Uán Jandred

So of course today (and by today I mean yesterday, since I'm a day late on the post) was a great day, because it was a Thursday!  I started out my day sleeping in..yay!, but I still headed to school early because I had to do a few things before my ballet class.  I met with the girl who is my Compañera PUCP (the Peruvian student I was matched up with by the university).  She is also now my "Cultural partner" for my Living and Learning class so several times this semester I will have to interview her about certain topics.  This time I talked to her about her name and what it means to her and other people, which was interesting because her name is in Quechua (the native language of Peru) so a lot of people don't actually know what her name signifies.  Also, I talked to her about different proverbs and values that Peruvians have in general.  Such as in the U.S. we have sayings like.."If your friends jumped off a bridge, would you?" which holds the value of independence.  It was interesting to hear some of the sayings that Peruvians use.  I also had my first experience at the PUCP library.  That was interesting.  I have to read two books for my Ethnography class (one in English, one in Spanish) so of course I checked them both out, but guess when I have them until..next Monday!  I don't exactly know how I'm going to finish them by Monday. :)  I haven't exactly figured out either if I just have to go and keep checking them out, but I do know that if I don't return them then I get suspended from checking books out of the library.  I definitely can't be dealing with that, but I'll figure something out.  I had ballet class, too, which is always a challenge, but still fun!  Also, shout out to my friends at Carthage who are in Advanced Ballet right now. :)  Apparently, there are only three people in that class and if I were there it would be four!  But, I'm glad we have ballet class on the same days so it's like I'm still at Carthage dancing with them. ;)

After ballet, a girl from my program, Meghan, and I headed to Deporte y Vida to volunteer.  I got to see the monkey again right when I got there.  He was chilling on the guy's shoulders, so it made me happy that he's not locked up all the time.  Anyway, for the longest time I helped a girl with her math homework.  Luckily, it was simple adding and subtracting (and no fractions) so it was easy enough, but I definitely still count on my fingers! :)  It makes me happy being there though, I like helping/teaching them.  It makes me feel good about the career path that I will be going down.  (For those of you who don't know, my minor is Secondary Education).  I also helped some kids with there English homework again.  It's interesting, the kids are learning English, but sometimes I see things on their homework that is incorrect.  For example, one boy had to count objects and fill in the blank with the correct number, however the sentence looked like this, "There're _____ apples."  I mean, I don't think that is "official," but I guess it works.  We do use "there's," so I can understand the use of "there're," but yea I just thought that was interesting.  Okay, now the difficult part of the day.  I had to help a boy with the pronunciation of numbers in English.  I don't even know phonics that well in English, so to have to translate them to Spanish was so hard, especially when you're limited in vowel sounds.  I pretty much just kept writing pronunciations.  I would ask the boy to say the word and when it sounded correct, that's the pronunciation I told him to use. :)  So eighty became eídi, ninety became neindi, and one hundred became uán jandred.  Also, all of them always want to know how to pronounce their names in English, like Issac or Nicole.  They always get a kick out of the difference and quirkiness in the pronunciations

Also, our taxi driver to and from Deporte y Vida was so talkative and I definitely got my share of practicing Spanish, because also I had a long dinner with my host mom and we talked for a long time at the table, too.  It was great!  Overall, it was a wonderful day and I'm glad I can always share my days with you!!  Thanks for reading!