We heard about both Spanish school and volunteer program through other travelers. For school, we found an organization called Fair Services, started and run by an awesome guy named John from Belgium. John has been living in Cusco for 12 years now and has a Peruvian wife and kids. Fair Services takes in single mothers and puts them through an intensive 600 plus hour course to teach them how to be Spanish teachers. Then, they become insructors for Fair Services. John had a new batch of teachers that just finished their training course and needed to gain confidence as instructors, so a discount was offered to students for the month of March...S/6 per hour, which equals just over $2 per hour for one on one instruction, an awesome deal!
Jon and I attended Fair Services, about a 30 minute walk from our hostal, Monday through Friday, 8am to noon. the first 2 hours were grammar, so in a classroom at the school one on one with a teacher and with workbooks provided by the school. The second two hours were one on one with another instructor for practical practice. We would walk around the city, visiting markets, museums and other locations just talking in Spanish and practicing our vocabulary and going over what we had covered in grammar class.
Fair Services also offered a Peruvian cooking course every Tuesday night. We only needed to pay S/5 and could show up with some booze and the teachers bought all of the ingredients and would instruct us on how to help prepare the meal. We made some delicious meals like Rocoto Relleno and Llomo Salado. we bought the schools cookbook with 9 recipes included so we can make some Peruvian food when we get back home! Salsa lessons were also offered on Friday nights, but since the school was so far away and Jon and I were usually doing things with other friends we never made it to those lessons unfortunately.
From 2:50 until 7pm, Monday through Friday, Jon and I were volunteering at the after school program for kids called Aldea Yanapay. "Yanapay" is Quechua for "help." It was run mostly by a local Cusquenan named Yuri. For the first few hours of the day, the kids were divided up into classes: art, computers, games and homework tutoring were a few. Jon found himself in the computer class for the two weeks we volunteered and I was in art. For the second half of the time, the kids were divided into Families based on their age. During family time, you had to discuss the theme of the week (helping others, love, acceptance, etc) and the kids needed to prepare a skit to demonstrate the theme for the Friday performances. At the end of the evening, some quinoa in milk was provided for every kid, and vitamins were given to the younger families of kids.
On Fridays, the restaurant associated with the Yanapay school would offer an all-you-can-eat buffet for the volunteers for S/15. Drinking and dancing usually ensued, and Jon and I had some of our latest nights with other volunteers in Cusco.
Our third week im Cusco Jon and I dedicated to Spanish school and meeting up with my friend Hayley who was in Peru for her spring break with other optometry students to do free vision screenings. It was awesome to meet up with her and show her our local favorites, like Jack's cafe (the best food we've had in Peru, western size and quality food that never disappointed, not to mention delicious brownies and milkshakes that weren't just milk and flavoring). In fact, Jon had a Jack's count, and we had to match the number of times we went to Jacks for brownies or other food with the number of times we hiked up to Christo Blanco, the white Jesus on top of a hill just outside of Cusco. We also had our 10 day tourist boleto at this time and spent our afternoons visiting ruins in the area on the ticket.
Overall, it was an extremely busy but fun 3 weeks in Cusco. It was nice to avoid long bus rides and the stress and money that it takes to move around a lot. But, by the end of the third week, we were getting stir crazy and we were ready for our next and final adventure...the Salkantay trek to Machu Picchu!
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