A Very Busy Two Weeks!

There's been so much that has happened in the last two weeks that i have a feeling this is going to be a very long blog so grab a cuppa and make sure you're sitting comfortably.

They've been busy because of a few things: the Ciudad de los Ninos annual Olympics, the 'Xi Te de la Esperanza' which is Ciudad's biggest fundraising event of the year, none of the boys have been to school from last Tuesday until this Monday (i still don't understand the reason why), since then there has been boys still not going to school as there is some form of chicken pox going around, and finally this weekend Hannah and I had our first experience of travelling in Pisco\Ica\Huacachina.

But first, a few interesting facts from the more mundane things we've done:

-We found half of a s/1000 note on the floor on the way to the market! Shame we didn't find the other half as it would've meant 500 soles each, around 125 pounds!
- In the market they sell 'dvds' two for s/5 so we went a bit mad when we first found it and bought: Mean Girls 2, Harry Potter Pt. 2, Bad Teacher, 127 hours, Friends with Benefits, The boy in the Striped Pyjamas, My Sister's Keeper, 21, X-Men, I am Legend, Toy Story 3 and Bridesmaids. And about 90% of them are perfect quality!
- I decided to count how many times here we do the cross sign over our chests and in one day we did it 26 times. We also go to church twice a day but i've opted out of the optional one in the morning as it was getting a bit too much.
- We've gotten to know one of the local fruit sellers as we go so much and she calls us her 'princesas' and always gives us free plantanillas (mini bananas).
- Yesterday we went on a trip with Sonrisa and San Antonio. I was told we were going to a park. 45 minutes later i was thinking this better be a really good park going so far to it and it turned out we were going to a zoo which was great!

The Olympics

The olympics were spread over the weekend and had events like sprints, marathons, long jump and a football tournament. Everyone was split up into four teams - Green (wooo), Blue (booo Hannah's team), Yellow and Red. I wasn't really sure what was going on over the weekend and no-one really told me much about it. All i knew is that Hannah had been going to markets in her breaks with the tutoras from her house, Nino Jesus, and buying supplies like blue paint, smurf outfits etc. So i was assuming that either the Green team was really unprepared or they just didn't need my help organising everything. Turns out it was the latter and when i got there to help set up on Saturday morning they had balloons, whistles, all the boys were smothering themselves head to toe in green paint and some silly person had bought really loud green horns for the boys so i couldn't hear myself think all weekend. To start it all off, all the teams marched their way to the main street down ciudad blowing horns, cheering for their teams and generally just being part of a team and making as much noise as possible. Music was playing really loudly too so the whole thing had a kind of carnival feel to it and even all of the hermanas and hermanos were more relaxed than usual which was nice to see. Even after two weeks of freezing cold weather the sun decided to show it's face for the whole weekend which was so nice. Apart from the fact that no-one had been expecting it so i hadn't worn suncream and therefore burnt my face really badly that it's only just finished peeling (bearing in mind this was two weeks ago!). And i had green stripes of paint on my face so i've just had two white lines on each cheek where i didn't burn since then. Hannah was alright though seen as she was 'Smurfette' and was covered head to toe in either blue clothing or blue paint so didn't burn at all! In the end the blue team won and the green team came last but it was still an amazing weekend.

Xi Te de la Esperanza

This is Ciudad's biggest fundraising event of the year, which meant that all of the volunteers got to go along to help out for the day. This was held in 'The Westin' hotel in San Isidro, one of the districts of Lima about 20 minutes from San Juan. The hotel is the tallest building in the whole of Peru with only 32 floors! San Isidro is like the opposite of San Juan. It's full of business people having lunch and walking around with a purpose to one of the many huge banks or business around. You can see it especially inside the hotel as it's the poshest hotel i've ever seen, literally amazing! The banquet room that we had the event inside was massive. There were fancy tables and chairs to fit 1300 guests with a stage area.

To set up we had to put about 10 leaflets in every persons place so you can imagine how long that took. Some people also helped to set out the raffle prizes and i can say i've never wanted to enter a raffle so badly! The top prizes were things like a bike, microwaves, and flight tickets from Lima to anywhere in South America for 2 people!! I did enter in the end and even asked Hermano Hugo to rig it for us so we could win the flights which we didn't win but we did win a meal out for two in a fancy restaurant in Chorrillos with a mixed grill, chips, salad and sangria so i guess that'll do. When people started arriving we stood on the door to welcome them all in and it was a great chance for people watching. It is so obvious the people in Peru who have money and those who don't. For example about 40% of the women that came had obviously had some form of botched botox or face work done and there was even a woman there who had had some form of Michael Jackson work done to her face as it was like paper white and a little scary. The entertainment for the night was some semi-famous Peruvian band, a must have been very famous older Peruvian singer as when he came on all the women were screaming and there was a rush to the front, Nino Jesus did such a cute dance and also the San Jose boys did a really funny and entertaining dance.

