy pointing out locations on the map. We then had them draw some of their favorite animals and indicate in which land type they thought they lived. They chose the correct places and seemed to enjoy the activity.

In other lessons we continued to focus on animals and taught the children the different classifications of animals. We went over mammals, reptiles and birds and cut out pictures of these animals and had the children tape the animals to the correct classifications. We also liked to start the lessons with a book to put the children in the right mindset to listen and end each lesson with a game.

Earlier in the week more volunteers came who will be working with me at Frida´s Place. Their spanish is much better than mine so I´m excited to be able to focus more on the environment with the children. The children are really receptive to the activities and have a lot of energy and are a ton of fun to be around.

Urubamba is gorgeous. Everywhere you look there are beautiful green mountains. My commute to Frida´s Place takes about 30 minutes on the bus and is a 15 minute walk up a hill to the house. It´s my favorite part of the day. The view is gorgeous and is a great way to get exercise.

Every Tuesday all the volunteers cook dinner together in the ProPeru office which is a great way to get to know the other volunteers. We´ve gone out a couple of times and I´ve been lucky to be placed with a great group of people. Last weekend a couple of us went on a hike which was one of the most beautiful I´ve ever been on. I´ve hiked in the jungle and it´s basically all green but here there were flowers, ancient trees with moss growing on them and a ton of birds flying over head. When we got to the top there was a huge lake surrounded by ancient jagged mountains that looked like something out of Lord of the Rings.

This weekend we´re visiting some ruins and hitting up the Pisaq market which is supposed to be Peruvian famous I believe. I´m definitely going to put a big dent in my wallet there. That´s all I have for now, hopefully I will have time to update more next week about the new project I´ll be taking on starting tomorrow!

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