casa dulce casa...

Yeah...so I am home now! Yay! Home is really fun especially since right now I am in Hawaii with my family on vacation.
I got a few complaints that I stopped blogging at the end of my trip. Sorry to my faithful followers! And even my not-as-faithful followers. So I decided I would do at least one more blog post to sum up the rest of my trip.
The last couple weeks in yantalo were great. I fell in love with all my students and it was really hard to say bye to them. We finished our nutrition/physiology program with the physical education teacher and I taught about vitamins and fitness nutrition.
I did finally organize the nutrition curriculum with the vaso de leche program which was three classes. I didn't however ever have anyone come to my classes which is embarrassing to admit, but I am trying to share the failures along with the success stories. The first class I didn't advertise at all, I just gave a few invitations to the lady in charge and she said she would distribute them. When no one came, I did more advertising before my next class and spent a couple hours delivering invitations...still no one came. Then I even had them announce it over the loudspeaker in town, but no one came. I was pretty bummed at first, but then I realized it was still a good experience. I met a lot of people and had good conversations when I was delivering invitations. I also learned a lot from preparing the lessons so the only real bummer was that I didn't get to share the information with the people I loved so much.
We also finished our english lessons, but we were trying to get another volunteer to continue the lessons because we all now you never really finish learning a language and our students don't have a lot of places to practice.
Speaking of them practicing, after I left yantalo but while I was still in peru a couple of our students called my cell phone on average six or seven times a day. It was nice to know that I was missed, but I had hoped to be more replaceable so all the programs and classes would be sustainable.
After leaving yantalo, I went with Caleb and Starla to Lima, Huancayo, Satipo, and Huanuco. Each was an area that Caleb had served in on his mission so we met a ton of people that were so hospitable. It was really fun to sit around and chat and I was glad we did it at the end of our trip when I had more spanish practice.
After all that traveling, we went back to Lima and I met up with my dad and John and Liz (brother and sister). Then we went to Cuzco and Machu Picchu and did a lot of touring and souvenir shopping. Caleb and Starla were with us on and off and overall it was a very fun last week. Maybe I'll make another post sometime just so I can add pictures.
So yeah, that's the end of my trip in a nutshell. I had such a good time and I am grateful for the experiences I had, the people I met, and all the things I learned. If anyone is thinking of visiting Peru I would recommend it. It is a beautiful country and the people are so kind.
Thanks everyone for your support and interest in my travels. I'm home safely and I am enjoying adjusting to life in the states again. We really are so blessed. Love you all! Chow!

Daily happenings not just weekend trips

This is how we get in our room when we forget our keys, which happens more and more often. I´ve gotten fairly good and climbing in the window :D

Three of my favorite students and me after an afternoon english class. That day was a lot more playing than learning, but it´s good to have fun every so often to keep them wanting to come and learn. The one on my right is my favorite; his name is Kevin.

Some kids just call my name through the window until I come out to practice flashcards with them. I feel like we´re teaching all day, but it´s not enough for these kids. Party on the front porch. This was the largest crowd I´ve had. Usually it´s just a couple, but this day attracted others as well. I love these kids!

This week we started teaching nutrition and physiology to the PE kids and the activity I had them do during their second hour was build food pyramids...well out of people as you can see. I just assigned them to be bread or carrots or whatever and they did pretty well from there. Most were pretty hesitant at first, but they got better at it and it has been really fun.

Animal Adventures

Here are a few animals I´ve encountered since being in the jungle. I don´t have much time to do captions, but I think you can figure out what´s what. Love love.

Bet you weren´t expecting this!

