Becca: School, Cusco Style

Hi, it’s Becca again! One of my favorite moments of the trip was the school in Cusco. You get to talk to real kids from a country that a lot of people wish they could visit and see what they’re learning. As soon as we got there, the kids, in awesome costumes, started dancing for us and playing in their marching band. The dancers formed lines that wove in and out of each other, twirling before us. This way and that way; it made me a bit dizzy to follow one dancer in the group (and the high altitude added to that too).

We were asked to bring gifts: maps, crayons, notebooks, etc. and something special from our hometown or city. Rachel, from Phoenix, brought a calendar of the Grand Canyon, for example. I brought a picture of a 400-year-old tree from my town in Pennsylvania and a little model of the Liberty Bell from Philadelphia. If we chose to, we could tell about our items or just say hi in Spanish. Wyatt and I told the Peruvian kids about our objects, which was a bit nerve-racking: I mean, that’s about one hundred kids who don’t know English staring at you. It was fun though.

I held up the photo of the tree and all of the kids crowded forward. Some of the kids were on a wooden platform that toppled over when they leaned over to look. They were very curious, probably because they don’t have big trees in the highlands. I told them about the Liberty Bell, “La Campana de la Libertad,” then went to see their classrooms. There were about four classrooms with blackboards and desks. Inside one of them, a few kids let us look at their math books, and I realized that we were learning close to the same thing. Sure we were in completely different parts of the world, but we were doing the same thing in school!

Some of the Peruvian kids asked to be in the photos of us that one of the teachers took with the school camera. One teen put his arm around my shoulder and asked, “Una foto?” The camera went click before I had a chance to say yes or no!

After taking photos and distributing a little candy, we got back on the bus, leaving our new friends to their schoolwork.