My First Charla

This weekend was Father’s Day. My family celebrated by eating breakfast with Rebecca’s dad and eating a huge lunch with all of Carlos’ family. On Saturday Rebeca, Carlos, Yerlin, Gianella, and I worked together to make a cake for the occasion. Once it was in the oven, us girls kicked Carlos out of the house so that Gianela could finish making her gifts for all the papas in the family. We all worked together to make these little yellow car picture frames made out of cardboard and fuzzy cloth. Also, Yerlin painted my fingernails. All the girls at training are jealous.

 

 

Saturday morning I was teamed up with two other trainees on a “Mission Impossible.” We had to go to Chosica, a small town about a 20-minute combi ride out of Chaclacayo, to ask random people on the street where I could find a school and a gym. Once we found our two destinations, we had a predetermined set of questions to ask the people there. I was with an Intermediate-level Spanish speaker and another novice. We chose to accept our mission and found it to be possible. However, it was difficult finding a gym. The people we asked would point us in different directions, but it was all worth it when we found a restaurant with “Café Americana” (American coffee). It was expensive, but I splurged on a large mochaccino. My Spanish is already improving. I learn a lot of new vocab (Melis, note the abbrev) words each day, but I still have a long way to go.

Soooooooo…(I know you liked that opening, Grace Kelly) it is only Week #2, and we are going to go to a school to give our first “charla” (session, lecture) on Thursday. We are having language class in my casa this week, so I am not waking up til 7:00! Super late! Major sleeping in happening! We are mainly focusing on prep for our charlas. All of us in my language class are pretty nervous. We found out on Tuesday who we will be teamed up with and our topic. We were given a brief outline of a game we will play with the kids and how our lecture should proceed, but that was about it. We had no time in class for discussion. I pegged down my team members after classes to choose which part I would discuss. Pablo helped me work on it Wednesday morning and then we had two hours Wednesday afternoon to plan the details. I have to explain to the kiddies the difference between high self-esteem and low self-esteem and then how a person can improve his/her self-esteem. I am going to have the kids get into groups and write out these three categories on a piece of butcher paper. (Side note to all my fellow psych grads – It’s like I’m in the counseling dept all over again! They use butcher paper more than a… butcher down here!) I wrote out my script and feel pretty good about it. Rebeca helped me tweek it and make it a little more personal on Wednesday night. I basically memorized it, but I am still nervous that the kids are going to ask me questions that I won’t be able to interpret, so I don’t sleep.

The schools here are divided into primary and secondary schools. There are five grades in each school. My group will be presenting our charla to first, third, and fourth grade classes in a secondary school. Of course the most advanced speaker in my group is really, really late, so I am starting to panic a wee bit. She shows up and we get started. We play a game outside where all the kids have to tie a balloon around their ankles and try to pop everyone else’s balloons while protecting their own. The balloons represent self-esteem. It is hard to protect when everyone is attacking it. (Yeah, total stretch, but the game was so much fun.) I got to play because one girl had an injured ankle, but already had a balloon blown up. I had a blast! The poor guy in my group who had to explain the game was having hell. It was so incredibly loud outside on the patio and the kids were not wanting to listen when they have balloons and strings in their hands. The game was pretty rowdy, but it was my favorite part of the charla. My part was so much smaller than I had planned. I had prepared for giving extremely detailed instructions, but I had to say two sentences in each class, and the kids just took off. Of course, there were some kids that asked me questions, but I only had to get my more advanced teammate to answer them twice. Overall, it went way better than I thought it would and the smiles on the kids’ faces makes my looking ridiculous totally worth it J.

The kids here are very friendly and treat us like celebrities. They were lined up after we were all finished asking us for our autographs and email addresses. One girl asked me if I knew Justin Bieber. Her face lighted up when I said “yes.” When she was about to faint, I realized that she thought I meant that I knew him personally. It was really difficult to refrain from pretending like me and the Biebs don’t hang out every day, but I still lack the conversational skills in Spanish to attempt that.

Everything is still going well. I thought I would provide yall with some interesting differences that I have noticed between U.S. and Peruvian culture so far:

·         Peruvians drink very little, and when they do, it is hot/room temp beverages. At this point I am not sure if it is because it is winter here, ice is hard to come by, or if it is a regional thing (rather than a Peruvian thing). I do know that if someone is sick, some believe that drinking cold beverages will worsen the sickness.

·         Since I mentioned it above, I have noticed how relative heat and cold are. It is consistently in the 60’s here. (No, I don’t know the degrees in Centigrade yet!) I am in capri pants and my host mom is in long pants, a heavy coat, a scarf, and repeating “Hace frio, no?” (It’s cold). I know my real mom would be in shorts and a t-shirt in this weather.

o   Side note: I’m sure that packing til midnight the night before I left has nothing to do with this, but I ended up with one pair of jeans and one pair of denim capris. The main “jefe” (boss) of my youth development program strongly encourages business attire every work day, even in training. Any other current trainees reading this, I would like to note that I dress in business attire every day because of necessity, not cuz I want to impress the boss J. Every American that I have asked about buying some jeans says that Peruvian jeans fit really weird (too short, excess room in the hienee), so I am looking forward to that. Since I make S./10 a day, I probably won’t be able to afford a pair for a while anyway.

·         Being cold at night will make you sick. My host mom frowns upon me bathing at night. For those of you who may have forgot, since I have barely mentioned it in previously blogs, I take COLD SHOWERS. lol. I have Zumba class three nights a week and I hate waking up any earlier than I have to, so I prefer to take my showers at night. After a little talk about how it is almost as cold in the morning at 6am as it is at 7pm (remember, we are talking about 60 degrees), I probably won’t get sick, my host mom relented.

·         Did you know that eating too much salt will make you cry? This one I left alone.

Please keep the comments coming! Miss you all.