Life is a Long Quiet River

Everything is still flowing sweetly along for us volunteers here in Arequipa. Things are starting to settle in as we begin our second month of teaching. Registrations are now closed as our school gathers around 120 students.

Our primordial task is to make sure they come regularly in order to establish a strong community feeling within the classroom. And the most exciting thing we are looking forward to this week is the distribution of individual books for each student!

With one of the students Cielo from Koala Class

We are extremely lucky and grateful for this donation as it will enable us to follow a clear and structured lesson plan that can be easily passed onto the next volunteer in charge of our class. It is hard on the children having to adapt to constantly fleeting teachers, and coming and going leads us volunteers to wonder what we are actually leaving behind. That is the reason why we are currently working on establishing our footprints through long-term routines that can stay with the kids on a daily basis, as well as in our hearts once we end our HOOP experience.

Also, we have decided to invade a hostel named “Home Sweet Home”, and are proud to have literally turned it into our home. This enables us to keep a perfect balance between having time to ourselves and never feeling alone. I personally love the way we have an established life here and are nonetheless constantly meeting transitory travellers eager to recount their stories and make us feel part of their journey.

Cancha Time!

Talking about travels, we decided spur of the moment last Saturday to hop onto a bus leading us to Mollendo beach. I’ll admit it’s maybe not the prettiest one in Peru but you can imagine what a sudden desire to hear the sound of waves breaking and feel the sand getting warmer beneath your feet led to. After a two hour bumpy ride through arid dunes and breath-taking landscapes, we found ourselves lying amongst Peruvians beneath the boiling sun, constantly being offered snacks while trying to recuperate the hours of sleep we were lacking from our previous typically Arequipinian night out. The city had that weird feel to it, when high season comes to an end and the streets are little by little emptied, deserted and haunted-like.

Beach just outside of Mollendo, Peru

The beach we went to on Sunday was much more secluded and my first swim in the Pacific Ocean (that’s what you get for living in Paris!) definitely memorable. We chose to discover the surroundings by walking up above sea level and, although the climbing was steep and almost deadly, I would be ready to do it over and over again. Ain’t nothing like feeling on top of the world is there?

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Written by HOOP Peru Volunteer Lead Teacher Megan Macnaughton

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