Crazy kids, rabid dogs and mental horses...

This week we began actually teaching in classrooms at Tancarpata School. What were once little angels in the playground, seemed to become little nightmares in the classroom...

Our first day, Rebecca was given possibly the worst class in the world. A group of raucous 7 to 8 year olds, who ran around stabbing each other with pencils whilst shouting 'no quiero aprender' (i don't want to learn).  Furthermore, many of them spoke Quechua as a first language and could neither read nor write. Great. Annie was given a class of 9 - 10 year olds who frankly were not much better. They chose to employ weapons to attack each other with (jabbing each other with long wooden poles and whipping each other with strings of beads....), chaos. Both the original class teachers abandoned us within 5 minutes, leaving each of us "in charge" of their respective class. NIGHTMARE.

The next day, we decided we needed sweets to bribe/tame our children. In principle a good idea, in practice a cause for more fighting. The idea of being able to win a sweet did initially work, but as soon as some children started to win, others would then attack them in a jealous rage.

Plan B, ask to change classes. Rebecca got a new class of 4 - 6 year olds, who are relatively well-behaved in comparison and actually listen. Although they do struggle to remember anything she manages to teach them. Annie was stuck with the same class, who enjoyed playing some competitive games and singing some english songs. Still, this teaching business is very exhausting and we are starting to have new found respect for our old school teachers...

Yesterday we went on a horse riding tour with some of the other volunteers around the ruins outside of Cusco. This cost us the equivalent of £6 for 3 hours. Needless to say for this price safety was not a high priority, we had no helmets and no briefing as to how to ride a horse (some of the group had never ridden before). The horses were virtually uncontrollable as their bridle's had no bit. But never the less we did have an enjoyable afternoon. UNTIL, Rebecca and Michelle (another volunteer) decided to go down a separate path from some of the ruins we visited and encountered a pack of rather angry dogs that Rebecca didn't notice until they were rather too close for comfort and Michelle had run (unnecessarily in Rebecca's eyes) back up the hill. One of the dogs in fact cornered Rebecca against some rocks, but thankfully was scared off by something, no harm done. Overall it was actually a really fun tour!

Rebecca with her horse Raito, Patrick with Coca-cola and our guide with his horse whipping implement, a branch of some sort

All of us on our horses, we're to the far right of the photo

Annie with Volcano, a worrying name yet completely non-characteristic of this horse

Us by some ruins we stopped at

The view out over Cusco

This weekend we are off to Lake Titicaca to stay on floating reed islands and partake in traditional peruvian dance (complete with costume, apparently). Photos should be good.

Lots of love
Annie and Rebecca
xxx