Caminante No Hay Camino: Fotos, Por Fin!

Here is some photo evidence of my life thus far in Tacna. This first one is of my community mates and me after our dance at Dia Familiar last Sunday (which came out very well by the way). I was the only JV who danced as a woman because we were lacking hombres (the 2 girls not in the picture also did the guy part), and yes those braids are fake. Many more to come of course, so stay tuned!

We just returned from a 3 day beach adventure which was lovely. Saturday was a field trip with the first year students from secondary so we spent all day playing games and swimming with them then camped on the beach. It was fun, but camping with 28 13 year olds equals not a lot of sleep. Then Sunday was paseo a la playa for all Miguel Pro teachers and families so the beach was full of our students and coworkers. After that the 5 of us JVs went to a beach house nearby to have our first retreat as a community. It was just one day but it was really nice to spend that time together just the 5 of us and start to talk about some of the issues we'll be facing together this year. We're all a little tired and sunburned now but it was definitely nice to see the ocean and do some reflecting on our time here so far and the year ahead.

Last week we had a really nice mass in the cathedral to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Jesuits in Tacna. All the local Jesuits came, plus the bishop of Tacna and the cardinal, who also happens to be a Jesuit. I've been helping out with the choir at Miguel Pro and our kids sang at the mass so I had a lot of fun working with them that night. AND my community mate Cara and I got to sing Ave Maria in front of a cathedral full of people, cardinal and all! The music director asked us if we knew it in Latin about a week before the mass because the kids were singing it in Spanish, and we kinda said yeah, I mean most Catholics can at least hum it. So I looked up all the words online, listened to Pavarotti sing it about 12 times on youtube, then we sang it, without having practiced even once! It came out really well and we got tons of compliments on the music that night, but I just couldn't help laughing at how last minute the whole thing was, especially for such a big mass like that. No rehearsal, no sheet music, no problem! Only in Peru...

Tomorrow I'm making my teaching debut as I take over Chelsea's 2nd grade class in primary and Cara's 2nd/3rd year advanced English class in secondary (the equivalent of our 8th/9th grades). We just have 2 weeks of school left before Christmas/summer vacation so this is our chance to get some test runs in before we have to do it for real and by ourselves in March. It looks like I'll be teaching both of those groups of kids next year, along with preschool (3, 4, and 5 year olds!!) and either a first year or 4th/5th year mixed class in secondary. I've observed almost every teacher in the school by now, interacted with lots of students, and helped out in both of these classes last week so I'm feeling ready to go and am really excited to see how I do in front of a classroom. And of course Chelsea and Cara will still be there if I need an assist. So wish me luck, and let me know if you can think of a way to make prepositions of movement any less boring than they sound. Enjoy the photos!

Profesora Maureen