Last Week of Summer School

I finally have my energy back after three weeks! This week was our final week of summer school. Over the weekend was the holiday called Carnaval (it's similar to Mardi Gras) and the entire downtown area was filled with groups of teenagers throwing water balloons, spraying people with shaving cream, and throwing paint at innocent passersby. I got away with just a bit of shaving cream. We celebrated with the kids on Monday with a massive water/shaving cream/paint fight, and I think we held our own quite well against the kids.

Tuesday was a normal day at school, and then yesterday was our last official day, so we gave the kids the t-shirts that they had painted last week and made them model for photos and then also celebrated the months birthdays.

Now that I have more energy, I've been able to spend more time with my host sisters, Geraldine and Melanie, and yesterday when I got home at 6 Melanie informed me that I had one minute to eat before I had to go upstairs and play.

This week we have 8 volunteers arriving, which means a very busy rest of the week for me with airport pickups and orientation, and as well as a big trip to the market. I'm also putting together some curriculum resources for a new GVI project in Chivay, which is about 3 hours away from Arequipa. Carla, our project mamager, will spend a few days in Chivay each week for the month of March, which means a lot more responsibility for me. Let's all hope for no major disasters on my watch.

Official school starts on Monday, so the local teachers will come back and we will have more students. I hope you all have a good rest of the week!

The attached photos are of Ayde, a hilarious addition to preschool, and of grades 1 and 2 at Triunfo modeling the t-shirts we all made.