Traditional dance success in Perú

Friday saw both schools, Inicials as well, head to the Sachaca stadium to celebrate Fiestas Patrias (28th July celebrates the Independence of Peru). A lot of schools attended, put on displays of areas of Peru with traditional dishes (a few brave vols tested the Cuye (guinea pig) but drew the line at the raw meat we were confidently told was indeed traditional!), marched through Sachaca and then the dance off started!

GVI Phoenix has a policy to promote local tradition and our children did SO well, we all felt like proud parents! Triunfo Inicial won their dance category (not really sure they knew what was going on but still!) and Maldonado Primary won their category with the dance “la Bandera del Peru” (the flag of Peru).



Our schools haven’t been attending let alone competing in such events for very long, so this was their first win! There were the biggest smiles, jumping up and down, throwing a few little brothers & sisters into the air and a lot of hugging (and that was just Ruth!). It was amazing!

This meant that on Saturday both schools came into Arequipa to parque Selva Alegre (a treat on its own) to perform alongside all the other dance winners from the other districts of Arequipa.

There were a lot of impressive dances, but of course none came close to Triunfo Inicial strutting their stuff and Maldonado impressing all by nailing the lift (there’d been a few slips and falls the day before!).



There were a few proud tears from us, Ruth, Lucy & the parents that had come to support their children. This did wonders for all the children’s self-esteem and was fantastic fun!

Spinning Frenzy has taken a hold of Maldonado! Volunteer Thomas invented a sort of wheel of fortune, which the kids spin to see how many points they will win if they answer the following question correctly, it’s certainly made learning their multiplication tables a lot more interesting and fun. Even Eder & Ivan are loving it and getting involved!

We continued our health programme this week with both schools (all grades) attending the clinic for eye test, 81 tests in total! Full details will come in a later blog.

Grades 1 & 2 this week were given the project of paper mashe!! It could have gone terribly wrong, but the kids loved it and put all their concentration into it (even if Jose Antonio & Cesar for some reason seemed engrossed in peeling off all the paper rather than sticking it on!!).

There was major excitement when the balloons came out; they then had to cover them and next week when dry will make their own masks!

Puppets have also started to play a role in the English classes, Carlita Chicken & Pedro Pig!! The kids are using them to improve their conversational English. It adds a fun element for them and it’s now a fight for who gets to come to the front to act out the “script”!

Traditional dance success in Perú