The San Jose Boys

They also had two famous people presenting who were apparently a famous news reader and a woman out of one of the Peruvian soaps. The whole event went really well and Hugo said that he thinks they will have made around 25,000 dollars from it, which only just covers a month's costs in Ciudad! We left at around 10pm and Hugo took us all out for McDonalds, after taking us all for Chifa for lunch (Chinese/Peruvian food) so that was really nice of him.

Pisco/Ica/Huacachina

We found out on thursday last week that the boys would be going on their salida (every fortnight they go home for the weekend) but leaving on Friday at 3pm rather than Saturday which is when they normally leave. This got Hannah thinking so when i got back from work Thursday she told me we were off to Ica and that she'd already settled it with Hugo and Samina back at Project Trust. I wasn't going to complain! So we had a couple of hours to plan it and then Friday at 4pm we got the bus down to Pisco for the night. We stayed in a little hostal called the Hostal de los Inkas which was quite nice (minus the rock hard pillows) and run by a really nice couple who even walked us to where we could get a cheap and safe taxi the next day. There wasn't too much to see in Pisco so we decided to go straight to Huacachina in the morning to go sandboarding! It was definately the right decision as we got to Huacachina at around lunchtime and i can't even explain how amazing it is. It's an oasis in the middle of the desert - a little town surrounding a lake and the whole place is smaller than Ciudad de los Ninos!

This picture still doesn't do it justice.

We went straight to our hostel to dump our things and get some lunch and i think we chose well hostel wise as this is where all of the other tourists seemed to be staying and it was the first time we'd seen any English people since arriving. We were in a room for 8 people but luckily there was only us two and two Brazilian girls. We booked straight onto a sandboarding tour at 4pm that afternoon and spent the rest of the time until then wandering around the lake and looking at all the little tourists stands. We also rented a peddle boat for 20 minutes and soaked up the sun from the first blue sky that we've seen since arriving! Even when it was hot on the olympics the sky was still covered with the grey fog that never disappears in Lima. For the sandboard tour there was me, Hannah, the two Brazilian girls Ivia and Bruna, two Londoners Katie and David, Ock from Korea and another girl from Toronto, then our instructor who was a bit of a mad man driving around the dunes. It was two hours long and we spent it driving around all of the sand dunes and stopping off at the biggest drops to go sandboarding which was amazing. There were about 6 sandboarding places, then we also stopped at another oasis in the dunes and at the top of one to watch the sunset.

Me on the dunes.

Hannah and Me on the dunes.

The whole trip was so worth the s/40 that we paid.We got back at around 6.30pm and happy hour started at 7pm so as we were all staying in the same hostel we showered and all met up again at 7pm for happy hour! This meant for me two pisco sours (not as good as everyone makes out) and two cuba libres (rum and coke), and for Hannah four pisco sours. Happy hour finished at 8 though so we all paid and went to find another place where happy hour was still going on. By this time we'd also managed to pick up Adam and Ali, a couple from California who had just started travelling and wanted to get chatting to people. This was lucky for us as Adam paid for the first round and we got the second round free! It was a really good night and good to chat to other people that were travelling and find out where they were all going and where they'd been. On the Sunday we went with Katie and David, the Londoners, into Ica to the bodega 'El Catador' which is where they make pisco. It was a good find from the lonely planet as it was a free tour around the place and then free pisco tasting after and they weren't even stingy with the amount they gave. We had lunch there which was really nice and then we went to get the bus back to Lima and the others went back for another night in Huacahina.

Pisco Tasting in El Catador

I'm definately tempted to go back to Huacachina again just to see it all again. It's really given us the travel bug though so we've already started thinking about where we want to go next. There's a little place called Chincha about 3 hours south that we're thinking of doing one weekend as apparently it's really chilled out, has an afro-peruvian culture and everyone has dreadlocks so that sounds good. We've been trying to organise a meeting with Hugo for the last couple of weeks to sort out our holiday time so that we can start planning and booking things but with the whole manana manana attitude here it keeps getting put back. Like we were supposed to have it last Monday, then it got moved to Tuesday which was yesterday and now it's been moved to next Monday. But atleast this time we've settled on a time so it's a bit more formal and hopefully it'll happen!

I think i've written about most of the interesting things that have happened. Apart from that one of the hermanas, Elsa, in my house has been ill since i arrived so i never met her until yesterday, which also turned out to be her birthday. It's strange having her around now as i'm a bit unsure what i'm supposed to do as i did a lot of her jobs whilst she was away so i think i'll be doing other things now but we'll see over time.

Anyway this has taken over 2 hours so i'm going to watch a film until my break finishes. I hope everyone's well and that freshers week is kicking off nicely! Remember you can all send me letters etc and maybe even shove a few tetley teabags in there too if you'd like, we're running low!

Adios amigos,
Evie x