Our students from Santoni enjoy a healthy snack

Parque Urpicha is known for its numerous swings and see-saws, exceptionally tall slides and a plethora of other playground games. The park stands out amongst other parks in Cusco because of its multi-colored design–every piece of equipment is painted in bright, attractive rainbow colors in a way that appeals to children and pops out from the otherwise naturally-colored landscape of Cusco. Anyone who has visited Cusco has seen the park on the drive into town from the airport!

Ester enjoys a ride in the airplane

Luz Marioly comes screaming down the slide

One of the highlights of the trip was racing down the slides, or toboganes, with the students. Many of the slides have more than one aisle to glide down on, making them perfect for competition. The girls loved challenging the profes to races of who could arrive at the bottom of the slide first. One of our younger students Ana would grasp us by the thumb and race up the to the slide pulling us behind! For the races, we’d climb up to the tallest slide of all, drawing a crowd of students to watch the take-off and gathering another group to judge the landing. Our students beat us every time! While we made the excuse that the slides were too narrow for adults, the students always chalked their wins up to their natural sliding-skills, perfected over time with plenty of practice.  Win or lose, we loved sliding with our students and look forward to visiting Parque Urpicha again soon!

Profe Megan strikes a pose with our Santoni girls

Introducing floor hockey at Los Nogales

We began with teaching how to hold the stick properly and quickly moved into basic stick skills, dribbling, and passing, all the while emphasizing safe play. Unfamiliar with holding and moving the ball with a stick, some of our student struggled with this awkward new skill while others appeared to be naturals. We noticed some neighborhood boys congregating around the court — they had never played the sport either! They were impressed to see their female classmates picking up an entirely new skill so quickly.

How to hold the stick

When we moved into game play, everyone played with enthusiasm! When we finished up class, many of our students exclaimed: “¡Que bonito juego!” (What a beautiful game!) and begged to play Floor Hockey again during the next class. We were delighted to challenge our students with new skills and provide them with this opportunity for confidence building.

Nerida, from Casa Mantay, practices floor hockey

At Casa Mantay our students are 14 to 17 years old and they participate in our classes very intensely. In the past, most of these girls came to class in inappropriate footwear which became a safety concern considering the level of intensity at which they play. Therefore, we decided to start off the year by buying each of the teenage mothers a pair of new athletic sneakers!

Yaneth and Ana trying on their new shoes

We purchased 12 pairs of brand-new sneakers from a local shop, all with good traction and sturdy support. The girls received their sneakers this past month and were extremely excited and grateful for their new footwear. They have been wearing their shoes to every sports class since, ready to play upon our arrival!

Meg and Liya with all of the girls sporting their new sneakers!

A view of the rolling hills surrounding Cusco

This past week, classes started again in full swing! We were so happy to see many of our returning students as well as many eager, new students that have decided to join our program. We decided to start the year off with soccer. While our girls are very familiar the sport, the majority lack ball control skills. Therefore, we spent most of the week teaching our students how to control the ball in order to maintain possession. Liya also started teaching our students how to juggle, which was a huge hit! We were very impressed by how quickly our students went from not being able to juggle at all to being able to make 2-3 touches in one class!

Playing Soccer at Los Nogales

This school year has gotten off to a wonderful start. We are looking forward to the many exciting projects and ideas that GSW has in store for these upcoming months, and we can´t wait to share those developments with you as they come!

Leading stretches at Los Nogales Elementary School

At Pacca’s Virgin de la Natividad, or Pacca for short, we led a field day in sports class for our younger group of girls. The field day gave them the opportunity to participate in smaller teams with more friendly competition than our usual sports classes. The team of Las Estrellitas, or the stars, won the soccer tournament after a heated final match.

Las estrellitas: first place winners!

In our English classes at Los Nogales, the students got to be creative with a holiday craft morning. We made muñecos de nieve (snowmen) and renos (reindeer). Boys and girls alike really loved making these holiday figures. Some even pinned their reindeer on their backpacks or jackets!

Students displaying their snowmen!

The teenage mothers at Casa Mantay also took pleasure in a day of crafts for their final class. Their creations ranged from Teresa’s paper Christmas chain of over 10 feet in length, to delicately painted tree ornaments. Plenty of renos and muñecos de nieve were also made and put on display in the house.

Miriam and Teresa, with Teresa's Christmas chain

Additionally, we made goody bags for our sports students in primary school at Luis Vallejos Santoni and Los Nogales. The goody bags were filled with little trinkets like a game of jacks, colorful hair accessories, candy, and Chicas Dinámicas* stickers. The girls were extremely surprised and quite happy to receive their gift bags.

Gifts and treats in the goody bags

All in all, it has been an exciting last couple of weeks with end of year and holiday festivities. We’re sad classes are coming to a close and even more sad that our oldest students will be graduating from the program. However, we’re extremely glad to be returning in March for the start of the next school year!

Happy Holidays!

*Chicas Dinámicas is the name GirlSportWorks goes by here in Cusco.

