Christmas, N.Peru, Ecuador and Parents Visit

Sorry for the length of this blog, I have 5 weeks worth of travelling to write about. I´ll try keep it brief.

This first part was written on Christmas Eve so may be a lot more detailed than the rest.

On Tuesday the boys went into school as their 'last day' or something like that, even though they'd already been off around 2 weeks. But it meant that we had a proper break again which was amazing! I just spent it cleaning the whole apartment for 2 hours as it hadn't been cleaned since the boys finished school. We have had at least one visit each day and then yesterday, we had 3. It was mad. There was one in the morning which was a really nice one. They gave them all a little city to build game, and a bag with board shorts, a t-shirt and new trainers in for every boy. Even for Gabriel, Elsa's son who lives 4 hours down South with his Grandma but has come to spend Christmas here with Elsa. Then at 3pm the 2 American Global volunteers that have been working in Sonrisa this week had a little party for them. They had cake, crisps, fizzy drinks and then we taught them the hokey cokey and did ring around the roses. The boys decided that needed changing up a bit though so that the last person to fall to the floor had to get into the centre of the circle and dance. This lead to Jesus being the first one and instead of any kind of dancing you might see at kids parties in England, he started doing Salsa! It was the cutest thing ever and he was surprisingly good at it! After that no-one else really wanted to so we just all started dancing instead all all the boys were showing off their moves and wiggling their hips. Mid-dance an unexpected new group of visitors turned up so the boys had to sit back down, wipe their mouths to pretend they hadn't just eaten lots of cake and we had to hide all of the presents the last group had left them. It's always the same routine with visitors that come to visit only one house - they come, give cake and drinks, sing a few Christmas songs, give them a present each then the boys sing two songs to thank them and give them all hugs. Apart from with this one they lit candles and sang Happy Birthday to Jesus which was very strange but I guess not surprising.

The boys this week have also been spending a lot of time watching films as they do so much playing and singing that as soon as a film is put on they all just lie down and shut up. I have been giving them a lot of dvds to watch as we have a bit of a collection growing in our apartment. Marisol came up to our room the other week to borrow some so I gave her some for the boys and some that I said just her and the hermanas needed to watch (like The Hangover, Get Him to the Greek, Bridesmaids etc). I got back to the house one day this week to find that she'd mixed the two piles up and was putting The Hangover on for my 7-9 year old boys. If you haven't seen it the name first explains the kind of film it is, but lets just say it's a good job I got there when I did to make sure she turned it off!

Last Saturday night Hannah and I were needing to get out of Ciudad for a bit so she sent a message to Joaquin who goes to uni in Cambridge with one of Hannah's best friends but he's from Peru and had come back for the holidays. Luckily he was free and was already going out with 2 of his friends as it was his birthday the day after so he invited us along and we went to Barranco for anticuchos then onto a really nice bar for cocktails. Then unfortunately they had to go home as he'd already had one too many but as it was 2.30am and we never go out we though we might as well make the most of it and go onto a discoteca (club). It seems that we are such saints whilst we work here that the rare times we do go out we end up going all out. We left the club at around 6am and got back to Ciudad around 7.30am, just as the older boys were cleaning the street as we did the walk of shame back to our apartment. The same day Alex and Aneesha, the two PT volunteers working in Iquitos, were coming to visit and stay the night. It was so nice to see them, even in the state we were in and made us even more excited for our travels which we are leaving for in around an hour!!! Yesterday we also got a visit from Kirsty and Shannon who have been working in Pucallpa and flew into Lima to start their travels.

Christmas Eve

I think this year I have done more Christmassy things than I have ever done any year, yet it still doesn't feel like Christmas! I really think that the weather is the reason. Christmas just isn't right unless you can see your breath and have to wrap up to go outside. Here it's currently around 27 degrees and as it has never snowed in Lima, it's highly unlikely to show whilst we're here. Gutting. But that doesn't mean that i'm not having an amazing Christmas. Yesterday Laura and I were asked to go into work at 2pm even though mass wasn't until 8.45pm in the evening and none of the other volunteers needed to go in. So for the morning I was feeling a bit homesick as we'd listened to Christmas songs, eaten chocolate sent from home and spoken to the family on Skype, and the thought of going to work didn't help. But when we got there, after all the joking with the hermanas saying they would be leaving us with the boys all day whilst they go to celebrate Navidad with their families, they brought us into the tutoria where they'd bought chicken and chips for us all for lunch as a thank you for all we've done here so far. It was so nice and I definately lost any homesickness right there feeling like I was home with my family here!

