Wednesday 26th May - Tuesday 1st June

Wednesday 26th May
Just Laura and I at Kindergarten this morning, it´s always harder work when there´s less of us, but we finished the tiger masks with the year 3s, cutting out the eye holes and attatching the string so they could wear them, although after all our work most of them weren´t keen on having them on their faces! The year 4s did the same but they absolutely loved them and were all chasing eachother round rouring. Unfortunately the year 5 teacher told us we wouldn´t be able to teach her class in the week, only on fridays, I think because she needs to do maths with them. It´s quite annoying because theyre the ones who are most responsive!

Thursday 27th May
We got a mini bus to Paucabamba with a group of people from Loki hostal and drove to a field where we were harvesting wheat. We were given these little metal sickle things and after a while it really hurt your back! Plus i kept losing focus and wacking myself in the shin, we managed to harvest the whole field though with half of us working from one end of the field and the rest at the other until we met in the middle.

Friday 28th May
Had kindergarten, the year 5s were a pain and kept standing on the tables for some reason, have grown so attached to some of the kids in there though!
We went to the bus station to try and book a bus to Arequipa where we would visit the Colca Canyon. This guy from terra lines ( a really good company) offered us a really good price on full cama (fully reclining) seats that night! We decided to do it, wrote down our passport numbers and everything when he came back and told us there were no spaces left. He then tried fobbing us off with some dodgy company but we weren´t feeling it, and it was already quite late so we wouldnt have had time to go back and pack.
Decided to go for a nice meal and cocktails to make up for it and Ashley, a girl we know, was out with a load of people because it was her birthday so we all went out together. The night finished fairly early though, and having just discovered the TV room in our hostal, we layered up (because the whole place is freezing) and flicked through hundreds of channels until we found ´Sex in the city the movie´, in English! It was soo nice to just sit and relax for once while we watched the film.

Saturday 29th May
Lara arrived today, the new girl we had been told would be joining us for a month. We went for a nice lunch with her and Jess and then took her round Cusco and showed her round the market and things. Lara had bought a load of magazines with her so over dinner we caught up on all the celebrity gossip wé´ve been missing out on.

Sunday 30th May
We´ve made friends with a guy called alex who sells fake designer sunglasses round the square, and today we finally agreed to buy a pair off him. I got some black raybans but when i went into the hostal i realised that one lens was way darker than the other one! I was going to hunt him down and swap them whether he liked it or not.
Lara went off on the City Tour that POD organises for you, while me Laura and Domenica caught a bus to go and meet Jevta in Ollantaytambo, a town about an hour and 20 minutes away. We drove out of the beaming sunshine into rain clouds. Ollantaytambo is tiny, theres not much going on there, Jevta said we might be able to catch the end of the bull fighting but it had already finished. He was coming back to Cusco for the week so at the end of the day we all planned to catch a bus back together, he had to say thankyou to his host family etc tho so by the time we left there were barely any buses because everyone heads to Cusco on a sunday night to work for the week.
We finally managed to bundle into this tiny mini bus thing, but then in Urubamba (the next town) they stopped and told us we had to change onto a new bus. However the bus depot was closed and there were no more buses leaving. We had to walk along the side of this road to find the town center, thumbing every vehicle that walked past. Even when we reached the centre, where hundreds of locals were also trying to hitch a ride, we were ignored by all the buses. Finally a little bus pulled over charging a ridiculous amount, and we eventually got back to Cusco.

Monday 31st May
For the Kindergarten we drew and wrote "good morning, afternoon, and night" on a piece of paper and got it photocopied for them all to colour in. We actually got to teach the year 5s today afterall, thankfully we´d photocopied way to many sheets so just did that with them because we had no lesson plan.
Went to Remar, an orphanage for about 30 kids, but its in a family home. We got to play outside on the street and did lots of skipping and stuff, it was really fun!
We had the pub quiz tonight and Jevta was running it with his charity. We managed to get a few answers out of him, Jess helped us and Rafael did too. We still didn´t win.
Afterwards we agreed to do this focus group thing. There were two people telling us about a place in Northern Peru called Cachimayo. They worked for this company, that is kind of like the Peruvian National Trust and they are trying to promote tourism in this area, it looked amazing! Plus we got a free drink, pudding and wooly hat!

Tueday 1st June
I took in finger puppets to the kindergarten that I had bought out from England. They were lots of little animans and we made them with the year 4s who absolutely loved them they were so sweet! The teacher was asking where she could buy more from. I was like "They´re from england, sorry!"
In our lunch break we bumped into Raymi our salsa teacher and booked a lesson with him for tonight.
Had a Spanish lesson in the afternoon learning irregular verbs which was confusing.
I got a text from Laura while i was there saying she had spoken to Alex about my glasses and i could swap them if i met him in the square at half 4. He wasnt there when i got there. Another day i´ll catch him!
Laura also saw Carlos in the square, our other salsa teacher and he told her that we had caused trouble. When we booked the lesson with Raymi, he thought we´d already booked it with Carlos and Carlos hadnt told him. Carlos showed Laura a text from him saying"you are a bad man, you are a liar" because he thought Carlos was keeping out lesson a secret from him!
When we got to salsa it was locked and Carlos wasnt there. Raymi turned up and seemed stressy and then Carlos arrived to let us in, it was really tense! After a bit of dancing though i think the tension cleared a bit.