End of year celebrations in Sauce

Our wonderful volunteers from Germany Liene and Franca sang Christmas songs in various languages and played the flute during three different end of year celebrations for different age groups. I played guitar and harmonica.

All the children and senior adults received gifts and edible treats as we wound up the southern hemisphere school year.

Now Franca is spending two weeks in New Zealand while Liene explores southern Peru starting in Arequipa.

When they get back we will be starting our 'vacacciones utiles' summer camp for 120 children in three different locations.

Celebrating the Archangel Michael

September and October is traditionally the time of the year to make a connection with this sun being who is the spirit of our present age.  He is usually depicted slaying the dragon of ignorance with his sword.

I made about 30 swords from balsa wood in my workshop for children in Sauce and Tarapoto to sand down and paint as a tangible symbol for this angelic connection.

Construction completed

We are now doing some landscaping after finishing construction on an additional classroom and back wall with steel door for our 'Estrella de Sauce' headquarters.  We also raised the bathroom floor  to try and avoid the flooding that had plagued us previously during tropical downpours.

Thanks to the 9th graders from 'Das Goethehaus' Waldorf school in Lima who came and painted the bricks. Also many thanks to the students in Germany who worked to raise funds during WOW-day, the annual effort by participating Waldorf schools to help initiatives in developing countries such as Peru. We used WOW-day funds to underwrite this new construction at 'Estrella de Sauce'.

Welcome new volunterrs

We have two new volunteers from Germany who are already doing a great job with the children in our various classes and our group of 26 grandmothers.

Liene is from near Hamburg in the north of Germany and Franca comes from a village near Bonn in the central part of the country.

Here are Franca (L), Lady from our Friday senior citizens group (C) and Liene (R) in traditional dress from the nearby town of Lamas.

Construction and remodeling at Estrella de Sauce.

Thanks to all who have recently sent us donations for our 2017 fundraiser, also to Freunde der Erziehungskunst Rudolf Steiners in Germany who have forwarded some generous funding from their WOW-day program for some much needed improvements and upgrades to our Estrella de Sauce facility.

We are currently raising the level of the bathroom floor to see if this will help avoid the flooding that plagues us during heavy tropical rainstorms and we are adding one more classroom area for woodworking and other crafts as well as a new metal back door set in a brick wall that will replace the previous wood fence.

In order to raise the bathroom floor level we had to put in all these rocks and add pipe extensions to the floor drains.

After that Maestro Simon (the best building contractor in Sauce and our personal friend) levelled the whole floor with red-died concrete and re-installed the toilet and wash basin.

Thank you Marnie Muller of Asheville NC, USA

Marnie has kindly sent us a large quantity of her book "Borning In and Borning Out" which is an imaginative and artistic approach to the deep questions of life and death, where do we come from and where where are we going, for all ages.  Fortunately she has come out with a Spanish edition called "Naciendo Afuera y Naciendo Adentro".

Marnie's project "The Borning Project" is sponsered by The Spiritual Growth Foundation in North Carolina which is willing to receive tax-deductible contributions so these books can be widely distributed.  THANKS TO ALL WHO HAVE MADE A CONTRIBUTION TO THIS EFFORT!

As well as having copies available for the children and youth who attend our Estrella de Sauce Waldorf educational outreach program Lourdes recently gave away copies to all of the grandmothers who attend our Friday afternoon get-togethers.

Green lyre for the Blue Jungle Waldorf school in Tarapoto, Peru

I keep experimenting with different designs for the 7-string pentatonic lyres I make in my workshop in Sauce, Peru.  I decided to tint this one using blue/green Stockmar water color paint followed by a beeswax coating.  The wood is a dense and heavy local hardwood called ana.  It will be used to create background music for storytelling in the kindergarten class at the new Selva Azul Waldorf school in Tarapoto.