- 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).
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| Plunging the sink she threw up in. Too funny not to take a photo. |
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!
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| In the KFC playarea. |
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| 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. |
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| 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!
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| 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)
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