Hello all, we decided to drop into Moyo in the middle of the week just to switch things up a bit...and restock our fruit supply. There´s not much to update since last time except our english classes are getting bigger and bigger. It is so great. The only hard thing is deciphering which students to teach what because now we have a big range of ability. It is good though, last night we had over 30 students so we broke it into three groups and Caleb, Starla and I each took one. I think they all went well. Today we had a lot of kids in the afternoon as well so we´ll see how tonight goes. We may have to start getting help from other volunteers.
Other volunteers...yeah there´s a group of med students from New York here now. They´re pretty awesome and they have their own research projects so we´re mostly doing the same thing as we were before. There is another group coming from Chicago this month sometime so Starla and I may have to move into a house of girls then they´d put the boys in our current house with Caleb. We´ll see...
Yeah life is good. We´re starting our physiology/nutrition program next week in the PE classes. I don´t remember if I´ve posted about the doctor leaving on this blog, but yeah the original nutrition program plan was under a doctor who decided to go to Spain for five years and she left last week. I´m working on developing a new one, something with a vaso de leche plan they already have. Again...we´ll see.
As always I´ll keep you updated. Life is great, our classes are really moving and people are actually learning, yay! Ok, love to all. Stay sweet.

As Promised...Pictures

A couple pictures from our super long hike to the top of the mountain. One is at the top, and one is at the bottom after it all. I´m going to assume you can figure out which is which. Well, I´ll give you a clue in case...the one with Starla is at the top. Ok, that was a pretty good hint, there´s no excuse if you don´t get it.


These are some pics from our waterfall trip last week...super fun.


These are a couple pictures to illustrate the crazy field trips here. There is a rope in the middle holding the sides of the truck together...really safe. Law suit anyone?

This is a picture of me fishing with a string...notice the reflection of the beautiful clouds.

Ok, I hope you all enjoy the pictures. I think maybe next time I´ll bring a couple from everyday life. Love love.

Jungle Fever

So I was a bit sick at the beginning of the week. It was amazing how many people wanted to help and were concerned for my well-being. At first they thought I might have Dengue Fever because I went to Soritor, the neighboring city that apparently has had problems with that. It turned out I just had a bit of pharyngitis or something. Some kind of a bacteria or virus. I took some pills and got a blessing and slept for a couple days then I was better. I had to postpone my nutrition class, but I did get to teach it on Thursday. It went pretty well, it was a little less than an hour and I felt like it was good enough. I think it was the first class that I taught all by myself. The director asked us to come back and teach other things too so it must not have been too bad. Next time I might just ask for questions first then plan my lesson because I spent a lot of time answering questions based on weird traditions they have. It was kind of like when I was sick, people told me a wide variety of reasons I wasn´t feeling well. Some were legit, and some just made me laugh. I don´t think they ever learned the germ theory here...maybe I´ll make that my next lesson. Ok, well I´m going to try and post some pictures but as a different post just in case it doesn´t work. Thanks for all your support, I really am loving my time here. I am glad I get to be settled in the village, as more volunteers come and go I realize how much easier it is to make a difference when you spend a significant amount of time. We´ve been here for about a month and we´re still developing solutions to problems we´ve only just barely found. It really is a wonderful place, the people are great and the life is simple. The people have such a desire to learn and to make life better, especially for their kids. It is just an awesome place to work. Ok, that´s all. Love to all. -Jenny

Teaching!

This week was more working which was great! We taught a lot and went to meetings to teach more. Most of our classes are still at the colegio (elementary, middle, and high school) which is fun and gives us a lot of variety. This week we also started our night english classes for anyone who wants to come- yes including you guys. The weather was bad and our advertising was lacking so the attendence was scarce, but it´s bound to improve. People ask us about it all the time.
There´s not much else that is new...oh. One thing, I am going to teach a nutrition lesson to some people who take night classes. It should be fun.
Also, we had another field trip...only this time we rode with the kids in the truck I was telling you about last week.
This morning we went with some kids from the church to some waterfalls and it was awesome! Such a beautiful day, wonderful people, and fun swimming, hiking, and rock jumping stuff.
I´m actually about out of time, so I´m going to make this one short. All is well here and I hope it´s the same wherever you are. Love love.