--------- End of the part written on Xmas Eve

So the main part of Christmas started at 8.45pm on Christmas eve which was when Mass started. I may not be religious but it was a really nice service where everyone was all dressed up, there was a church band and you could just feel how much of a family community there is here. After the service we all went to the comedor where the tables had all been places around the edges covered in table cloths and huge piles of presents colour coded in piles in the centre.The Christmas dinner was actually really nice and not too different from home which was comforting.We had vegetables, beef (which we always have at home for xmas), mashed potatoes, stuffing (which Michael made but none of my boys liked except Jean Pierre who ended up eating about 4 portions), gravy and rice. When it got to about 11.40pm Hugo announced over the microphone that it was nearly christmas and time to wish all your hermanos and hermanas a Feliz Navidad. So the next 20 minutes involved everyone in the comedor (bearing in mind there are about 400 people) going around and giving a hug and saying Feliz Navidad to everyone. It did get a bit repetitive after hugging around 200 people and having the whole of familia San Martin queue up to hug us but it was so lovely and really made me feel like part of the family. After all the hugs we had a countdown to midnight and on the dot of midnight the boys ran for their presents. Each boy got a huge box of gifts each, all from a charity. They got things like small instruments, remote control cars, clothes, trainers, bikes, toys and just anything you can think of really. They are very lucky boys! So after all the tearing into presents we all went back to the houses around 1am. Due to everyone leaving the day after this meant taking all of the decorations down when we got back and sorting out all of the boys presents, clothes and chocolates into bags to take home so we didn´t actually go to bed until 3am. The next day the boys all got their stuff together and one by one their parents came to collect them. It was sad knowing I wasn´t going to see them for 5 weeks and even worse that some of them aren´t coming back this year including Brighan who I had problems with at the start but became like my little best friend. It was also sad saying bye to Jesus who I absolutely love to bits. He gave me a hug thinking I was leaving, then half an hour later when he realised I was still here and he was about to leave he told me he wanted another hug and that he´s going to miss me. I can´t wait to see him again.

So once the boys had all left I came back to the apartment to meet the other volunteers where we had our own little Christmas and opened our presents with the Christmas smelling candle lit and Christmas music playing. I have to say, it was one of the best Christmas´ i´ve ever had.

Enjoying their presents.

The littlest boy got the biggest box - Gerardo.

All the volunteers on Christmas Eve

Our presents under the Christmas tree.

North Coast of Peru - Trujillo, Chiclayo, MANCORA

We left Ciudad around 7pm on Christmas day to meet Kirsty and Shannon in Pariwana hostal in Miraflores where we stayed for one night before going up to Trujillo the next day. We took the Oltursa bus which was absolutely amazing, better than first class on a plane (i´m guessing). The seats were huge and went back 160 degrees. There was a flat screen tv, wi-fi and they served meals on-board. Only around 95 soles too which is something like 30 pounds for a 9hr journey. We arrived in Trujillo to meet our couch surfing host David. For those who don´t know about couchsurfing, it´s a website where you have a profile and you can request to stay at someones house in the places that you´re visiting. Some people offer their spare room or just a mattress on the floor but the point of it is that you meet like-minded people who can show you their town and it´s free. We stayed in Trujillo for 3 days and met up with Frances and Wendy whilst we were there. Then Hannah and I went onto Chiclayo for a a day where we couchsurfed again with a girl called Aylin. After Chiclayo we got the bus up to Loki, our hostal in Mancora which was mad from the minute we arrived at 5 in the morning. To be honest our first night was the biggest night, even though the second night was NYE. I think this is because it was the first time in over 4 months that all of us 12 Project Trust girls were together again so everyone went a bit crazy. Our bedroom was on the bottom floor right by the pool with a huge window which was perfect for jumping in and out of instead of walking round. This wasn´t the best idea at the end of the night when I jumped onto the ledge, ready to jump into the room when Kirsty was there and decided to ´give me a hand´ by pulling me through and obviously my reactions had slowed down a little by then, leaving me to land face first on the concrete floor. Safe to say I looked a little disabled for a couple of days with a golfball sized lump on my forehead and spent the majority of NYE concussed on my sunbed but apart from that, it was a great night! NYE was also a big night where we all covered ourselves in yellow paint for free jelly shots and after the Loki bar closed, headed onto the beach where there were hundreds of tents pitched up for the night and thousands of people bringing in the new year. Definately one of my best New Years!

