The First Week

I've only been here in Cusco for a week, but it's been full of amazing and unforgettable experiences.  First of all, my placement is in a preschool called Nuevas Americas. It is a PRONEI which means it is a government sponsored preschool for children ages 3-5 who are very poor. Most of the children's parents both work 15-16 hours a day. These children spend the rest of the day with either a grandmother or siblings. This isn't every child's case, but it is reality for most of them. The Profesorra's name is Flora and I love her. She has good, meaningful lessons for the kids everyday and she only gets paid 300 soles a month which is just a little more than $100 a month. 

This is a pretty bad picture, but all 21 kids, Flora, and I squeeze into a tiny little cement room. 

Before I left my little nieces and nephews all gave me clothes that they had grown out of.  On Wednesday is was able to take the clothes to the preschool. When I told Flora what was in the bag she gave me a big hug and almost started to cry. She knows the children best, so at the end of the day she distributed the clothes to the children. Some clothes were too big or too small and she sent them home for siblings. The kids were all so excited and came and gave me a hug and said, "Gracias Professora." It just melted my heart. Only one week has passed and I already love these little kids. 

L-R Deysi just wanted to jump in, and then Dayana and Brianna are wearing some of the clothes. 

On Saturday I was all touristy. I went with some of the volunteers I live with to some ruins just outside of Cusco. We walked from out house to Saqsayhuaman (about 2 km). I did a little research on this one before we left, so it was neat to be able to know some of the history as we were walking around these ancient Incan dwellings. How they built this without modern equipment, I have no idea!  The stones are massive! 

We walked around the ruin for quite a while and enjoyed some beautiful views of the city from up high. 

Then we walked about 1.5 km to Q'enqo.

This ruin had a cool cave and a very large sacrificial table. After this one we decided we didn't want to walk the 8 km to the next one, so we hopped on a local bus and took a ride up to Tambomachay.

Tambomachay had some really pretty streams running through it and a section of these ruins were very well preserved. Finally, we walked the last .5 km to Pukapukara. It's set on a knoll of a hill and is surrounded by farmland. It was cool to see people working in the fields below as we explored the ruin.

I loved every second of our little excursion. The people, the sights, all of it! It's been an amazing first week here in Cusco, and I'm excited for what the next week brings!