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Some updates:

I recently spent 10 days in Chicago and St. Louis/Collinsville. It was a little quest to see if I really want to go to Chicago and to get a feel of the city as a living destination instead of a place to visit. (I also got to speak a little Spanish as Dora the Explorer at a fun cartoon-themed costume-birthday party!) I like that there are soooo many things to do in Chicago, that public transportation is much more readily available than it is here in Columbus, that I know several people already. So. We’ll see.

During my visit with Matthew, we kept busy and tried to avoid the hot, hot heat. We dodged killer wasps at a holy site, tried on paper mache hands at an art museum, celebrated his mom’s birthday, and danced our feet off during a wedding reception at the City Museum. (That's a photo of us looking awesome!)

I got back to Columbus Sunday evening in time to celebrate my “little” sister’s 20th birthday with a delicious [steak] dinner and ice cream cake. Lots of laughing, being loud, and funny pop-culture references from dad (thankfully, he’s been over the word “bling” for a bit...). It’s good to be home, back with my family, and events like the Sunday’s dinner are one reason I longed to come home to something familiar.

And now, more blogging on Peru:

I waited a long time to write about what we did in the classrooms in Oropesa, where we spent the final 2-3 months of our trip. Now that I have photos of the projects all together and I’ve been back in the US for about 2 months, I think it’s about time.

The first few weeks in Oropesa were tough. We mostly substituted in classes of very naughty kids until we had a regular schedule and assisted teachers however they wanted. Sometimes this meant covering cardboard boxes with wrapping paper to make them more aesthetically pleasing or sorting markers. Most times, though, we taught. Many of the teachers wanted us to teach English because Oropesa is near Cusco, one of the major tourist cities in Peru and English is a huge plus for the industry. (One teacher even told her kids that they needed to pay attention unless they wanted to grow up and be cart pushers. lovely, huh?) However, the kids got bored copying down vocabulary words and we didn’t make much progress there. We started giving the kids the choice between an art or English lesson and mostly ended up teaching art, which was fine with us!

Matthew and I brainstormed kid-friendly art projects we could teach in Spanish with few supplies. The first project was blind contour, which required only paper and pencils. It was basically teaching kids that art doesn’t have to look like real life. We made references to Picasso that flew over their heads then partnered the kids up and demonstrated the process ourselves. It doesn’t sound difficult: face your partner, draw him or her without lifting the pencil from the paper and without looking at what you’re drawing. It was difficult for the children, even after we demonstrated. They kept peeking at their papers and drawing legs and feet and things they thought were “supposed” to be there, though they couldn’t actually see them. From my experience, it seems that Peruvian children aren’t encouraged to be creative. For example, a young girl we knew was coloring animals from a coloring book and she was told which colors to use and was corrected when she wanted to use colors like purple for a monkey. We praised the kids who actually listened and created wacky lines, weird versions of people. This is my blind contour drawing of one of the students.

I should thank my 8th grade teacher for what I thought was our most brilliant project-the face project. It was brilliant because the supplies needed were minimal- paper, pencils and erasers, colored pencils, tape, and one half of a straight-on face shot from a mgazine. Finding the faces was the most difficult part, but we managed from old magazines Roxana had. When I did the project as a student, the faces we used were pretty much life-sized, but we just did what we could with any sized face. I cut each one in half vertically and we did a lesson about symmetry. I know faces are not completely symmetrical, but the students worked hard replicating the half face they were given; it was a concrete task they understood. For a "creative" bonus, I asked the students to invent five sentences about the person they drew. [Photos: 1.) A pile of the faces cut in half. Students chose at random, without seeing the fronts first. 2.) Examples that Matthew and I each drew using 2 halves of the same man. My recreation is on the left. As you can see, faces really aren't symmetrical. 3.)What I thought was the best job. 4.) I changed my mind about best job when we did this project with a second class. 5.) Another example.]

A teacher got word of a mosaic project Matthew did with another class and she wanted to do the same thing in her class, but didn’t have the same supplies. We modified the project using colored paper. The kids got into groups and had to come up with an animal/nature design they’d make in the mosaic style. I was doubtful about how it’d turn out, but it really took off. One particular group of boys who appeared to be disconnected and undirected developed an octopus/under-sea scene, complete with coral and fish that had eyeballs. Wow. [Photos: 1.) A pair works on their flower. 2.) Four girls work on their moon mosaic. 3.) The octopus design]

Matthew’s friend who worked at an art camp suggested we make flip books. It started off great, though explaining how cartoons/animation works was a little fuzzy. Unfortunately, we only worked on this project for one week before we threw ourselves into painting the two murals before flying back to the states. [Photos: 1.) Matthew counting out piles of 12 pieces of paper. 2.) We left a pile of started flip books with the teacher.]

If we weren’t teaching art, or had some time to fill, I was singing crazy songs with the students. I explained the words of the songs and sang in English and they participated with the motions (even the naughty kids!). I used “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” to teach body parts in English. I also sang “I’m a Little Tea Pot” and “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” with the younger children. All of the students loved the baby shark song that I learned as a camp counselor in Florida. It’s about going swimming and ends with a shark attack and loosing a leg. They also liked my favorite little birdie song that ends in kids making “beaks” with their arms and chirping like baby birds. The shark song was by far the favorite.