Adios Teaching, Hello travel

As of yesterday, we are finished teaching english to giant classes of energy-filled peruvian kids. While we are glad to be back on the road again, we are also sad to leave behind the scores of entertaining situations that occurred each day. Although we could fill a book with funny anecdotes from our experiences, here are just a couple that stand out to us right now:

1.) Almost every class Matt and I (Jeff) would ask the students if they knew certain words in english that pertained to our respective lessons. Everytime the class would go quiet for a moment, then one brave student would venture a guess, which was usually a shortened version of the spanish word he was trying to guess. Almost instantaeously the class would erupt into a thunderous chant with every student acting like they knew the answer. When we finally got the class back in order and told the kids the correct answer, the kids laughed at and/or hit the kid who started the chant. One of our favorite chants occurred when I was asking the class if they knew how to say peach (durazno) in spanish, and in every class I was greeted with the chant, "Duraz, Duraz." Our other favorite chant happened one time when Matt asked the class if they knew any Greetings in English. Following the lead of one brave but terribly wrong student. The whole class started chanting "Blu-ay, Blu-ay." We have no idea why.

2.)In another instance, I (Matt) was writing on the whiteboard with my back to the class. I had only turned my back to the class for a little bit, but pretty soon a student was at my side, politely asking me a question. I bent down to hear his question: "How do you say, Peleado, in english?" Assuming this an innocent question, I told him--"fight." However, he immediately turned around and ran to the back of the class chanting, "Fight, fight, fight!" I looked behind me to see where he was headed, and sure enough, two other kids were in an all out brawl at the back of the class. The chant was soon taken up by the rest of the class, and while I walked back to break it up, I thought to myself, "At least they've learned one word during my time here that they won't forget.

Right now, we're getting ready to head off to hike the Inca Trail, and ultimately arrive at Machu Picchu a couple of days after Easter.