Liya & Megan on the train to Machu Picchu

This past week we had the absolute pleasure of taking the 4^th grade class from el colegio Virgen de la Natividad, situated in the town of Pacca, to Machu Picchu. It has become tradition that every year GirlSportWorks sponsors this trip, which for our girls as well as the GSW program managers is their first trip to Machu Picchu!

After taking our separate trains to Aguas Calientes we met in the quaint central plaza to walk to our hostel and get settled in. The girls and professors were thrilled and so grateful to each have their own bed. That afternoon we made the short walk to the Aguas Calientes baños termales (or hot springs), where we passed the entire afternoon soaking in the warm mineral baths! Fully relaxed, we then headed to the Aguas Calientes Market, where we enjoyed a filling, delicious meal. The girls spent the rest of the evening walking around town and thoroughly enjoying the change of scenery and climate!

Massage chain in the hot springs!

At 6AM everyone was awake and the hostel was buzzing with our excitement for the day. Everyone was thrilled to wake up to perfect weather for our visit. Today, we would all finally see Machu Picchu! We arrive to the Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu by 8AM. The girls were able to freely pass through the Sanctuary for several hours taking in the many sights of the famous and sacred place.

Pacca 4th Grade

We met up with an educational guide at 10AM who illuminated many of the mysteries and known facts of Machu Picchu. The girls had tons of questions for our guide and fully took advantage of his knowledge.  The professors were also happy with the guide and emphasized to the girls that Machu Picchu belongs to them. We will certainly never forget our unique guide who called himself “El guía amoroso” or “The loving guide.”

Listening to our guide

After our tour, we took our final photos and looks of the magnificent Machu Picchu and left full of the energy of this sacred place! The entire trip our girls were full of thanks and gratitude and we promised to pass on their thanks to all of you that support GSW and make possible these special trips! Thank you from the Pacca 4^th grade class!

Thank you for our wonderful trip!

We arrived at the climbing site and Nathan and Luis who operate SkyHighAndes (www.skyhighandes.com) instructed our students in basic climbing with a harness. After seeing just how high the rock was, many of the girls started feeling nervous and scared. Some even said they had changed their mind and would rather watch than climb. Nerida was the brave one who volunteered to go first.

Nerida climbing first

Ana followed Nerida and was much more afraid of making her way up. At one point she remained crouched on a ledge of the rock and was too frightened to stand up and continue. Realizing how scared she was, all of us watching began to cheer for her until she felt confident enough to stand tall and keep climbing. It was an awesome moment to see her change her mind and realize that she could keep going without coming down. Equally as inspiring was hearing everyone in the group shout encouraging phrases to her as she continued her climb.

Ana, right after she stood up!

After watching Nerida climb first and after witnessing Ana overcome her fear of falling, the other girls lost their apprehensiveness and they each took a turn. Two students in particular, Yovana and Nelida, showed a natural ability for climbing—they made it higher up than anyone else and also scaled the rock fastest as well. It was amazing to watch them tackle the rock without any fear of falling!

Nelida descending from high up

The girls all did extremely well with their first climbing lesson. While climbing initially frightened many of them, they each embraced the opportunity to try something new, which was a big accomplishment! Thank you to Sky High Andes for providing us with this great opportunity!

All of the girls and their children with Nathan and Luis

Fanny from Colegio Santoni proudly shows off our new friend Kimochi

Our Santoni girls, with our Collaborative Bunny, put their hands in for the end of class cheer

Sometimes Kimochi is happy.....

and sometimes he is sad.

Naomi from Colegio Los Nogales shares her feelings with the group

The decorations really set the mood for the party

This Sunday we had the pleasure of attending Casa Mantay’s Halloween and October Birthday Celebration. Casa Mantay is a safe-home for young mothers and pregnant teens; we teach sports to these exceptional young women once a week. We were invited to dress up for Halloween with the volunteers that work at Casa Mantay. Together we were the “Super Voluntarias” or Super Volunteers; we really enjoyed getting dressed up and all the girls seemed to get a kick out of our silly costumes!

Liya and Megan striking a super-pose!

The party started off with a Magic Show for the kids, which had everyone laughing, including the moms and adults in attendance. After the magic show, Raquel, the Director of the house, MC´d a fashion show of costumes. Each mother walked down the red carpet with her baby modeling their costumes for the audience. Popular costumes were fairies and princesses for girls and Zoro for boys. Our favorite costumes were those of Nerida, our newest student and a fierce athlete, who dressed as a Spring Fairy and Angel, the son of our student Nelida, who dressed as a Rocker, complete with spiked hair!

The gypsy and the lady bug: Yovana and Alexis

New student Nerida at her first costume party!

Afterwards, we all enjoyed delicious hand-made pasteries. Eli, one of our oldest students, taught the other girls how to make the pastries. Eli will soon graduate from the program and currently works at a bakery in the afternoons, which means she is unable to attend our sports class. We sincrely miss her sweet smile and strong presence with the other girls.

Everyone enjoyed the home-made pastries

Thank you, Mantay, for such a fun Sunday evening!

Volunteer Lisa dances with this beautiful princess