I am extremely sorry for the distinct lack of blog posts over the last month, I have just been so busy and I'm always behind on my journal let alone updating my blog!
The last 2 weeks of volunteering at the orphanage were as good as the first 2. I continued to fall in love with my babies; entertaining them, helping them out at school where they did activities such as smelling and cutting up fruit, sponge painting, hand painting, dancing, etc and jumping on the trampoline. I also used one of my Saturdays to go and visit one of the schools that the teachers from our programme work at as they were always talking about it so I wanted to experience it too. The school was in an area called Pachacutec which is a 'slum' area on the outskirts of Lima which is extremely sandy and dusty (as its in the desert) but had lovely views out over the sea. I helped out in the advanced class which had two older guys who are basically fluent in English but just want to keep improving so we had some interesting conversations about all things British, idioms and stupid pronunciation of different words in our crazy language...it makes me very grateful that I learnt English as a first language!
That weekend there was also an influx of new volunteers and I said goodbye to some of the ones who had started at the same time as me which was very sad. However, with the new volunteers I got 3 new room mates and became the non-french-speaking member of the 'French connection' which included 3 Swiss people, a French Canadian and me...don't ask why I was part of it but it meant by French was improving as well as my Spanish.
A group of 5 of us, coincidentally all Brits, went away for a very English 'surfing' weekend. We headed about an hour down the coast to a surf town which, it being the winter season, was deserted so we found another beach town where we could hire surf boards. However, by the time we had had a little lie down on the beach, the one surf hire shop had shut (due to it being a Sunday) so we ended up just lounging around in the sun, with some beers. For dinner that night we managed to find a little road side place that would do us a variety of different burgers with salad and chips for a total of S6 (£1.20).
The next day we decided to head back to Miraflores, in Lima, where we knew we could surf as it felt wrong to go on a surfing weekend without having actually surfed! I really enjoyed the surfing but it was a lot harder in the pacific off the coast of Peru than little me is used to surfing the sheltered Atlantic off the Cornish coast...I was exhausted by the end of our hour and a half in the water and constant paddling of my arms against the pull of the ocean.
I have also loved visited a half way house which the charity Tarpuy Sonqo is connected with which is a safe police guarded area for at risk girls. A group of us would go and visit the girls in this home on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons and every time I went k would come back feeling so good. Many of the girls there have been brought in off the streets where they had been prostituting themselves, or they were taken away from their families because they were unsafe there. The majority of the girls were aged 14-17 and they were all so friendly and welcoming and grateful to us for giving up our time to go and visit them, do activities (like nail painting, playing cards and dancing) with them and teach them a bit of English. The teaching English part was usually the least successful but we did manage to teach them colours, animals, clothes and adjectives to describe people. Even if there English didn't improve, chatting away with them definitely improved my Spanish and I really enjoyed being able to communicate with them even if i only understood one sentence in 5.
My last week in the house was a very busy and sociable one. On the Tuesday night a group of us went a Peruvian dance extravaganza where there was a live Peruvian band playing and they would do traditional dances in traditional
peruvian dress which included terrifying masks and massive skirts or skimpy shorts. In between each Peruvian dance they would open up the stage for us general public to take to the floor...which of course we did with impeccable style, although I do wish I had the ability to move my hips and legs to a rhythm at the same time like the Latinos do! So we basically spent the evening dancing, laughing at each other dancing and drinking sangria - perfecto! On Wednesday evening we went to the cinema to see Mad Max and my mind was completely blown and I had no idea what was going on most of the time, I was using the Spanish subtitles to help me even though the film was in English.
Thursday was one of the volunteer's, Yasmina, birthday so we went to a local bar for a few NON-alcoholic beverages as it was a work night so we weren't allowed to drink (LOL JOKE). In the bar there was a girl covering some Avril Lavigne songs which a couple of us, including me, got a little too into and James + I ended up on the stage singing along to sk8er boy with her - how embarassing - and sadly someone felt it was necessary to take video evidence.
Friday was my last day at the orphanage so, predictably, I got very emotional saying goodbye to my babies that I have been chasing around for the last 4 weeks and also saying goodbye to the inspirational mamas who I was working alongside. In the evening we had a wild night out on the town to celebrate/commemorate/commiserate my leaving which involved going to the local bar first as a big group, then moving to classily drinking wine and beer on the park until 11 when the teachers had to be back as they had to teach the next day and then 6 of us went to Barranco to find a bar there and dance the rest of the night away, finally returning at 5am...its safe to say I went out with a bang ;)
Saturday mainly involved sleeping, eating, laughing at our antics from the night before and attempting to squish all my unnecessary items into my backpack. In the evening I was joined by my Aunty Ali at a hotel in Lima and it was so lovely to see her and catch up about life out here and life at home. Sadly her bag had not arrived in Peru with her so I had to put up with her in the same smelly clothes for 3 days :P
For her first couple of days we headed down to Nazca, south of Lima, which is a small desert town where the Nazca people made lines in the ground to draw pictures which are too big to be seen from the ground so we took a flight over the top of them in a tiny 6 seater plane from which we could clearly see the lines and the general desert landscape. We also visited las islas ballestas which are known as the poor mans Galapagos as they are islands off the coast, south of Lima which have thousands and thousands of seabirds all over them and we also saw seals sunbathing on the rocks and even had a pod of dolphins swimming around our boat on our way out which was just magical! I also loved the fact that the islands are a reserve and every 7 years a large team of people go out to collect up all the guana (bird poop) because it is extremely valuable as fertiliser.
