Firstly, here is my address for all those people who fancy sending me lovely letters or parcels! (Wink Wink)
Evelyn Oldfield (Please write Evelyn NOT Evie, it needs to match the name on my passport!)
Av. Pedro Miotta 180
San Juan de Miraflores
Lima, Peru
But, don´t write Ciudad de los Ninos anywhere on it or it won´t get here!
So, I don´t really know where to start this as i have to much to say so i think i´ll start with arriving in Lima. We had a bit of a panic in Miami airport. There are 12 of us girls and we´d all managed to get from London to Miami without any problems until it came to going through customs. Hannah, my partner, is an American resident so she had to go through a different part to the rest of us and because we all left our phones at home there was no way of contacting her. Typically, there ended up being a problem with her going through as she hadn´t lived in America for 6 months so ended up being sat in an immigration room for ages whilst we all waited for her to come through the exit gate. It got to about an hour before boarding and we´d rung Project Trust to see what they thought we should do and they said we all just needed to go through and hope she´d make her way there. Luckily it got to about 20 minutes before flying and we saw Hannah running towards the departure gate, shoes in hand after being searched. So luckily we all managed to get the same plane and arrived in Lima Friday night around 10pm, 4am UK time so we were all shattered. We spent Saturday sorting out our documents with the British Chamber and getting our Peru sim cards then just chilled out on the balcony of the hostel for happy hour for the rest of the night. Sunday morning at 6am Hannah and I got our taxi to Ciudad de los Ninos to see our new home for the year!
We arrived at Ciudad at 6.30am and breakfast was at 7am with the boys. It was quite full on as we were immediately told which houses we´re working with (Me - Sonrisa Fransiscana ages 7-9, Hannah - Nino Jesus ages 3-6) and then were sent to sit with them through breakfast and spend our first two hours with them. The rest of the day was spent with Hermano Hugo, the main monk of Ciudad, giving us a grand tour of the place (it´s HUGE), and then just unpacking and settling in.
The layout of Ciudad is that there are 9 different houses, each with about 25-30 boys in and all of different age groups. There´s lots of other bits too so i get why it´s called a ciudad (city). E.g. a barbershop, pig and chicken farm (or not chickens anymore as they just killed 400 of them to feed everyone!), shoe workshop, church, ampitheatre, dining hall, tuckshop, school, lavanderia (just a woman handwashing everyone´s clothes), office, and the volunteers apartments where we stay, attached to the back of the church. We also found out that next Saturday there´s going to be a German girl coming to stay for a year too, and as we´re in a room with 6 beds (3 bunkbeds) she´ll be staying with us, and working in Sonrisa with me, so i just hope she´s nice!
Anyway, people have been asking what i do so from only a week i think i´ve got the daily routine down so it´s something like this -
5.15 - wake up to be at Sonrisa for 6am
6am - wake the boys up and throw soapy water all over the floors to speed them up and for cleaning later
6.30am - breakfast with everyone in the comedor (two bread rolls and some form of hot drink)
7am - back to Sonrisa for the hour of cleaning. This included brushing soapy water around all the floors (there are no carpets anywhere) then brushing it out of the house, then following it round with a trapo (wooden stick with a rag on the end to soak up the water), then wiping surfaces and sweeping water into the gutters outside. It´s like a spring clean every morning!
8am - Church
9 til 9.30am - English classes with a couple of the hermanas. We´ve only done one so far but i think this is going to become regular as they´re so keen to learn English!
9.30am til 1.15pm - break which we usually spend sleeping or watching a film or going to the little market a 10 minute walk away.
1.15pm - set up for lunch at 1.45 then do all the washing up and drying after. Lunch is normally soup, then rice, lentils or beans with some form of meat or veg or sauce. I don´t normally know what it is but i think that´s best as i found out we ate liver the other day!
2.30 til 5.30ish - I´m not sure of what exactly happens this time but it´s normally a couple of hours of homework and the rest spent playing football or some form of getting rid of the kids energy so they don´t fight quite so much. I´ve already been accidently punched a couple of times breaking up fights!
6pm ish - Tea (a smaller version of the same meal we had for lunch)
7pm - Church again but this time with all the kids and it´s more like just singing and dancing so it´s quite fun really.
8pm - Depending on what jobs there are left to do i´m normally back at the apartment for this time and in bed and asleep by 8.30 or 9ish. I´ve not gone to bed later than 9.30pm yet.
It´s definately hard work and i´ve never worked this hard in my life but it´s definately more fun than sitting behind a desk!! Yesterday was a proud moment as i managed to learn the last of the 24 boys names in my house! It definately helps knowing their name when i need them to do something like get out of the shower cos they´ve been in there for ages! The boys here are so respectful though! It doesn´t matter who i walk past in Ciudad, whether it´s a little boy or one of the 18yr olds or monks, every one of them says "Hermana, buenas dias" (Sister, good morning). We definately wouldn´t get that in England! It´s also strange being called sister. Although i always knew i had nun like qualities! The language barrier is quite difficult as they speak so fast so it´s hard to know what i should be doing at times but the two hermanas (sisters) that i work with are nice so on the rare occassions they talk to me, they try to explain more than once. With the kids it´s not so bad as i can just say si or no or just nod and they´re happy with that response! It did help though that when i arrived there were already 3 Slovenian volunteers working in Sonrisa who could explain everthing to me that i needed to do, seen as the hermanas didn't really tell me much. Although they left yesterday so we´ll see if i can get along without them until the German volunteer comes next week! It´s also really useful having Tania, an American Cap Corps volunteer, here as she has been here for two years and therefore knows the best places to go, what buses to take and just general tips etc. She took us into the market the other day which is a 10 minute walk from Ciudad and introduced us to a couple of the market stall owners that she has gotten to know, then yesterday she took us by bus to Tottus which is a huge shopping market in the middle of a really rural and run down town
Mine and Hannah's 19th Birthday - today!
As today is both mine and Hannah´s 19th birthday we decided to go somewhere new so we took a bus from San Juan to Barranco and have been for lunch to a quite posh looking place (thought we'd treat ourselves) to try Ceviche. It´s raw fish with lime and chilli. I´d heard lots of good things about it from everyone that´d tried it but to be honest i wasn´t too keen. Probably just for the fact that i don´t like spicy food and even though he said it was sin picante (without spice) my mouth was burning! After we'd had lunch and my mouth had settled down we went to an internet cafe to write this blog, and then onto a wooden rooftop bar which looked really nice and chilled out for a couple of drinks. I was planning on trying my first Pisco Sour but the one that we ordered turned out to be some form of pisco sour cocktail - nice but not the real thing. We ended up coming home at about 9pm as i'd been up at 6am for work and were both shattered. It has been a really lovely birthday for both of us though. The only thing that wasn't great is that i worked for 4 hours with all the kids in the morning and as i've only been here a week i didn't want to go around telling them that it was my birthday, and even though one hermana knew, she didn't say anything so it was like no-one knew. And the only 'Happy Birthdays' i got all day were from Hannah and 2 other volunteers. I had expected that but it was still a little disappointing and a shame that my birthday isn't later on when i know the boys and hermanas better. Still, it was a great day spent with Hannah.
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| Birthday Ceviche |
This has taken a lot longer than i thought it would but i´ll try and keep it updated every few weeks if i can. I hope everything is well back home and that everyone is excited and ready for going to university!
Hasta pronto!
Evie x
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