Before the paint - Rosanna, Me, Emily, Harriet, Louise

With the paint. With Kerry an American Peace Corp volunteer.

Ecuador!

So after an amazing 4 days in Mancora we all moved on with me Hannah, Frances and Wendy heading to Montanita in Ecuador for a few days. I´m not sure this was the best idea going from Mancora to Montanita as I was so partied out that I needed a few days rest, but Montanita is exactly like Mancora but bigger and better. I think it showed how knackered we all were as on the first night we all fell asleep at 5pm and didn´t wake up til 9am the next day. We made up for it though and had a good couple more nights in Montanita before moving onto Quito, the capital of Ecuador. It was definately a lot more relaxing there and time to finally start sight seeing rather than partying. We saw a few amazing churches covered in gold walls and went and stood on the Equator - very exciting. After Quito we went down to Banos where somehow we ended up bumping into 4 of the other PT girls and had an amazing 3 days there. We went river rafting, took a 6hr bike ride along a waterfall route, jumped off a bridge into water, jumped off a bridge attached to a harness, swam in the hot springs, drove buggys around the Ecuadorian roads (scary watching the non-drivers take to the road *cough* Louise *cough*). Obviously with there being 8 of us we managed to have a good couple of nights out there too, eve n though the clubs closed at 2am. One of the nights we had the police slowly following us in their police car telling us over the speakphone to ´get to your beds´. They gave up at 4am though and instead, told us to get into their truck and drove us to the only open fast food place in town. Got to love the Ecuadorian police. After Banos we needed to head back to Lima for Hannah to supposedly go back to work and for me to meet my parents. It was a bit of a stress as we arrived in Piura at around 7am and there wasn´t a bus to Lima until 7pm so we had 12hrs there,leaving me with only arriving in Lima about 4hrs before my flight to Arequipa with my parents. Hannah got back to find out they didn´t actually need her back at work which was annoying as we were only in Piura where she could have easily gone to work in Loki Mancora for 2 weeks, so instead she is now working in Loki Lima for a couple of weeks before we´re back to work later this week.

Before white water rafting

My bridge jump.

Travels with the Parents - Arequipa, Puno, Lake Titicaca, Machu Picchu, Cusco

It´s been amazing seeing my mum and dad these last 2 weeks after 5 months apart. We started our travels in Arequipa where we did the Colca Canyon Tour. This may have been the first thing we did but it was definately my favourite out of the whole 2 weeks. We saw huge Condors in the canyon and the scenery was absolutely breathtaking. From Arequipa we went onto Puno and then to see Lake Titicaca which was also beautiful and great to see how the people on the Islands live, or used to live. After Puno we moved onto Cusco where we did a tour of the sacred valley, ate a Guinea pig (national food of Peru), did the 6hr Inka trek and saw Machu Picchu. All of it amazing. It´s a good job it had been great weather the whole day of our trek to Machu Picchu. That day we saw it in all it´s glory for about half an hour, then the day after when we went for the actual tour of Machu Picchu, it absolutely pissed it down. You could hardly see infront of your face for the fog. So that was disappointing but luckily we managed to see it the day before.

Machu Picchu in sunny weather.

Machu Picchu in terrible weather.

Top of the Colca Canyon in Arequipa.

Eating Guinea Pig (Cuy)

Even though all these 5 weeks of travelling have been amazing, I was still really excited to come home to Lima and just have a few days of relaxing and sorting everything out. I also found out that we have a new girl living with us for the next 4 months who I haven´t met yet. I only know she´s arrived as her stuff is all over the place. She´s from the same religious organisation as the other American´s here but isn´t sleeping downstairs with them as technically she´s finished her time with the company so isn´t expected to participate in their community prayers and meals etc. So right now it´s just me and Sara in the apartment as Hannah is still at Loki and the new girl is in Nazca, expected back any day now. Definately enjoying the peace!

