Throughout the day on Monday, we learned more about where we will be teaching English. There are four volunteers: me, Bob, Verity (from England), and Mike (from Vancouver). We're teaching the staff at a retirement home called La Recoleta that is run by a church. The girls are from ages 8-17, and they are eager to learn English. We will also be teaching the nuns two days a week. What's really interesting about this project is that we are the first volunteers to be teaching there! We had to create an English diagnostic test to give to the girls, which proved to be difficult. I've created tests before for students, but this was different. That took up a lot of time on Monday. At the end of the night, we were treated to a wonderful dinner and then crammed into the living room to watch 12 Years a Slave.
Tuesday was also the first day we visited our site. Josue, the field manager from Maximo Nivel, and the four of us squished into a taxi (4 soles = $1.50), and drove up to the retirement home. It has an absolutely stunning view of the mountains and the city. The retirement home is completely funded by the church, and it's incredibly well kept. For the week we are going to be using the dining hall to give lessons. But they say that next week we will have classrooms. I had major jitters because I was both nervous and excited to meet the girls. One by one, the girls started to show up; some were shy while others were full of energy. We have 21 girls, and they were all eager and excited to learn. We gave them the test, and some struggled greatly while others were able to answer the majority correctly. For the most part, the girls know little to no English whatsoever. We had them make colorful name tags and then we went around the circle introducing each other and saying what their favorite animal was. Many of the girls said cat or dog because they may have known that. Some girls were curious and wanted to know more than just the basic animals. One girl tugged on my sweatshirt and ask "Como se dice delfin en ingles?" She asked how to say dolphin in english.