My Peruvian Adventures: Day 11: Tuesday, January 31

Today I woke up feeling just super awesome because I am not sick anymore! YAY!!! After breakfast, I went with Sandra and Wera to the sports program. We took a collectivo (taxi) to a little town just outside of Pisco which was basically just a desert with little shacks everywhere. But in the middle of town there was a very nice concrete soccer field. There were about 15 kids, mostly boys ages 5 to 12 and three girls. We started out cleaning up the field which surprisingly the boys got pretty enthusiastic about; they liked using the giant brushes to sweep the sand off the field.

Once the field was clean, we played a game kind of like duck, duck, goose. Then we played freeze tag. It was exhausting. Those little buggers sure can run fast! After freeze tag we did some body warm ups. Then the boys played soccer and the girls, Wera, and I set up the volleyball net and started doing warmup exercises. The girl I was warming up with was Nicole. She was very good already and she was only like 12 years old. She was definitely better than me! I told her that she should play in high school and then she could get a scholarship to college. She told me that he whole family plays and she practices all the time because she really wants to be on the high school team. After we warmed up a bit, we attempted to play a game but it was really hot and the 2 little girls were tired so Wera and Nicole played and I 'refereed' the boys' soccer game while Sandra played mini-soccer with the little kids.

An hour and a sunburn later, we packed everything up and said goodbye to the kids and took a collectivo back to PSF HQ. I tried to get as much sand off of me as possible then scrounged around in the fridge for some lunch.

After lunch I went with Claudia, Robbie, and Noemi to Ludoteca, which is the daycare sort of facility. First the younger kids came and I tried to talk to them. I kept telling them to speak slower and that they needed to help me practice my spanish. They would laugh everytime I said a word wrong but then they would help me pronounce it correctly. :) They were so sweet and courteous, when they came in the building they automatically gave you a kiss on the cheek and said, "Hola". We played with marbles, did puzzles, and played chess. Then when the older kids came we played a series of very intense UNO games.

At 4:00 we went back to PSF HQ. I showered, ahhhhhh. And now I'm just waiting on dinner. YUMMM!!!!! :)

the boys at the soccer field