So that´s all the news from my travels. I start work again a week today which is our orientation week, i.e. workshops, then my boys come back on the 11th which I´m excited about. Sounds like this year we have over 40 boys in Sonrisa so that´ll be a change from the 21 we had last year! And we´re still waiting to hear if there will be any changes to staff and whether i´ll even be in Sonrisa again, we´ll see what happens. Also good news - all us volunteers got free tickets to see Elton John on Wednesday night. Excited!

So many fiestas.

And when I say fiestas I don't mean pre-drinks with the vodka flowing - I mean clowns, giant Papa Smurfs, Ben 10, Santa Claus and Magicians.

Like I said in my last blog, because it's Christmas the kids have been having sooo many visitas and paseos (I don't know the exact words in English but visits from charities and other school groups and being invited to go visit different organisations and charities). This means that for the last two weeks we've pretty much been working straight through the day and just taking an hour break here and there when the kids are napping or watching a film. I know it's not exactly like work work as a lot of it includes playing with the boys and sitting through magic shows and being dragged up to dance by crazy clowns who scream 'baile' in my face but still, there's only so much playing and dancing one can do and it's such a relief when it gets to Saturday and we get our day off! Some of the visits we've had this last couple of weeks have included: a group coming and bringing Salchipapas (sausage and chips) for everyone for lunch and Santa Claus dancing around the Comedor, a show in San Antonio with a clown, giant Ben 10, Papa Smurf and a different Santa Claus, another clown and magic show in the comedor and we've been to a community centre where the boys ate paneton, got presents and played there. Every visit the boys get presents which would be nice for them, if it wasn't for the fact that as soon as we get back to the house, the majority of occasions the presents are then taken back off them and sent to the reception where they are put into a storage room which is huge and jam packed with toys from the last few years which never got given to the boys. It seems ridiculous as they could use them as prizes for good behaviour, birthday presents seen as though they don't celebrate the boys birthdays here, or just give them a few more presents at xmas! I don't think the charities would be happy if they knew that all the present that they donate every year just end up in a big store room and the kids don't even get to open them.

Just before school finished the boys had their final English exam which I got to help them prepare for. Preparations included teaching them all 'Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes'. It went quite well and they all enjoyed it but unfortunately only seemed to manage to remember that first bit and not the 'eyes and ears and mouth and nose' part. I also spent around 2 hours drawing around 30 animals so that they could match the pictures to the english word and admittedly, I really enjoyed those 2 hours with the boys telling me 'well it sort of looks like a cow'.

My Peruvian Family...

is growing! We now have a Sonrisa house pet rabbit. Maribel and a couple of the boys found it running around so they caught it and it now lives in a box in the house. It has managed to escape already so Moises went running after it coming back with it wrapped in his t-shirt. It's so cute, perfectly white and soft and tiny! Still no name, although the San Antonio boys liked the name 'Blanconieves' i.e. a male version of Snow White.

I am absolutely, positively falling in love with my boys. Whilst washing up with Alex last week he told me that when I leave, even though it's a good 7 months away, he's really going to miss me. And another of my boys Jesus, asked if I could take a photo of us both so that he had one that he could keep, so seen as Shilpa had sent me some photos and there happened to be one of me and Jesus that she sent me, I gave it to him and it's now stuck up inside his cupboard in the house. So cute! I spent about an hour with Jesus and Alex the other day just sat inside reading my Closer magazine as the boys had been playing for about 3 hours and I was out of energy. They found it all interesting (or atleast the pictures), and were asking me on every page which person I preferred or which type of shoes I liked the best from the fashion pages, and then we ended up doing the spot the difference and crossword in the back.

We've finally managed to get the DVD player working again in Sonrisa which has been good as it means that the boys can watch Christmassy films and spend a couple of hours each day relaxing rather than just playing and having parties. I gave them Home Alone 1, 2 and 3 to watch. We're currently half way through Home Alone 2 and they all absolutely love it. I've never heard so much laughing in my life. Only one boy needs to start laughing then suddenly they're all off.

