Wow!  Where to start.  The whole day was sensory overload from start to finish, non-stop new experiences.  From showering to walking around the city to getting a fix on what exactly I will be doing for the next seven weeks the day was full of constant information flow.  Since everything I have learned today is still jumbled up in my brain the best way to approach the day is to start at the beginning and go from there.  The day started for me at 6:30am.  I was in bed by 8pm the night before, just completely worn out by being awake for so long.  I slept well and most importantly was not cold!  The first new puzzle of the day was figuring out how to get hot water in the shower.  I turned on the valve and at first only cold water emerged.  I immediately had some unpleasant flashbacks to Russia, where I had had similar problems.  With some patience and a lot of determination I finally got the temperature to lukewarm and mentally braced myself for seven weeks without hot showers.  Asking around later I learned that there is a trick to getting hot water (there always is) so armed with that knowledge I will approach the bathroom with hope tomorrow.  Breakfast is at 7am and after breakfast I walked over to the main office near the Plaza des Armes, the big tourist square, with another girl from the house.  The walk is about 20 minutes, if you know where you are going (and now i do) and the orientation was scheduled for 8am.

There were about ten of us in the orientation, all new volunteers ready and eager to get started.  I have to admit, though, sitting there listening to the volunteer coordinator talk about the projects and the people we would be working with I was experiencing huge doubts about what I had gotten myself into.  All of a sudden, as the idea of going off and teaching English in a new place to unknown people became a reality it all seemed a bit overwhelming.  I definitely felt out of of my comfort zone and the “safe” part of me wanted to run away and return to my well understood existence in Houston.  The “adventurous” part of me, though, silenced the wimpy safe part and I never moved from my chair.  It helped that the lecturer clearly stated it was “normal” to feel awkward and uncomfortable at this stage.  Thank goodness, validation!  Since the whole point of coming here to do this was to stretch myself I took it as a good sign that I was feeling a bit at sea-clearly I was being stretched.

The orientation, besides assuring us that everything was going to be fine, informed us about the city and how to get around, the possibilities for excursions, and how the Maximal Novel organization is run.  It turns out they have English classes for paying students, those who can afford that, and use us volunteers for teaching students who could not necessarily afford language lessons.  They offer Spanish classes for volunteers and after the orientation we took a placement test.  It turns out I place well in grammar- go figure, I cannot speak much but man can I conjugate those verbs!  I ended up in a high basic class and after my first class tomorrow I will find out if I have bit off more than i can chew.

After the orientation we had a one hour crash course on teaching English, which is what I will be doing.  It was actually very valuable and provided some insights on techniques to help beginners learn.  The exact details of the project were to come later, at 1:30 when I was taken to the location of the work.  It turned out, however, that two other women in the orientation session had assignments at the same time and place as me so we were going to be working together.  After the crash course it was time to walk home for lunch then get back to the office for our trip to the project location.

View from the hill of the city center

After lunch at the office we discovered that our project location is a convent.  The convent, about a 20 minute walk away from the office, houses a girls orphanage as well as an elderly care center.  The project with the convent is new; we are the first volunteers to work there.  The plan is to teach English to the girls and also to any of the elderly who might be interested.  So in the afternoons we will have two classes one with the girls and a session with the older residents.  We had a meeting with the sister and since her expectation was that we would start right then, we started!  There are about 24 girls and we split them by age into three groups of eight so we could each work in small groups. I am working with the older girls whose ages range from 18 to 23.  The whole class is in English- I am not supposed to use any Spanish, which is not that hard since I do not remember a lot anyway, good verb agreements aside.  The class runs between 1 and 1.5 hours and it went by fast.  I spent the first class on the basics of “hello” and “what is your name” and “how are you” with the appropriate responses in addition to the days of the week and the months.  Not bad for no planning but clearly I am going to have to start lesson planning since this is an everyday class.

The elderly will be a bit more challenging to work with especially until my Spanish gets better.  Some of them do not want to learn English, some want to but cannot speak clearly, some cannot speak at all, some can only speak Quechua and not Spanish and some cannot hear well.  The three of us were a but nonplussed when faced with this kind of mixed group.  In addition I do not think the sister in charge has sorted through everything yet so this first week will be interesting.  Today we just went from table to table introducing ourselves in Spanish and English.  I spent quite a lot of time talking and listening to several people not understanding a word they said or visa-versa but it was fun anyway.  In general I think they will just be enough to have people spend time with them and I have a feeling this is where I am going to get the best Spanish practice of the whole trip.  We will see what tomorrow will bring after the sister has a chance to organize the group a bit better (maybe).

So the schedule of my days are taking shape: classes in the morning and volunteering in the afternoon with lesson planning and studying Spanish filling in the odd hour or so free now and then.  There should be time in the afternoon before dinner to walk around the city and get familiar with all of the streets and where to find things. In the evenings I hope to update this blog.  We humans like to have our routines, don’t we, no matter wherever we are.