Quaker meeting and first teaching lesson

I am feeling so much better today! My stomach has finally settled down!

Yesterday I went to Quaker Meeting in the town of Batallas, which is in the Altiplano region. It took an hour and a half on the buses to get there, but it was quite an interesting journey. The Altiplano is completely flat, although surrounded by the mountains, and there are no trees so you can see for miles around. You can also see ranges of ice mountains- mountains covered in snow and ice, which are really beautiful. The houses on the altiplano are made from mud bricks, as brick bricks are too expensive, and the people farm the land. You can see them working the crops as you drive past and there are pigs, sheep, cows and llamas everywhere.

Batallas is one of the few towns on the altiplano; mostly it is just houses dotted about. There are a lot of Quakers there and Manantial school is there which is where i was today.

The Quaker meeting was weird. I know people think our Quaker meetings are weird, with just silence, but the Quaker meeting at Batallas was basically a church mass. It had hymms, prayers, kneeling, ministers (only men though!), a kind of pulpit, even a yamaha keyboard set on organ which a man played in the background(-very cheesey!) Also the men sat on the right, and the women and children on the left.

I didn´t like the Meeting much. If it hadn´t have been challed Quakerism i wouldn´t have minded, but it really didn´t fit my view of Quakerism at all.

After Meeting I went to Emma Condori´s family house in Batallas. Her family are traditional Aymaran and her mum gave me a meal, which i had to eat, despite being terrified for my stomach. They keep giving me a ´delicacy´here, which is basially dried and mouldy potatoes. How they manage to get it both at the same time is beyond me, but it is truly disgusting!

Today was my first day teaching at the school in Batallas. The children are aged between 7 and 12. They are really friendly and all want to hold my hand and touch my hair and compare my skin with theirs. They ask what their names are in English and what words are in english and how much everything costs. They are pretty mischievous and run around all the time and were even climbing on the roof!

Another teacher actually arrived today, which was good, really. We did half her lesson and half mine. It is clear that i need to know the spanish for phrases such as ´sit down!´, ´shut up!´´, ´be quiet!´and ´listen!´ for the next lesson on Wednesday!

In the pictures, the big white building is the Quaker meeting house and the yellowy building is the school. You can see the ice mountains in the distance in one of the pictures too.