Religion

Last week we had the day of the Virgin or something like that which meant that everyone left Ciudad to go to Mass across the road outside by a big statue of Mary. I tried to respect what they were all worshiping but found it quite difficult, especially when Hannah was sat next to me. We ended up coming to the conclusion that Mary wasn't a virgin, she just had sex with God and they were both too ashamed to tell anyone so when she got pregnant, she told Joseph/Jose that it must be a sign. We try to make light of these kinds of situations. I was put in a very uncomfortable situation the other day though. One of the brothers here got made into a priest and at the end of his first Mass everyone queued up to kiss his hands. Normally my boys and hermanas don't go up to get the bread or anything but this time they started getting the boys into the queue. Two of my hermanas then sat back down so I thought that i'd managed to get away with it until one of them tapped me on the shoulder saying it's time to go up. I tried saying no but the older boys were already looking at me as if to say why is she not going and Marisol had me by the hand so I pretty much had to go. I could see American Laura looking at me trying not to laugh as she knows I don't believe in God, then I saw Hannah pissing herself at the other side knowing I was hating every minute of it, and when i'm uncomfortable I get the giggles so I was there, queueing up to kiss an old guys hand trying not to let out a huge belly laugh infront of everyone. It doesn't even sound like a huge thing but i've never felt so uncomfortable in my life.

Thanks Giving

As 5 of the volunteers that are here are American they decided that they wanted to celebrate Thanks Giving with everyone. So as we were all so busy around the actual date for Thanks Giving, we decided to have it last weekend with all of the Monks in their living area (so much nicer than anywhere else in Ciudad). We had a proper English/American meal with roast chicken, stuffing, mash, lots of veg, gravy, beers etc. Made it feel a bit like xmas day seen as though there was a xmas tree in the room playing xmas songs and a big nativity scene.

Day of the Cadets

Last Sunday we had the day of the Cadets. This meant the whole of Ciudad including the 300 boys, tutoras and monks going to the military base in Lima. It was quite exciting as everyone had been looking forward to it and for the boys it meant that every one of them got their own cadet for the day to show them around and buy them lunch and sweets etc, and for the tutoras and volunteers, a day off. There were only 2 buses to get there though which meant about 150 people on each and a very jam-packed and slow journey there. There aren't exactly safety rules here it seems. When we got there the boys were given their cadets and we went to the main site where there were lots of stands (even a Domino's pizza stand), a big band stand, paintball area, trampolines, assault course, huge inflatable slides, face painting etc. Basically everything kids love. I spent the first hour and a half with American Laura selling paneton (we sold 2), then we went for a wander and had a try on the assault course before Christoff came over to drag us to do paintballing. We ended up getting 8 people together, Me, Laura, Marisol, Christoph, Hermano Hugo (main monk of Ciudad), Hermano Antonio and two of the boys. It was only a 15 minute game with 25 paintballs each but I was hidden near the netting which meant that a lot of the boys were throwing me extra paintballs from the sidelines. This lead to me leaning out to get one and Marisol shooting me right in the ribs leaving me with a nice big bruise and the guy with the microphone telling everyone that I deserved it for being a tramposa (cheat). It was funny though. After paintballing we had a big game of Ultimate Frisbee (apparently a big game in America), then a little game of football with Hermana Gaby, Anita, Eliza, Laura and a few of the boys.

Gerardo - my youngest and cutest boy

Paintball Team -  Marisol, H.Antonio, H.Hugo, Laura, Christoph

El Parque de las Aguas

The prize for all of the boys who came 1st 2nd or 3rd in the Noche de Talentos in November was to go to the water park in Lima. It was definately the best idea for a prize as everyone had such an amazing time. There were around 5 water fountains which you could only look at, but the last two you could go into, which lead to around 40 boys and volunteers getting absolutely drenched, some that hadn't brought a spare change of clothes. It was so much fun. I only had two boys from Sonrisa to look after as they were the only ones who entered the competition so that left me with Jesus and Jhamyr to look after or in other words, make sure that they got completely drenched. I think I did my job quite nicely. Jhamyr wasn't too happy when i held him over one of the water machines though.

