Mallory in Peru: The JVs and the princess

Well, it´s sure been a long time since I´ve blogged. Sorry about that. The past few months have been packed with work and difficulties. Here are a few tidbits from the past few months...

In October, I participated in the Olympics for teachers from our district. It was great to spend more time with and get to know the teachers from Fe y Alegria and other schools. I played basketball with the women´s team and we won gold! It was exhausting because we were running around at 11,000 feet. Overall, the Andahuaylillas teachers won which means we will be hosting the olimpiadas next year in Anda.

At the end of October, Cara, Mateo, Sam and I travelled to Tacna for ReO/DisO (Re-Orientation/Dis-Orientation...the annual retreat for JVs). Office staff (Dan and Margaret!) came down to visit our sites and lead the retreat. We had the grand delight to have ReO/DisO with the Tacna and Santiago JVs.

We celebrated Thanksgiving by cooking a ginormous meal and sharing it with our nun friends and Padre Oscar. It was really nice :).

Last Tuesday, the new Andahuaylillas JVs, Brian and Susan, and the princess of Spain arrived in Andahuaylillas. Techinically she´s not a princess, she´s Infanta Elena, the daughter of the king of Spain. Long story short, she donated money to help build our school 17 years ago and came back to visit. There was a lot of pomp and circumstance surrounding her visit.

Anyway, so Susan and Brian are here. They´re great and we´re very excited to have them as part of our community in Andahuaylillas. Next week they´ll spend time with families in Cusco and working on their Spanish.

We´ve also decided that I will not be teaching at Fe y Alegria next year. Instead I´ll move to work at the parish. Right now it´s up in the air, but it looks like I´ll be working in the comedor, ludoteca and a bit in tourism.

At the comedor, the parish feeds lunch to 350 children from Andahuaylillas and its surrounding communities every weekday. I´ll have a couple grades of children under my watch; serving them food and checking in with them about school and home.

The ludoteca is a center for play and learning. Right now, there is an after school program where kids can go to play, read, do art projects and run around. Next year it may be expanded to include workshops (dance, guitar, chorus, art, etcetera), recreational activities and maybe even classes for pregnant women and mothers of young children. Not sure exactly what I will do there, but I´m excited for the possibilities.

Andahuaylillas is home to the "Sistine Chapel of the Americas". Entrance fees from the church finance many of the programs we work worth. I will probably be giving tours of the church if needed and translate in our new tienda that will open soon. It will be full of artisan work from local communities.

That´s my update for now. I hope you are all doing well during this holiday season. I´m so excited for my family to come for Christmas. They´ll be here in two weeks!