Bienvenidos a Urubamba!

I got to a small town about on hour from Cusco called Urubamba a couple of days ago. We were told the place we´d be staying is someones home but it´s actually a hostel called Ccatán, and it is soooo beautiful. Our room has lofts in it, and there are all these gardens. Our host parents are really nice too. They sit down and eat all their meals with us. They speak English about as well as we speak Spanish so I´ve learned a lot since I´ve been here because of that. Our host dad also is a trek guide and he offered to take us to all the Incan ruins around here. It´s so exciting! Urubamba is a small town with hardly any tourists and the people are so much more authentic here... they wear the traditional Peruvian clothes where in Cusco people only wore them so people would take pictures with them and give them money. No one harasses you to constantly to buy things from them. It is so nice.

Also at Ccatán is two dogs named Toby and Gitaña. Toby is my little Peruvian Ruby. He is white and fluffy but has really matted dirty fur. He is such a sweetheart though and sometimes goes a little taz with Gitaña. I took a video, and I´ll see if I´ll be able to post it on the blog.

The school that Amy, Grace, and I started working at is pretty intense. There are about 150 kids in the school and it´s the only public school in the area so quite a few of the kids seem to have problems. I worked in a first grade class these past 2 days and the teacher didn´t have anything planned so I pretty much took over. I just drew pictures for them and they colored them. He also doesn´t discipline them at all. A couple of boys will randomly hit girls or take their things and the teacher doesn´t do anything about it! It was pretty exhausting and I was only there for 2 or 3 hours. I went into a 5th grade classroom later though and all the kids were way better mannered. And all the kids really love us. They just run up to us and hold our hands and stuff. They always shout Mira! Gringitas! which means Look! White people! Then the rest of the kids come running.

We also work at an orphanage in Wayabamba that is about 20 minutes bussing and 20 minutes more walking. The orphanage was not expecting us and they were really hesitant to let us in. But once Miguel (our host dad) told the director the organization we were from and how we were there to work as volunteers but not for money, they couldn´t stop thanking us for coming and being there. The kids at the orphanage have a lot more self discipline and control than the kids at the school. I was trying to help these two 13 year old girls with their math and it was such a struggle because I can´t speak Spanish very well. They were subtracting large numbers but I didn´t know words like borrow or take away or anything. And the last part of their homework were word problems and that just wasn´t happening. But there is a guy here from New Jersey staying in Ccatán and he works at a private school in Urubamba. He said they really need help with math because he doesn´t remember any high school math so he wants me to go to that school, help them, and he can translate what I say. We will see how things go…