Here are a few photos from the night...

Loving Life

Jesus and Jhamyr

I'm sure this next week leading up to Christmas is going to be absolutely packed so i'll probably write another blog sometime at the end just before we leave for our travels! Also, Alex and Aneesha are coming to visit us tomorrow as they fly from Iquitos to Lima to Ecuador. Cannot wait to see them, I can't believe it's been 4 months since we all arrived and spent our first couple of days in Lima together!

Loving life,

Evie x

Lead up to Navidad.

I am going to try and write more often as so much is going on now it's coming up to Christmas and this blog took aaages. You might need to go make a brew again for this one.

- As of last week we have another new volunteer who is working here for 3 months and living in our apartment. She's an Italian woman called Sara who speaks Spanish but only a little bit of English so we're getting in a bit more Spanish practice now in our breaks. I feel a bit sorry for her though as I don't think that I would want to live with 3 19 year old girls if I was 39!

- WE HAVE A WASHING MACHINE! Exciting stuff, no more hand washing! Also, due to Sara's arrival we didn't have much drawer space so we've now been given 2 more sets of drawers and a cupboard for the living room. Sounds like nothing but i've got my own space for clothes now which is nice.

- Hannah, American Laura and I went to see the new Twilight film a couple of weeks ago. And it was in English!

- As i've mentioned in other posts every fortnight the boys go home for 'salida'. The other weekend the boys from San Felix which is the 16-18yr olds as a punishment weren't allowed to go home as they'd all done something or other. This was good for us though as it meant that we all had a huge football tournament with the boys, a few of the monks and Jeanette and me. Got to admit I found it really funny seeing monks playing football and wearing normal clothing rather than their brown robes!

- A few weeks ago we spent 3 of our breaks packaging Paneton which is like a sweet bread which they sell here. This meant about 3 hours with all of the volunteers and tutoras using a glue gun to stick 8000 boxes together. Fun fun fun!

- One of my favourite boys in my house, Jordi, has been expelled from school for breaking up their nativity scene. This means that he can't live in Ciudad anymore which is gutting! I wasn't even sure what was going on until the hermanas all gave him a hug (which never happens) so i gave him a big squeeze, said bye and then found out he isn't coming back!

- A bit ago Hannah and I decided that we needed another night away from Ciudad so we went to Pariwana again, this time without booking a room as we weren't even sure how long we would stay. We got there about 9pm and were just sat on our own chatting, then two guys came and sat down at the same table so we got chatting to them. This wasn't the funny part as one guy was obviously on something and was really creeping us out, and the other guy was from London who seemed to think very highly of himself, even though he'd spent the last 2 years in the prison in Callao in Lima for drug smuggling. So not a great start and he made it worse by also making a really sexist comment to Hannah (who is kinda femenist) so all hell broke loose there. But after that we found a few of the guys that we had met on Halloween so ended up spending the whole rest of the night on the Pariwana rooftop playing table tennis, table football and chilling out on the beanbags until 5am. It seemed pointless by then to bother paying for a room for the night so we just decided to stay up for 2 more hours then go back to ciudad at about 7.30am, a much more reasonable hour to turn up.

- We've had such a stress trying to book buses online, ringing various bus companies and not understanding a word they said and leaving it way too late. We went to Javier Prado last week which is a huge street which has about 4 big bus companies on it, intending to book some buses there and then. We left at 8.30am from Ciudad, it took an hour to get there by bus, we walked for about half an hour to find the companies, spent about an hour going in and out of them to find buses which it turns out there weren't any apart from ridiculously expensive ones. We then gave up, walked the half hour back to where we thought we'd gotten off the bus and spent about an hour and a half in the wrong place at a huge t-junction seeing our bus go in all 4 directions and us changing streets to stop the bus with each driver telling us we had to go to a different street. By this time it was about 1pm and we were supposed to be setting up for lunch at 1.15. We finally realised that we were 2 blocks away from where we should have been getting on the bus so went that way, easily found the right bus and ended up back at Ciudad for around 2.30pm. All that hassle and not a single bus booked! Luckily since then we have found one but which will get us to Mancora for New Year at a decent price so we're happy with that! I think we're just going to have to wing it to get up into Ecuador and do the border crossing as we can't find anything online to get us to where we want to be.

