Hello friends and family!
As some of you may
know I, Molly Boyle, am spending the summer in Lima, Peru with my
friends Gabriel Rysdahl and Michael Connor. We would like to stay in
contact with as many friends and family as possible, as we like to share
stories about what we are doing as well as hear from all of you!
This
summer we are working in a High Cloud school, helping with the education,
predominantly of mothers, in the community and using some money we have
received to repair the roof of an existing school as well as build a
bathroom and an additional classroom. Our goal is to make the school a
safe and easy place to learn as well as help with the education of the
mothers.
The school is only about a twenty minute
walk from the apartment we rented for the summer, but the neighborhood
it is in is entirely different. We live above a small ´ferreteria´on a
fairly busy street. We can catch a bus right outside our house and go
anywhere we need to go. To get to the school, we walk down the street
about 10 minutes and then turn onto some unpaved roads and walk uphill
for another 10 minutes. The school is up in the sandy hills on the edge
of Lima admdst many modest homes. It is a humble community and
everyone is very nice. The school we work in is for kids 5 and under,
and any time we walk into the classroom we are literally clobbered by
kids. Most of them want to be held or thrown in the air, but it seems
we only have the stamina to do this for about 2 minutes. It takes the
kids a while to realize we cannot hold them the whole time we are there.
Some never seem to stop asking. The kids are all so cute and we love
playing with them.
We enjoy being able to speak
Spanish every day and try to study it at the end of the day when we go
back to our apartment. We have some great DVDs we got on the street for
about 50 cents that we can watch in Spanish. Gabe and I also bought
The Silver Chair in Spanish and are reading that. Michael doesn´t speak
Spanish, but came here with the intent to learn. He is doing pretty
well. Gabe, who has always liked to joke, has taken to telling the
Peruvians that Michael doesn´t talk because he is ´especial´. Michael
usually just sits back and smiles as this is going on. He knows Gabe is
just joking.
Not much other news since we have only been
here for four days. We´ll keep you posted and, again, would LOVE to
hear from all of you.
Love,