It has been a whole month?

            I have had a good past few days.  On Saturday, Mariska and I went to Cusco in order to talk to a travel agent about planning a trip to Lake Titicaca this coming weekend.  I am very excited to see another part of Peru and it seems like it will be a good trip…I will write about it when I get back!  I was also able to buy Machu Picchu tickets for my family´s Halloween trip, which were surprisingly hard to figure out how to buy.  I can´t wait for my family to be here in less than a month!  We walked around Cusco, saw Incan walls in the middle of the city, had a good lunch, and did some shopping.  The highlight of the day was going to Mercado San Pedro where you can buy anything, from any type of fruit, to clothing, to desserts, to band uniforms, to souvenirs, to flowers, to pigs’ heads.  It is colorful and not very touristy.  Sunday was nice because I didn´t do anything.  I was tired of traveling and wanted to explore Pisac, so we walked around the Market and hung out around Pisac which was really nice.

            Today, at the kindergarten, I tried to work on counting with Moises and Diego.  I spent over an hour with them outside, just the three of us, working on counting to ten.  I had them match dots that I had colored on pieces of papers to dots I had drawn on their fingers and then count the dots and their fingers, I had them count while they jumped up and down, I had them count my fingers, I had them count people in photographs, I had them count rocks.  For a while it felt that the two boys were making progress, but they would be able to count to about 6 once or twice and then only remember how to count to 4 again.  Moises got very distracted and started to distract Diego, so I sent him inside and worked with Diego alone.  He was able to count to 5 pretty consistently by the end of my time with him, but by the end of the day could only count to 4 again.  It is very strange and I am not quite sure what else to do to help these boys.  It´s sad because I think the teacher is going to just keep moving ahead and leave them behind to struggle.  I think that Moises is kind of unaware or just doesn´t care that he is struggling more than his peers, but I can tell that Diego knows and is upset about it.  The teacher asks Diego to count in front of the class pretty often too, which is not good because he can´t do it and the other kids are starting to catch on that they know more than Diego does and are treating him as an inferior.  I hope I can work more with these boys tomorrow.

            Today was nice because Mariska and I were able to meet three new volunteers who just got to Pisac, two today from Texas and one on Friday from England.  The two girls from Texas will be joining me at the school in San Salvador tomorrow, so that should be nice.  It is fun to have more people in Pisac, for the past month the only volunteers in Pisac have been Mariska and me, so we have had to meet up with volunteers in Urubamba or Cusco.  It will be nice to have friends closer by.

            Time is moving so fast, I can´t believe I have been here for a month!