- Yesterday I had a bit of a change around. Hepatitis A has been spreading around Ciudad mainly in Nino Jesus so far with around 8 of the boys getting it and also Tania, the American volunteer working there. So yesterday Anita and Eliza the hermanas that work in Ninos Jesus both went to the hospital in the morning to have a blood test, then left again in the afternoon to have their Hep A jabs. This left just Hannah to look after 24 3-6 year olds so I got asked to go in and help. The morning was suprisingly alright. We took them to breakfast, got them all fed and back to the house and put on a film. Obviously there were a few boys who were just more interested in putting the bin on their head, or throwing themselves on the floor but over all the morning was a success. Then came the afternoon. I got there just before shower time which is stressful enough in Sonrisa with the 7-9 year olds but at least they all have their own shower cubicle. Whereas in Nino Jesus it's just one big communal shower with a very slippy floor and I got the fun job of trying to get them all showered and hair washed. I knew it was going to be a disaster and it just ended up with the boys pushing each other and taking running dives along the whole length of the bathroom, which I have to admit, if I wasn't supposed to be the responsible adult, I would definately have joined them.


Noche de Talentos

On November 12th we had the Noche de Talentos here in Ciudad. I.e. Talent show. There were two rounds of auditions which we got to be judges for. The first round was just to see if the boys had started preparing what they were going to do and the second round was a week before, so if the boys weren't prepared by then, they weren't in the show. Got to admit I quite enjoyed being Simon Cowell for the afternoon. Mine and Hannah's job on the night was to sort all of the boys out backstage and make sure that everyone was where they needed to be. It was a little stressful as the boys all went off to places to practice so we had to run around to find them all. But it made me realise how much my Spanish is improving by having to talk to all of the boys in a stressed environment. The night went really well even though it ended up finishing at 10pm rather than 9pm, but still that's a lot better than last year when it apparently finished at midnight! Two of my boys, Jesus and Jhamyr did a little number and it was the cutest thing ever. They even remembered to do the little bow that i taught them at the end. The video is on my facebook and i've put it on public so you should be able to watch it here - http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10150476739360903&saved


Mi Familia Peruana

I realised that my last proper blog was over a month ago now and a lot has changed in this month with regards to the hermana situation in my house. I went to the market with Marisol about a month ago and we ended up chatting non-stop the whole way there and back which meant that i found things out about her life, why she works here and just generally got to know her more which even that made me feel so much more comfortable at work. She also came up to our apartment one evening as she needed to use the internet so research something for her boys, and to look up Christmas jokes to tell the boys, which then lead to just looking at loads of random jokes and her staying until 9.30pm (curfew time in Ciudad) just pissing ourselves. I was surprised how many jokes I actually understood as well. This was one of them...

- Cuanto vale esta Barbie Superstar? How much does the Barbie Superstar cost?
Cuesta 30 soles. It costs 30 quid.
- Ah, bien. Y la Barbie divorciada? Ah okay, and the divorced Barbie?
Esta vale 225 soles. That one costs 225 quid.
- Como, porque tan caro? What, why so expensive?
Porque trae la casa de Ken, el coche de Ken... Because it comes with Ken's house, Ken's car...

Since last week i've started doing English classes with Elsa. We do an hour a day on the days when she's not busy. So far we've done basic words like hello, goodbye, basic questions like how are you, what's your name. Then also numbers, colours, clothes, things in the kitchen. There have been two funny situations so far when she was trying to pronounce 'fork' and was just repeating 'fuck' over and over. I explained to her what she was actually saying which she found absolutely hilarious. Then when she was trying to pronounce 'shirt' she was saying 'shit' over and over which i again explained to her and she said she's just never going to use the words fork or shirt as she doesn't want to be saying to anyone, 'can I have a fork please?' It could sound a bit dodgy. So these English classes have just meant that i've had time to get to know her and I think she needed to get to know me a bit better so now I feel a lot more like we've got a proper unit working here. Which we needed 2 days ago when we went from 5 hermanas in the house to just me and Elsa as it was Marisol's free day, Maribel had gone home for a couple of days and Laura wasn't at work. That was one stressful day!

