Profe Julia de Canada.

As I approached the door with some of the other volunteers, two girls eagerly waiting to go in greeted us; "¡Hola, profes!" ("Hi, teachers!"), hugging and kissing each of us in turn. I stepped inside to find a courtyard whose dirty walls were crumbling, held up by posts leaning on the uneven stony ground. A pair of dirty white ducks drank from a faded plastic water basin. A handul of equally dirty dogs darted around our ankles. I ducked to avoid the laundry hanging low on wires strung across the space between houses. The next door led into the school. Colourful murals and neatly kept walkways, wash basins with towels hanging at the ready for little fingers, hand-painted signs over every door, "Arte", "Biblioteca", "Baño Yanapitos"... A place for every thing and every thing in its place. An oasis in the crumbling side streets of Cusco.

The first area is School One, for the kids aged 4-8; the second, School Two, for the 9-13 year-olds. The other volunteers and I went up to the supply room to deposit our stuff and put on our smocks. While we were doing this many kids had come in and were now bouncing around the courtyard in School 1. As soon as I walked in I was jumped on by one kid after another, each giving an enthusiastic hug and kiss on the cheek. Yuri, the projects director and founder, practically had to pull them off me and shove me into the tutoring room so I could have a few minutes to get acquainted with my work space for the week. I didn´t have long, but then again, it doesn´t take long to get to know a 5 by 9-ish room! I was especially glad to discover that there was a paper lantern hanging at exactly the right height to hit your head on, just like in my Sunday school class at home! Sarah, the other girl working in tutoring, gave me the briefest of lessons on what to do and before I knew it, little Flor Evelin was sitting next to me, waiting for me to begin! I started by asking whether she knew how to write her name (she did) and then whether she knew the alphabet (some of it). We spent the rest of our time together reviewing the alphabet by laying out flashcards in order and matching upper and lower-case letters. Flor, naturally, asked me every ten seconds whether it was time to go to games yet... at last it was and my second student came in. Angela was also six but barely knew any of her letters... so we started at the very beginning, "a very good place to start". Where Flor was bubbly, confident and unfocused on her work, Angela was quiet, timid and studious. It was amazing to see her smile as she wrote a "B" after my example!

After our first class time we have the "Circle of Expression", so all of School One made a "train" and marched over to the School Two courtyard to sit with our "families". The families are divided by age group and assigned a pair of volunteers each week. This week I am with familia "Uvas" (Grapes), who are mostly 8. Since it is summer vacation here and the beginning of a new year, Monday´s circle was mostly a revision of some rules and an explanation of some differences in the program for vacation time. When it was time to introduce the new "professores" a boy named Josué was practically jumping out of his skin to be the one to do it. He went around the circle and asked each of us our name and where we were from. There are volunteers here from England, Spain, the United States, Denmark, Australia, Holland, Peru and France. When Yuri asked the kids what they knew about Canada a ton of hands shot up! They mentioned maple syrup, bears, languages spoken and our flag. Apparently they studied Canada a few weeks ago. After circle time we piled into the library at School One (in an orderly fashion) to watch "La Princesa y El Sapo" (The Princess and the Frog). Sitting on a wooden bench in that darkened room filled with childrens laughter, a girl from my family cuddled up on my lap, I was so grateful to have found a place with so much love in it and to have the opportunity to serve passionately at Yanapay. Entering the school through that dank and decaying yard was a perfect metaphor; You can emerge from the squalor to find another way of living.