That´s right, Village People

Well, I am settling nicely into Ollantay. But it means I don´t feel like I have very new or exciting stories to tell here.

I started teaching English classes this week which is a fun new adventure. 20 people signed up to take classes but on Monday only five showed up and on Wednesday only five showed up, but they were an entirely different five and I have no idea if any of them are on the original list so that´s pretty entertaining. I will be hard to teach very much if I don´t have consistent students.
Monday´s class was pretty awful. They already knew what I had prepared to teach them and there weren´t as many people as I thought so mostly we didn´t have much to do and I didn´t have any idea what to do. I was a little discouraged and left feeling pretty dumb thinking that I can figure out how to teach without any teaching training.

On Monday evening my friend Julia came to visit for a few days and she is a teacher and has taught English in Germany before so she helped me make a lesson plan for Wednesday and came to class with me and even though I ran everything, it was really nice to have her there. Class on Wednesday was fantastic and we had a great time and they learned what I wanted them to and we played games and laughed and everyone really enjoyed it. I am hoping that as I go along I will have more days like that and less days like Monday.

I am also talking with someone who has a group of kids up in one of the villages that really want to learn English so if we can work the transportation out, I may get to go up three times a week and teach which would be great. Any inroads I can make into the indiginous villages that has me there for a reason other than being a tourist is really nice. Their lifestyle and dress really is fascinating but I try to figure out a way to observe that without treating them like sideshow freaks.

Julia left today and I will put together a teaching plan for tomorrow and spend a mellow day. On Saturday I will go to Cusco to see a concert.

The Village People are playing in Cusco Peru. Can you imagine such a thing? Well, we´re going, hopefully it will be as fun and ridiculous as it seems like it must be.

Also I have now TWO people with really solid plans to come here from the states. I just can´t wait to get to share what I´m living here with folks and I´m very very excited.

Love you all,
MJ