On Thursday I did my second day of volunteering at the school, and my first day of teaching the kids English. We worked on greetings and the alphabet. As excited as they are to learn English, it's like pulling teeth trying to get them to say stuff, because they get nervous and don't want to mess up when we're actually learning it as a class instead of them just asking me to translate random words. But it went pretty well. 

Raquel and I both had the afternoon off, so we decided to go to Metro, the grocery store, to get tickets to Mistura, a famous food festival that's coming in a couple weeks, and to get stuff to make cookies. We went to the Metro a few blocks away from our house, but they didn't have a TeleTicket booth, so we decided to take the bus to the Wong in the Plaza San Miguel. So we asked the cop outside which bus to take and he told us. We waited and got on, then, 2 blocks later, realized there was another giant Metro, so we got off. We were gonna go all out and get cookies, wine, and cheese, but we didn't bring enough money so we sacrificed the wine and cheese and got some Betty Crocker double chocolate chip cookie mix. 

We baked cookies and hung out in the kitchen watching Keeping Up With the Kardashians. It was a good night :)

On Friday, I went to the school again. I got there around 7:45 and the teacher wasn't there, so I just hung out and talked to the kids. At 8:00 the bell rang, and Profesora Delia still wasn't there. At 8:15 I decided I'd just start teaching them English. 

After awhile they started saying stuff about how they needed to go out for P.E., and I didn't know what to do, so I knocked on the other 4th grade room next door, where the other volunteer, Nichole, helps out. I told the teacher there that my teacher didn't show so she went in my room and figured out their P.E. schedule and everything, and told me where to send them. 

So we learned some more English (a song about spring, and numbers) and then at 9:30 I sent them to P.E. Luckily I didn't have to teach that because they have a teacher for it. At 10:00 they had recess and from 10:30-11 they finished their hour of P.E. then we did some more English and a lady came in to teach them the right way to brush their teeth. Luckily that killed another 20 minutes. 

After they'd been doing English lessons all day they were starting to get a little antsy and rowdy so I had to give them the "I'm disappointed in your behavior..." teacher lectures. So they were all being quiet, listening to me lecture them, and the principal knocked on the door. She just wanted to say that she was so happy with the way the class was working so hard. Sometimes when she walked by a classroom all she heard was yelling, but when she walked by ours she didn't, and she wanted to thank the class for being such hard workers for profesora Jamie. Haha, good timing!

Finally it was 12:30 and I had made it through the day with my sanity in tact!

I needed a new camera battery and Raquel needed new shoes, so we went with Joel, from ISA, to have him show us where to buy them. He took us to Las Malvinas, which has everything. It's a huge market and there's different "zones" selling different things, cell phones, cameras, light fixtures, power tools, gym equipment, toilets, the list goes on and on. You can get stuff really cheap, because it's usually stolen. (Joel informs me that the toilets are, in fact, new). So we shopped around for a camera battery for me, because I have a Canon, so it takes the special square Canon battery and charger. Some of the ones looked fake, but we found one that looks like the original for $45 soles (about $15-20) and a charger that was definitely original, but I held off to buy that, because I'm pretty sure I'll be able to use Raquel's charger and then get a cheaper one of ebay in the U.S. So now I can take pics again!

Then we went shoe shopping. He took us to a place a couple blocks away with 3 levels of just shoe stores. It was pretty great. And the shoes are Peruvian made knock offs of name brand designs, so they're cheap too. Raquel found a pair she liked and then we took the combi's back to our house. 

Once there, we got ready to go out, and around 11:30 we called a taxi to take us to a bar in La Molina called Hensley's. Raquel's friend from school (she goes to la Universidad del Pacifico) invited us to go out. The bar was a punk bar, and was pretty empty and low key. Which was a nice change from the discotecas. We just hung out and had some beers. I listened while everyone jammed out to their punk songs that I had never heard of. The bar is pretty cool. The owner was born in Peru and moved to Boston when he was 8 so he speaks really good English. He inherited the place from his parents, and turned the downstairs into a bar. He also built a half-pipe in the backroom. It's pretty sweet. We stayed there until around 4:30 and got home around 5. 

Just in time to get about 3 hours of sleep before it was time to get up for our ISA activity today. At 9 a.m. we met at the UP ISA office for our tour of the historical center of Lima. We walked from the office (a few blocks from our house) all the way to the city center (I'm not sure how long, but it's a long way). We checked out the Plaza San Martin, watched the changing of the guards at the Plaza de Armas, and then walked to China town to get some Chifa (it's like Peruvian Chinese food). We sat at one huge table and then they just kept bringing us stuff so we got a little bit of everything. After that, we walked to a churro place and got some churros, and then on to the San Francisco Catacombs. We got a little tour of the church and then they took us to the catacombs. It was pretty cool. 

We got to see this 

Those are bones and skulls. Unfortunately, some idiot also threw their food wrapper down there.

Then we walked around the market a little bit while we were waiting for the bus to come take us back to the ISA office. 

Raquel had gone home to sleep after Chifa, and I crashed as soon as I got home at 5:00. It's 10:30 now and in like an hour-ish we're going to go to an exchange student's party in La Molina. So I'm gonna go make myself a nice warm cup of coffee, so that I don't fall asleep on their couch at 1:00.