A Special Celebration

Viernes, 25-Julio-204

"San Manuelito" Centro Educativo Básico Especial 

FIMRC just started working with a special needs school in San Ramon. They invited us to come celebrate Peru's Indepndence Day at the school with the students, teachers, and families. 

We helped supervise the classes while the teachers prepared the food and costumes. Aaron and I were with teenagers who were awesome! We had two very high functioning 12 year old girls and two very low functioning 15 year old boys. The girls, Lydia and Gabriela, helped us so much with how to communicate with Jesús and Sandro. Our classroom was representing the jungle region of Peru. 

There are three main regions of Peru: the jungle (Selva), the mountains (Sierra), and the coast (Costa). I have visited and seen both the Selva and the Sierra regions between La Merced and Huancayo. Tomorrow I will visit the Costa region in Lima. 

The kids seemed to have a blast dressing up and dancing around. I'm so glad we got to witness this since I actually learned a lot about Peru's history. This year is the 193rd anniversary of their Independence.  

Fanny's Pool

We spent our afternoon off sitting by the pool reminiscing in the past 4 weeks. It's so crazy how fast the time went by!! I've loved every second of it and know these memories will stay with me for many years to come. Also I tried a new kind of Cusqueña and it's my favorite! Glad to have found this out at the very end...

We left the pool a little early and headed into town for some Dolce Latte ice cream. This is the Coqui Cafe so La Merced for us. I tried some star fruit sorbet and it was really good! If you ever see that flavor you should try it. 

Packing 

It was finally time to pack up for the last time as a FIMRC fellow. Somehow I managed to get everything back into my bags and organized for Cusco. It was definitely sad having to say goodbye to Yaniña and family. It's amazing how close of a friendship we formed in 8 short days. She was just so great about talking with us and we had mutual Spanish-English lessons going on. I really hope to one day return and catch up with her and her family. 

Lima Bound

Danel took all of us to the bus station so we could catch the 10:30pm VIP bus to Lima. The bus was on #Peruviantime which means we didn't leave till 11pm. According to Danel we had at worst a 12 hour bus ride ahead of us. He didn't think it would take much more than 9-10 hours though. Fingers crossed!

As we left the bus station Danel came running after the bus waving goodbye. I will definitely miss his positivity and awesome outlook on life! It's so sad and weird to have to say adiós to all of these wonderful friends.