We then headed back to Lima to join our G Adventures tour down to Cusco....
The last 2 weeks of volunteering at the orphanage were as good as the first 2. I continued to fall in love with my babies; entertaining them, helping them out at school where they did activities such as smelling and cutting up fruit, sponge painting, hand painting, dancing, etc and jumping on the trampoline. I also used one of my Saturdays to go and visit one of the schools that the teachers from our programme work at as they were always talking about it so I wanted to experience it too. The school was in an area called Pachacutec which is a 'slum' area on the outskirts of Lima which is extremely sandy and dusty (as its in the desert) but had lovely views out over the sea. I helped out in the advanced class which had two older guys who are basically fluent in English but just want to keep improving so we had some interesting conversations about all things British, idioms and stupid pronunciation of different words in our crazy language...it makes me very grateful that I learnt English as a first language!
That weekend there was also an influx of new volunteers and I said goodbye to some of the ones who had started at the same time as me which was very sad. However, with the new volunteers I got 3 new room mates and became the non-french-speaking member of the 'French connection' which included 3 Swiss people, a French Canadian and me...don't ask why I was part of it but it meant by French was improving as well as my Spanish.
A group of 5 of us, coincidentally all Brits, went away for a very English 'surfing' weekend. We headed about an hour down the coast to a surf town which, it being the winter season, was deserted so we found another beach town where we could hire surf boards. However, by the time we had had a little lie down on the beach, the one surf hire shop had shut (due to it being a Sunday) so we ended up just lounging around in the sun, with some beers. For dinner that night we managed to find a little road side place that would do us a variety of different burgers with salad and chips for a total of S6 (£1.20).
The next day we decided to head back to Miraflores, in Lima, where we knew we could surf as it felt wrong to go on a surfing weekend without having actually surfed! I really enjoyed the surfing but it was a lot harder in the pacific off the coast of Peru than little me is used to surfing the sheltered Atlantic off the Cornish coast...I was exhausted by the end of our hour and a half in the water and constant paddling of my arms against the pull of the ocean.
I have also loved visited a half way house which the charity Tarpuy Sonqo is connected with which is a safe police guarded area for at risk girls. A group of us would go and visit the girls in this home on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons and every time I went k would come back feeling so good. Many of the girls there have been brought in off the streets where they had been prostituting themselves, or they were taken away from their families because they were unsafe there. The majority of the girls were aged 14-17 and they were all so friendly and welcoming and grateful to us for giving up our time to go and visit them, do activities (like nail painting, playing cards and dancing) with them and teach them a bit of English. The teaching English part was usually the least successful but we did manage to teach them colours, animals, clothes and adjectives to describe people. Even if there English didn't improve, chatting away with them definitely improved my Spanish and I really enjoyed being able to communicate with them even if i only understood one sentence in 5.
My last week in the house was a very busy and sociable one. On the Tuesday night a group of us went a Peruvian dance extravaganza where there was a live Peruvian band playing and they would do traditional dances in traditional
peruvian dress which included terrifying masks and massive skirts or skimpy shorts. In between each Peruvian dance they would open up the stage for us general public to take to the floor...which of course we did with impeccable style, although I do wish I had the ability to move my hips and legs to a rhythm at the same time like the Latinos do! So we basically spent the evening dancing, laughing at each other dancing and drinking sangria - perfecto! On Wednesday evening we went to the cinema to see Mad Max and my mind was completely blown and I had no idea what was going on most of the time, I was using the Spanish subtitles to help me even though the film was in English.
Thursday was one of the volunteer's, Yasmina, birthday so we went to a local bar for a few NON-alcoholic beverages as it was a work night so we weren't allowed to drink (LOL JOKE). In the bar there was a girl covering some Avril Lavigne songs which a couple of us, including me, got a little too into and James + I ended up on the stage singing along to sk8er boy with her - how embarassing - and sadly someone felt it was necessary to take video evidence.
Friday was my last day at the orphanage so, predictably, I got very emotional saying goodbye to my babies that I have been chasing around for the last 4 weeks and also saying goodbye to the inspirational mamas who I was working alongside. In the evening we had a wild night out on the town to celebrate/commemorate/commiserate my leaving which involved going to the local bar first as a big group, then moving to classily drinking wine and beer on the park until 11 when the teachers had to be back as they had to teach the next day and then 6 of us went to Barranco to find a bar there and dance the rest of the night away, finally returning at 5am...its safe to say I went out with a bang ;)
Saturday mainly involved sleeping, eating, laughing at our antics from the night before and attempting to squish all my unnecessary items into my backpack. In the evening I was joined by my Aunty Ali at a hotel in Lima and it was so lovely to see her and catch up about life out here and life at home. Sadly her bag had not arrived in Peru with her so I had to put up with her in the same smelly clothes for 3 days :P
For her first couple of days we headed down to Nazca, south of Lima, which is a small desert town where the Nazca people made lines in the ground to draw pictures which are too big to be seen from the ground so we took a flight over the top of them in a tiny 6 seater plane from which we could clearly see the lines and the general desert landscape. We also visited las islas ballestas which are known as the poor mans Galapagos as they are islands off the coast, south of Lima which have thousands and thousands of seabirds all over them and we also saw seals sunbathing on the rocks and even had a pod of dolphins swimming around our boat on our way out which was just magical! I also loved the fact that the islands are a reserve and every 7 years a large team of people go out to collect up all the guana (bird poop) because it is extremely valuable as fertiliser.
We then headed back to Lima to join our G Adventures tour down to Cusco....
No comments:
Post a Comment