New Friends, New Slang

     Today, we began the next phase of our stay in Peru - volunteering at the Peruvian Airforce's Quiñones School. It serves children aged five to seventeen, giving it a far greater number and range of students than at many American schools. Our tasks will alternate day by day and group by group, but for today we spoke with the students and got to know them better. Some of us spoke in English to with them to help them practice, while my group practiced our Spanish with them. We Began with a whole tour of the school, and Introduced ourselves to some of Their classes. We had little time for each class and the students we spoke With Were aged six to eleven, so we kept our introductions and conversations fairly basic. This was for the better, since my Spanish is more intermediate, and They Would not Understand everything we did in college and the US.
     Later, we spoke with older students in their teens and who spoke some English, allowing us to have more in depth conversations. Our group spoke (mostly) in Spanish with two fourteen year old girls named Olenna and Valeria. Valeria had relatives in New York and spoke some English, while Olenna explained many different cultural features of Peru, particularly food. They were ecstatic that we were going to Lima, and recommended eating cuy (guinea pigs). They were eager to learn more about the West Coast and Denver since they had not been there yet, and talked a lot about their favorite music from the US (specifically Justin Bieber) and Peru.
     Tomorrow, I will begin helping students practice their English. I feel like I am well prepared for this for a few reasons: First, the students have surprisingly good English, and will almost certainly speak it better than I speak Spanish. Second, I have a large English-Spanish dictionary split in half for both languages; I am sure several words in the Spanish half will be very handy at one point or another. Finally, both the students and I have a strong desire to learn from each other and to teach each other.