Day 25: Huancayo/Hualhuas and squares

Today we learned about squares. Unlike circles, squares have four corners, and four sides. Pretty much the same games as yesterday were played - some of the younger ones brought up circles instead of squares, which wasn't surprising. Then came the children's task of ripping paper up into little squares, and I'd stick them inside a big square, one square per group. This was much more successful - my little group of five all wanted to stick on the squares themselves, so with the proviso that I'd be the only one putting glue on the paper, I had no issue with this. We were all very proud of our square. Then came lunch (a few tears, a few refusals to eat, a few threats to sit at the 2 year olds' table), then an afternoon of jumping, building houses (I'm the official house-builder and jump-facilitator), cutting nails, doing up shoelaces, and brushing hair and teeth. The children leave the playschool very clean.

In the afternoon Juliana had said that her friend Daniel would take me to Hualhuas, a place known for its wool products. So Daniel and I set off - it was great chatting to him, and I had a nice afternoon. It was about a 45 minute journey by bus, which took us into more rural areas - I saw some pigs and cows munching grass on a train track, and we were fairly close to the mountains when we got off the bus. We looked around the artesans' market, then found a place where they sold alpaca wool, then walked around the town square for a bit before heading back.

I'd arranged to go to the cinema with Yesy and Juan Jose in the evening, but when I got there half an hour late, they weren't there. I called Yesy, no reply. I wandered around the shopping centre for a while, eventually she called me while I was munching some KFC - she was inside the cinema now, a horror film was about to start, would I be joining them? I'm not the hugest fan of horror films, so I said I'd see them back at the house. I wandered about town for a little, bought some churros, then got on a bus to Juliana's (I'd left my shopping from Hualhuas there earlier). I chatted to her mum for a while, then Juliana and Nelly turned up, and the four of us chatted until it got dark. Juliana's mum made us a dessert of peaches in jelly, she says that during Holy Week it's custom to eat this dessert in her hometown of Tarma. Then when it was dark, I grabbed my shopping, then headed back to Hilda's.