I'm also really beginning to enjoy doing homework with the boys and some of them have started calling me Miss. At first they corrected themselves and went back to calling me Hermana but now they don't bother and just stick with Miss. I'm quite surprised but I think i'm actually quite good at helping them with their work and teaching them easier methods of how to do things, like how to do the 9x table really easily.

Last weekend I went in on my day off just to collect something and ended up staying and helping to make things for the nativity scene. Marisol and Elsa were asking me what i was doing the rest of the day and the original plan was to go out for lunch with all of the winners of Noche de Talentos, and then go and meet this 23yr old guy from the British Chamber for a drink (which never ended up happening as hannah and I got food poisoning yet again, even though none of the other 24 people did).

Plunging the sink she threw up in. Too funny not to take a photo.

But when they heard that we'd be meeting a young guy they were all questions, telling me I had to tell him that there wasn't just going to be the 2 of us, that there would be 5 of us as Elsa, Marisol and Maribel would be our chaperones and that they'd be telling him to 'cuida nuestra hijita' (take care of our daughter). Then just before I left the house they were telling me that whenever i'm bored or just want to see the boys or just come into the tutoria and chat with them then i'm welcome whenever I like as 'somos tu familia aqui' (we are your family here). It made me feel so good to hear that from them.


Christmasy Things!

Now that it's December the boys are also getting so many more visits from school groups who come to 'share' with the boys and celebrate Christmas. It generally means an hour of less homework time in the afternoons and a mini party where they all get normally chocolate milk and paneton (sweet bread) and sweets, and a Christmas present each. I think we've had 4 parties in the last 3 weeks. A few weeks ago there was also a big surprise during lunchtime. Normally we go into the comedor to set up at 1.20pm but when we got there the boys were already all sat there starting to eat and there were loads of people stood around in yellow t-shirts. They were the same people that had been coming in the week before everyday to repaint and decorate the comedor. Turns out it was their last day so they were putting on a show for the kids and yet again we hadn't been told anything about it. The show means music playing loudly and 3 clowns running around all the tables handing out balloons, whistles and dragging kids off their seats to join the conga line. It was quite a nice surprise for the kids and they all seemed to enjoy it. I found it quite funny though after. When we got back to the house the tutoras in the house lined the boys up, then popped every single balloon that they'd brought back infront of them as if to say 'that's enough of the fun'. I don't think the majority of the boys had behaved well at school that day. Along with groups of volunteers and school groups coming we've  had a visit from McDonalds, and taken a day trip to KFC where they both put on a little show for the kids and gave out happy meals and prizes. Then as well as that, last week a film crew came from a Channel 2 news show to do a quick Christmas story on Ciudad. They came into the comedor at one point and spun the camera around right infront of my face twice, so I wouldn't be surprised if there's a 1 second close up of my face on Peruvian TV. Hitting the big time!

In the KFC playarea.

I gave Jhamyr my camera at KFC and he came back with about 20 shots of his face nearly identical to this one with different backgrounds. Not sure if he'd just got the camera the wrong was round or what.

Party in the Comedor

We started decorating Sonrisa (the house I work with) the other week which really made it feel more Christmassy. As we don't have a proper xmas tree we used the one outside the main door to decorate. Our first plan was to get the star on the top which was such a farse. The tree is probably about 6 metres high and we didnt have a ladder big enough sooo... we unfolded one small ladder, then balanced a much bigger ladder against that, then had Maribel climb as high as she could on that holding a huge wooden stick with the star balancing on the end whilst trying to hook it onto the top of the tree with all the boys stood on the bottom of the ladders so it didn't flip. This is what I meant before about no health and safety! It took about 30 minutes to hook the star on properly, then once we'd finally got it, we realised that the cable had snapped so it wouldn't work and we just had to take it down again. All that hassle for nothing!

Start of the Decorations in Sonrisa

So yeah, life here in Ciudad is great. Everyone is preparing for Christmas, there's only 19 days until Christmas day and travelling, and 40 days until my mum and dad come! Exciting times ahead!

Chau for now!

Evie x (or 'Ib' as the majority seem to think it's spelt)