First Day of School

Today was probably the strangest back to school day I've ever experienced. I was at Triunfo, and a whopping total of nine students showed up out of a possible 70. The teachers were back, but lied to my face, saying that the first official day of school really isn't until a week from today, and that they will just be planning this week (meanwhile we're in charge of the kids that do show up, which should be more and more each day). Do they not know that we all live in Arequipa and that the city was bustling this morning with all children in uniforms and getting onto buses? At Maldonado, the teachers tried to lie and say that they had to be gone this entire week to attend a class with the Ministry of Education, and then today back-tracked and admitted that they would, indeed, be attending class this week. So essentially we all have to be very flexible and prepared to teach classes ranging from one student to twenty, because while the teachers will apparently show up, they're not planning on doing anything resembling teaching until next Monday!! Let the circus begin...

In other news, we had eight volunteers arrive over the weekend, and they will all be in Spanish this week. We lose six volunteers at the end of this week, so we will have a huge changeover in volunteers. I'm hoping that word will spread and we will have more than nine kids tomorrow (given that there were six volunteers), but there is no way to predict who will show up).