Peruvian Pie!

On Friday night, one of my Peruvian friends Luis invited us volunteers to his house in Huaycán to use his oven (we don't have one!) and I decided to make an apple pie in Peru! Inspired by the Smith tradition of Mountain Day (when classes are canceled and Smithies go apple picking) which just happened in the US and my love to making pie, I decided to attempt to acquire all of the necessary ingredients in Huaycán. I asked my mother to give me the family recipe and I set out for the "mercado" (market) with a friend unsure if my mission would be successful. Turns out that our favorite fruit vendor sells green apples perfect for pie! It proved much more difficult to find a pie pan (I got some confused looks) but eventually a woman selling all kind of pots and pans had two tart pans which worked just fine! We bought flour by the kilo and of course cinnamon! On Friday, Luis so kindly welcomed us into his home (it was the first time I had been inside someone's home in Huaycan) and we set to work making the pie! We listened to Peruvian music, chatted and when it came to making the dough, I just had to estimate using a mug and spoons (because they don't use cup and tablespoon measurements here). We definitely had beginners luck, because I managed to mix a dough of the right consistency despite all the estimating! Luis very skilled with the rolling pit and we all helped to put the whole pie together! After lighting the oven with a match, we slipped the first pie into the oven and started in on the second. Unfortunately, I had run out of good luck by that point and the dough came out super crumbly. However, we managed to scrape it together and I fashioned a improvised lattice top. While the pies where baking, Luis brought out his guitar and we had a really fun sing along! He can play pretty much any song on the guitar as long as he looks up the chords, so we had fun singing both spanish songs and the beatles and other songs in English. When the pie was done, Luis put a happy birthday candle on top to celebrate one of the volunteers Adriana's birthday and we all sang to her. We even tried to make some whipped cream- which turned out nothing like whipped cream but was good on top. Everyone really enjoyed the pie and I do think it came out really well, if I do say so myself! I couldn't have done it without all the help from all my friends here! It was a wonderful night and a true reminder of the power of music and food to bring people together and celebrate different cultures!

The challenges (and joys) of teaching English

Did you know that the following sentence is written in the "unreal conditional" tense of English: "If I had a million dollars, I would travel around the world." ? Well, I didn't until yesterday when I was preparing to teach my adult advanced English class! It's amazing how my understanding of the English language is purely based on what "sounds right" or "wrong" and how I never think about what tense I am speaking with or writing in. Now that I am teaching English, I have to suddenly understand English through the eyes of my students and it isn't pretty. I have quickly learned how hard English is to understand, speak and teach, especially because I have not been properly trained as an English teacher and I'm mostly relying on the textbook and my peers to help me. I have been corrected by my students, I have realized that I speak English incorrectly and I have apologized on the behalf of the English language many times. Mostly, I have become skilled at thinking on my feet and quickly coming up with examples that hopefully partially explain what I am attempting to teach. At least I am able to have a lot of empathy for my students, because I am still in the process of learning Spanish and I still get very confused with Spanish grammar. But to return to my original example, think about the fact that when describing an imaginary situation that would most likely happen in the future, the grammatical structure of the "unreal conditional" requires you to conjugate the verb "I wish I HAD..." in the PAST tense. WHAT??? I often communicate my frustration with the English language to my adult students so that they know that they are not alone in their confusion. However, I find that most often, they are entirely used to craziness that is the English language because they have been studying it faithfully and filling out worksheets for years. I, on the other hand, am encountering the challenges of teaching English grammar for the first time. Thankfully, my students laugh at my jokes and seem to enjoy my enthusiastic, but somewhat clueless teaching style. I like to incorporate fun activities into the class; for example asking them to finish sentences such as, "If I could have any super power, I would choose to..." or "If I had only one week to live, I would...." Considering that most of my adult students are about my age, I really enjoy getting to know them and the opportunity to have discussions with them about their culture and lives. Despite my feelings of frustration and inadequacy teaching advanced English, my experiences in this class and our "conversation club," which is a more informal chance for us to play games and discuss different topics in English with our students, have helped me realize that I really enjoy teaching adults. Who knows, maybe I will look for opportunities to be an University English teaching assistant or something like that for the future. However, I think that taking a "Teaching English as a foreign language" course should probably be in my future before I attempt to teach any more advanced English classes!

Huaycan Sunset

A couple nights ago I looked out the window and the sky was pink! We don't often have sunsets here because it gets foggy at night. I ran up to our roof to take some pictures of the sky and our view of Huaycan...and my hard day's work! We wash our laundry by hand on the roof and hang it to dry...I will never complain about doing laundry with a laundry machine again!

Celebrating the Chinese Moon Fesitval

On Friday, Veronica, our education programs manager organized a Chinese Moon Festival celebration for the children of Zone Z. She taught then how to fold Chinese dumplings which they had a lot of fun doing and we performed a little skit for them about a Chinese legend that is told during the moon festival. Interestingly, there is a china town in Lima and you can find Chinese-peruvian food called "chaufa" all over the place here because many Chinese people immigrated to Peru to work in the 19th and 20th centuries. The kids also got to eat dumplings and a taste of a moon cake as well, but their favorite part was making the dumplings to bring home to their families. You can see in the third picture that even the rambunctious, trouble making (but adorable) boys that I teach were super into it!

