On Wednesday morning, I woke up super early, got dressed, and headed to Cabracancha, the town where I teach sex ed. Last year I trained a group of 12 kids to be youth health promoters, primarily in sexual education. I've spent the last few months training health post workers all over the Chota district to form the same kind of group. About a week ago we had Physical Activity Day, but the activities the DISA had scheduled for that day they rescheduled for this past Wednesday and invited me to come with my youth promoters. I arranged it with the Director of the colegio, and of course the kids had no problem missing a day of school.
I took a combi up to the high school, met up with my kids, and hiked them all back down to Chota (about 45...all the boys had rocks in their shoes...metaphorically speaking). We got ourselves to the DISA right as the parade was starting around 9am (was scheduled to start at 8...classic peruvian style). We walked in a parade around the Plaza de Armas behind a truck that was shouting out of a speaker about the event and playing music. Little did my kids and I know, this parade would eventually take us about 6 miles away from Chota. We were walking for what felt like forever...after they had walked all the way to Chota that morning. My legs pretty quickly turned to jelly, but the walk offered a really unique opportunity to just chat with my kids. We're always on a tight schedule, we don't ever get the opportunity to just hang out. I talked to them about their plans after graduation. One wants to be a civil engineer, another a doctor, and another wants to take a few extra classes to pass the exam to work in the mines and then get to work alongside his father.
When the parade finally ended it brought us to a field and a small basketball court. We hung out for a little while and then played some start-up volleyball. I'm really not great at volleyball. We played about a million games but it was a lot of fun and I think I surprised the kids a little bit. They've only ever really known me as a teacher. That's always funny...surprising kids that you have a life...I remember that surprise with teachers in my own life.
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| Volleyball Players for the day! |
We played volleyball for a long time, hung out for a little while more, ate lunch, and then I shoved them all into mototaxis and regular taxis to get back to Chota so they could get home and study for a test they had the next day. A couple kids during all this took some time to tell me how grateful they were for the opportunity I had given them by teaching them in Pasos Adelante. They said it was just a really great experience. We talked about planning a couple movie nights in the future to just spend time together, and they were all really excited about that idea.
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| Everyone Eating lunch |
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| Two Doctors from Chota, Karen the OB, me, and Gabby, another PCV |
I ended the day absolutely exhausted but so fulfilled and content. It really was a great day!
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| My Promoters, minus 2 |
On Wednesday morning, I woke up super early, got dressed, and headed to Cabracancha, the town where I teach sex ed. Last year I trained a group of 12 kids to be youth health promoters, primarily in sexual education. I've spent the last few months training health post workers all over the Chota district to form the same kind of group. About a week ago we had Physical Activity Day, but the activities the DISA had scheduled for that day they rescheduled for this past Wednesday and invited me to come with my youth promoters. I arranged it with the Director of the colegio, and of course the kids had no problem missing a day of school. 
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