Peruvian Kindergarten

This was at church. I know it's illegal but I just wanted to capture Orrin standing by all the Peruvian guys, it was just so cool!

The church building, by the way, was one of the nicest (and cleanest) places we visited in Cusco. This was outside of it. Jethro would go play soccer once a week with the YSA kids.

Walking back home. I think Navy said she didn't feel good that day, so Brett stayed home with her, but really she was just fine. Probably tired from getting back from the trek the day before (we all were).

A little sunburned.

She wrote a letter to her friend. Part of it says "I went on hics (hikes). I so (saw) alpacas. I so (saw) Rambo Mantin (Rainbow Mountain)." With the cutest pictures in the world!!!

The next day we went with Doug, the stake president from Idaho who comes to Peru once a year and tries to visit some remote, high Andean schools to give some supplies and things. So we all packed into the 2 cars.. that was another South American experience--there were supposed to be 3 cars but something happened to one, so we had 2 for Doug, Natalia (Pamela's mom and the bishop's wife), and 8 of us (luckily Brett decided not to come). Plus 2 taxi drivers. So, 12 people in two tiny cars. Wyatt had to half sit on my lap and he was so ticked the whole 2-hour drive.  I wasn't sure what to expect or where we were going, really, but we went to a little kindergarten and we had the best day ever.  

First of all, aren't these little boy/girl signs on the doors adorable? I assume those are the Quechua words for girls and boys. These kids speak Quechua, and the teacher speaks Quechua and Spanish. And some English, luckily for us! (p.s. Jethro was always trying to learn a little Quechua. That was his opening line to start talking to anyone, at the market or anything. "Do you speak Quechua?" and then he would try to learn a little bit more. He kept a list of vocab on his phone.)

At that time, there were 4 kids who come to this kindergarten. And they are all THE most ADORABLE kids ever.  This one is Raquel.

This is Bianca.

Everyone was polite and said "thank you for coming" and shook hands.

Then they took us on a tour of their place. This is their classroom area. They had some good centers, play and dressup, a kitchen and food, musical instruments, books, much like you'd see at an American kindergarten. (Well, probably more toys than an American kindergarten).

I love that a lot of their worksheets for math (counting) or patterns were with potatoes. haha!

Of course they have a playground area, kind of in the middle of the square.

They showed us their little greenhouse where they grow vegetables. So so cool!

This is looking at one side of the square. There are bathrooms, the kitchen, and a gathering room where we ate lunch later.

This is the place we ate lunch. It was decorated for Doug's birthday.

So, below, the kids are from left to right, Bianca, Raquel, Briyith (kind of like Bridget), and Alexis (the boy).

A couple of the kids moms were preparing the lunch. I think they come do this every day.

Salad from the greenhouse!

Not quite all the way warmed up, but getting there (also I love the little kids on the bulletin board behind them too).

Gah!! They're the cutest!!

We gathered everyone up and went out to go on a walk.

Such a tiny little village. But some of these kindergarteners walk to school from an hour away.

I don't remember what we did to get them to all smile! :)

Kept walking around the lake.

Throwing rocks in the water.

We brought several soccer balls with us from Utah to give away. We gave them our first one.

Passing a herd of alpacas and sheep.

The kids by now had grown totally and completely comfortable with us and somehow there started to be tackling and wrestling and roaring.  Great fun!  This is Hazel under there.

And now Talmage. That Alexis was kind of a wild child. He reminded me of Kainoa. I liked him. :)

Farmer preparing the ground by hand. There were no tractors up here.

Some soccer for Jethro and Orrin.

We finally got back to the school (it was a pretty long walk!) and the girls were doing each other's hair.

Then we played games like Ring Around the Rosie, and London Bridge is Falling Down.

I just love these pictures--all of them--but these ones of Hazel giving piggy-back rides are so cute!

Giant me with the two moms.

Then we had a little Surprise for Doug.

And ate lunch. There was this phenomenal salad with homemade cheese and homegrown veggies, and at first we were looking at each other, like-- should we eat this? because technically we weren't eating salad or anything that wasn't cooked in case of getting ill from it, or even from the water it was washed in, but we just all kind of shrugged and started eating. :) And it was better than ever because we had missed green leafy vegetables for so long! Also there was some kind of vegetable pancake, maybe something like a zucchini? And then boiled potatoes. Some were normal like we're used to, and we didn't put butter or salt or pepper on them, everyone just picked them up with their fingers and ate them. Then the other kind was something they explained to us, but I will just post some info from the internet because it's probably more accurate than what I remember. 

Chuño (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈtʃuɲo]) is a freeze-dried potato product traditionally made by Quechua and Aymara communities of Bolivia and Peru,^[1] and is known in various countries of South America, including Bolivia, Peru, Chile and Northwest Argentina. It is a five-day process, obtained by exposing a bitter, frost-resistant variety of potatoes^[2] to the very low night temperatures of the Andean Altiplano, freezing them, and subsequently exposing them to the intense sunlight of the day (this being the traditional process). The word comes from Quechua ch'uñu, meaning 'frozen potato' ('wrinkled' in the dialects of the Junín Region).

In the market, you can find white and black chuño. The latter is made with bitter potatoes, which are left to freeze overnight in the open air. In the morning, they thaw under the sun, and then they are crushed to extract their liquid, and frozen all over again at night. This process is repeated many times until the potato is completely dehydrated. To make white chuño, on the other hand, potatoes are soaked in the icy cold water of rivers and streams for several days, and then sun-dried.

Wyatt really liked these potatoes, but I thought they were pretty nasty and didn't eat mine.

Then we had dessert, which was some weird jello with what seemed like graham crackers in it. I'm not a fan at all. And some cake, which is also not like American cake.

Then it was time to go home, so everyone had to give everyone lots and lots of hugs goodbye. What a wonderful, amazing day!

These were some kids that were just getting back from a different school (I think). But I thought he looked cool on his motorcycle.

Passing through whatever town is famous for it's cuy on the way home.

And some chocolate-covered soda crackers that I thought were a great snack!