A weekend of eating and camping

Last weekend was an adventure filled journey from the pacific coast in Lima to the hills in a nearby village. First I went to Mistura, a giant food festival in Lima, located right on the water with some fellow volunteers to check out the delicious food vendors from all over Peru. The festival was extremely well organized and filled with opportunities to try free samples of food delicacies such as chocolate, olives, honey, nuts and fruits from around the country. The festival was also divided into the different areas of Peru, so you could buy dishes from the Amazon rainforest, Northern Peru and the Andes for example. We ate an incredible dish from the rainforest which included fish, mushrooms, cashews and onions with coconut rice- que rico! We also ate anticucho- beef heart (it was a little too meaty for me!), a delicious tamale and picarones (donuts) made with Quinoa flour. I wish that I had had room in my stomach for more!

After returning to Huaycan that evening, we set out for for our camping adventure. We went to a camp site that some friends had been to before that was a couple hours from here but definitely off the beaten track (there were a lot of potholes on the road up the mountain!) After crossing a rickety bridge over a rushing river, we found ourselves in a valley, alone with just the horse grazing nearby and...electricity?! It ended up being pretty easy camping because there was a light and bathroom. We then made a campfire, roasted marshmallows and made Peruvian adapted S'mores. Most of the night was spent dancing around the campfire instead of sleeping...so the next morning was a tough one! It was really nice to be in such a rural, natural and peaceful setting and escape the dust of Huaycan.

Sports time in Zone Z

Playing volleyball during sports time after English class in Zone Z last week!

My students love to play the game twister!

I have never seen Enderson so focused! He drew a whole pond with a "patito y pecitos" (a duck and fish) with chalk.

A Day in the Life of a Huaycan Volunteer

(The Zone D classroom- our nicest and biggest classroom where we teach most of our classes) I have been here for 3 weeks and despite the fact that everyday is an adventure here, I have started to settle into the routine of living here. This post is going to describe what the "day in the life" of a volunteer (aka me) is like in Huaycan. I usually wake up around 8 or 9 in the morning and I make myself oatmeal with ground peanuts (the closest thing to peanut butter here), bananas and milk and sometimes raisins (they are super juicy here1) We also have fresh bread every morning. I say "hola!" to Dina, our cook who is usually busily preparing our lunch- chopping avocados and peppers and frying onions and garlic- it always smells amazing! I also greet Queta, our house cleaner, caretaker and healer (she knows all about natural Indigenous medicines). Then I head out to teach a class, either a block away in our "Zone D" classroom or I take a bus up the mountainside to another Zone. This is always quite the experience because so many people are packed into tiny little buses and I often find myself in very strange positions (and sometimes tripping or accidentally sitting in people's laps!) In Zone Z, we turn on the one light in the classroom, open the wooden windows and wait for the children to arrive. If they show up, they usually come at least 15 minutes late (time isn't really a big concern or priority here.) When teaching the younger kids, we try to incorporate a lot of games to keep them engaged- pictionary, bingo and charades are very popular. The other day, we were learning weather vocabulary and I had the kids make a rainstorm by snapping, clapping and stomping. I don't know if they really got it though because I don't think it ever rains here. If it did, the streets would turn to mud and it would be horrible. Anyways, I am trying to incorporate as many songs, games and art projects as possible, but they are still really young to sit through an English class and the minute its over they RUN to the concrete court where we play sports. The kids here play soccer on hard, hard pavement and go down a slide that is like 10 feet off the ground and has rocks under it. They are tough cookies! Sometimes we play volleyball, Twister was a big hit last week..and I made the mistake of teaching a couple girls how to play "monkey in the middle" and now they always want to play...sigh! Anyways, after teaching, all the volunteers return to the house for the delicious lunch prepared by Dina. We all sit around the dinning room table and chat about our day or crazy experiences people have had in Peru. Usually Lara, the director of the organization, joins in and tells us about things that have happened over her years of working in Huaycan. The best part about lunch is that we always end up laughing! After some rest time and last minute lesson planning, we head out to teach afternoon classes and if its the weekend, evening classes for adults as well. These days are very long, but the adults are super easy going and understand why I'm tired when I tell them about my day! Last class, one of my adult students brought me a cookie from his hometown in northern Peru. The box said it was "cookies," so I opened it and was prepared to share them with the class (Peruvians are excellent sharers- whenever they eat or drink anything, they always share it with everyone). However, I opened it and discovered it was one giant hunk of layered graham cracker like cookies with peanut butterish, pineapple jelly and condensed milk caramel layers. Not very easy to share without knives or napkins! I did share this strange cookie with the volunteers later and none of us could actually decide if we liked it or not...It was different than any cookie I have ever eaten. In the evenings, its time to do more lesson planning, catch up with email and and sometimes we go to "Quince" the main street in Huaycan to buy food or hang out with friends here. Just walking down Quince is an unbelievable experience- the sidewalks are lined with people selling every possible thing you can imagine. There are people frying food, selling cellphones, sneakers and clothing, showing bootlegged videos on flat screen TVs and hawking pineapples. The buses are honking, the "cobradores" (the people who try to get you to board their bus and collect the fare) are yelling and the mototaxis are weaving in between everyone. I love this experience but I'm usually pretty tired by the end of the day and I like to relax in the house. By the time its around 10pm, tengo mucho sueno (I'm sleepy) and ready for bed!

Field Trip to the Farm!

Yesterday, I was a chaperone for our field trip to the nearby farm and it was a lot of fun, but pretty exhausting to keep track of all the kids! I never would have guessed that there is a dairy farm about 5 minutes driving from downtown Huaycan, but there is and there is green grass- amazing! They make fresh yogurt, and they also have all kids of farm animals like pigs, sheep, ducks and... iguanas!? The kids loved seeing the animals, eating the yogurt and playing games! In the middle picture, I am posing with Ruth, one of our very sweet and helpful students.