The first round of goodbyes...

On Wednesday we went to Marco´s in the morning which was great, and then in the afternoon we went to El Molino market and bought some more stuff for the Chinchero kids, just little presents to say goodbye, and some lollipops for all the children at Marco´s and the Amistad as well. We went to Inkafe with Cecile for dinner and ended up having a pretty in-depth chat about life and the universe etc., and we got to bed late-ish in the end.
This morning we planned to walk to Marco´s but the weather was a bit grim so we ended up taxi-ing it, when we got to the Kindergarten we found out it was Children´s Day so they were going to have a massive party with food, drink etc., all the kids were dressed up in their best clothes and the teachers put on a play. The teacher of the four year olds left me in charge of the class when she was helping to set up the party, it started off okay when they were doing their worksheets but once they´d finished and started to get bored it quickly descended into absolute chaos, they were jumping on the tables and drawing with permenant pen on the board and fighting with each other, as soon as I solved one problem three more came up- Leo and Daniel were fighting over a particular chair even though there was another one exactly the same right by it. When I tried to explain in my best panicked Spanish that it really didn´t matter whose chair was whose, they both started to cry, and I was like, "Shit...". They were climbing on the windowsills and everything, Dannah and Yerely were cutting up lolly sticks that were meant for arts and crafts, and Diego and Jelsen were pretending to be racing car drivers/really scary animals and had created a "You shall not pass" scenario and all the girls were upset because they wanted to get stuff out of their bags.... God, it was absolute chaos. Controlling twenty hyperactive four year olds is really, really tough. But I couldn´t help finding it all really funny at the same time, I even found the time to take some photos of everything. When the teacher came back it took her a while to restore order, but she wasn´t angry with me because she could see that I was trying and the kids were just too excited about the party to listen. Eventually she gave up and we all went outside and the party started which was great. I got so many lovely photos of the kids, they´re so cute and were posing for all the pictures. After the party we had a little mini party with just us and Marco and the teachers, and they all thanked us individually in Spanish, I was quite proud I could understand them. It was really touching and I nearly cried, one of the teachers said she wished there were more people like us in the world and I could feel my eyes welling up.
Then it was pretty much straight on to the Amistad, where Heather taught them about clothes briefly and I played Bingo with them, and then we had a party because it was Kelli´s birthday and also because it was our last day. We played musical chairs, musical bumps, musical statues (we made the most of the CD player...) and sleeping lions which they absolutely LOVED, it was quite fun for us as well as it gave us a bit of peace and quiet. One girl was really good and won nearly all of the games. It was so sad to say goodbye, the kids were all hugging and kissing us and reassuring us they were going to practise their English lots, even the boys who I would´ve thought would normally hang back a bit, looked really sad and were giving us hugs. The girls wanted to take all of mine and Heather´s drawings that we´d done as examples for them home, and I said they could, they were really sweet.
Tonight we´re out to dinner at Pachapapa with Lauren, Laura, Sophie, Cecile, and a couple of friends of Laura´s from her trek, which will be really good. Tomorrow we go to the llama farm with the kids from Chinchero, which will be awesome, but then we have to say goodbye to them as well which will be really sad. Then Saturday is our last full day, our flight out is on Sunday morning. It really is the beginning of the end now and although I´m gutted, I´m starting to get pretty excited about coming home as well.
lots of love, amy xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx