We are four days into our 9 day trip with students in Peru. We spent two days in Lima, the first of which was spent exploring downtown Lima (el centro historico) and Miraflores. During my time living in Lima, I certainly spent a decent amount of time in both of those neighborhoods, for a myriad of reasons including legal paperwork (el centro) and meeting up with friends. It felt surprisingly natural and “at home” to be back and show students around.

As nice as it was to give students the opportunity to experience the metropolitan feel of Lima (many were surprised, and I must admit, excited, to see that there was a Starbucks so close to the hotel), I had high hopes for the day trip to Huaycan. I wanted to show them not only a community that I personally loved so much, but additionally wanted to push them into a viewing different perspective of Lima.

Huaycan is a community located on the outskirts of Lima. It, frankly, has a terrible reputation within the wider Lima society for being “una zona roja,” dangerous, and just all around not a good place. During my ten years, and still now, this reputation saddens me. There is growing crime, this is true, but the people who lived there showed me nothing but love, support and excitement for our collective work as a non-profit. I simply cannot see Huaycan through any other lens but one of the good, generous people there.

So, we took the long 1.5 bus ride out to Huaycan. Our first stop was walking them through the open air market, which is a feast for all senses, but is also eye opening to anyone who is used to purchasing food from a supermarket. Then, we were off to el Colegio Huaycan Mixto, where I had coordinated with an old friend Sara to arrange a cultural language exchange. The result was beautiful: students took turns explaining in their native languages (Spanish and English) photos and narratives from their life. A former student of mine, Johnny who is now bilingual and an English teacher, even came out to chat with them about how language changed his life. My hope was they discovered they, as teens, had more in common with each other than not. I am confident we acheived that. I have to give a shout out to Sara, my dear friend who teaches Art at Huaycan Mixto for the coordination.

The next thing that happened was simply thrilling and beautiful to see. Students from both schools came together to play a impromptu volleyball game. For the students from the U.S., they were overwhelmed by the energy and interest in them being just themselves–all they had to do was show up and kids were excited to meet them and play against them. For the students from Peru, there was an excitement about meeting/seeing people from the U.S. I don’t think there were many students in classes for that hour that the game went on–of which I have thought about, if this happened in my school or most schools in the U.S., would teachers had been as flexible?! I appreciated their relaxed attitude and overall joyous participation in the impromptu event.

After the volleyball madness, we rounded out the day with a home cooked meal by best friends in Huaycan: Ana, Meche and Queta. While we at pachamanca a la olla, students shared stories about the morning at the school. We also went around and introduced ourselves to our most gracious hosts. I would have liked to have seen more interaction here between students and Ana, Meche, and Queta, but I know everyone was hungry and mentally (and well, physically) tired from the morning. Next time, I think I will program this a bit differently… maybe a cooking class, more on that later!

Overall, the students interaction with Spanish was quite good the first couple of days and I was the most energized at this point by providing comprehensible input to them during times they didn’t understand.

This blog post was well over due! Up next, Cusco!