Summer Classes and Rainy Season

For the past 6 weeks I have been teaching free summer classes in my new library. Due to a few challenges and delays, our library opened for use right when the normal school year classes were out and summer vacation started. While I was frustrated that the library was FINALLY ready for use right when the school year let out, I knew that I at least wanted to take advantage of the space by teaching my summer classes in the new library space to get a feel for how things would go teaching in my new space. I gathered up a bunch of kids who I knew could benefit from the classes and I taught classes to them every morning for about 4 hours Monday-Thursday. The classes were all focused on improving reading levels, critical thinking, and art.

One of my three year olds putting a puzzle together 

Showing their art project that we did with sea shells that I brought after my trip to the beach!

Her sweet little smile just melts my heart!

Note the dog that we had accompany us to class every day! 

Making valentine's cards. 

The only downside to my library is that the space is quite small. Even fifteen kids at once in the library is a tight fit and with my summer classes I had anywhere from 17-30 kids per day show up for classes! I had kids sitting on buckets, and sitting on the floor. At times there was no space to even walk through the classroom at all. But I never wanted to turn a kid away from learning even if it meant more stress for me. So we dealt with the lack of space and managed quite snuggly but we survived :) Thankfully kids in poverty complain about very little so I had no complaints from my students about their lack of space. I think it also helped that in Peru personal space is not a thing here, haha.

A typical day in the library-very full! But this isn't too bad compared to some days where there was literally no floor space because there were so many kids that had to sit on the floor!

These boys worked so hard to put together a 150 piece puzzle. They even stayed after class to finish it and they were SO proud when it was finally done :) 

Our faithful dog Winston who accompanied us to class EVERY day! 

My friend Abby from the US reading to the kids! She has been in Peru visiting me! 

My and my kiddos! And Winston the dog was in there too of course! 

On our last day of class we had a field games day. 

Playing duck duck goose!

Our faithful doggie friend Winston. 

 Summer classes are over and the normal school year is starting up in a week! I am super excited to get back to teaching normal classes and continuing on with all of the after-school activities that I lead during last school year :)

On a different note, rainy season has been in full swing here in the mountains of Peru for the past few weeks. It has been raining hard almost nonstop for the past week and our rivers have risen by at least two meters and have begun starting to flood over into the streets. Yesterday a car was carried away by the water! I am getting by fine in my rain coat, rain pants, and rain boots. We are all hoping that the rain settles down but we are just only half-way through out rainy season that usually goes through the end of March/early April! 

The only outfit that I will wear outside when it's rainy season! Those boots especially have saved my life. (Thanks Aunt Wendy!) 

Also, one of my best friends from the US, Abby, has been with me in Peru and we have really been enjoying our time together :) I will post photos of some of our adventures soon!