Big Changes.

I realise that my last few blogs have not been too positive so I felt that I´d best write another one to let people know how things have been changing in the last few weeks.

The main change that has happened is that I am no longer working with the 7-9 year olds in Sonrisa Franciscana. I´m now with the 3-6yr olds in Nino Jesus which is the age group that I had wanted to work with from the start. I really loved my time working in Sonrisa before Christmas. I had a great relationship with the boys and the hermanas and by the time it came up to Christmas I really felt like a part of the family there. The only trouble is that since being back after Christmas, the majority of the boys were new and I still wanted to work with the babies so thought that rather than regretting not changing and never getting the experience to work with them, I spoke to Maribel, Anita and Hugo to check that it would be alright and the next week I changed houses!

So far I have to say that I am loving being in Nino Jesus. The work with the kids is a lot more the kind of work that I have wanted to do rather than the disciplinary role I was fulfilling in Sonrisa. Now, I am teaching kids how to tie their shoelaces by making the cross and bunny ears, I´m brushing the 3yr olds teeth telling them how important it is to have lovely white healthy teeth (they all have naaasty teeth in Peru) and I have 3 4yr old boys to do homework with and teach how to write out letters and numbers etc (technically I preferred teaching the older boys how to do mathmatical equations and write stories but this is good too). I also actually look forward to seeing the boys after my breaks rather than just getting stressed as I knew that it would be another afternoon of telling kids off, playing a bit, them losing respect then telling kids off again. It´s made me realise that I don´t actually hate kids which is the idea I was really starting to believe. There is one little boy in Nino Jesus called Angel. He´s 3 and is the cutest little kid i´ve ever seen. He waddles around with his big watery eyes and says things like "Miwa el cawo" instead of "Mira el carro" i.e. Look at the car. I love him.

The only problem I´ve had since changing houses has unsurprisingly been with the Sonrisa hermanas. If you´ve been following my blog from the start you´ll know that I had my problems with them in the first couple of months too. I thought at first maybe it was the way I work or my personality but i´ve come to the conclusion that they just have weird personalities. Before leaving Sonrisa I spoke to Maribel, but never actually said I was changing to Elsa and Marisol as Maribel had already told them. This gave me a bit of an easy way out really as I´d been a bit worried about telling them both anyway. Never take the easy way out. Since them both finding out, neither of them hardly said a word to me in my last week in Sonrisa and haven´t made eye contact with me since. I didn´t know whether it was because I left them or whether it was that I didn´t say to their faces that I was leaving or another reason but it was really getting me down as these are women I´d worked with for 7 months yet were able to drop me so easily without even telling me why they were so pissed off. So after having enough of the awkwardness whenever Nino Jesus and Sonrisa passed, I went to speak to Elsa (as Marisol did speak to me a couple of times when Elsa wasn´t there) to ask her what the problem is and just to explain to me the exact reason so that we could try and sort it out. She sat there and told me that there is no problem whatsoever and that the only reason she doesn´t look at me, smile at me or even say a quick hi is that she has to put all of her attention on the kids and doesn´t have time for things like that. Bullshit. It takes nothing to turn your head and say hello which Maribel does everytime. So if she´s not wanting to tell me the real reason and throw away any relationship that we had before Christmas then fair enough. It´s not worth me caring about. At least the boys haven´t deserted me and everytime I walk past any of them they all yell things like the typical "buenos dias hermana Evie" or the more unusual " te adoro hermana Evie" (I adore you sister Evie). I do miss a lot of the boys that were there last year and a few of the new ones. And I really do miss working with Maribel but I´m so glad I changed. Anita and Eliza are great to work with. After a week in Nino Jesus I already feel like more a part of the tutoras there than I ever did in Sonrisa. We had a tutora meeting straight away and they told me that what´s theirs is mine and that I should feel at home in the house, if I need anything to go straight to them and that if i´m ever feeling a bit ill, upset or anything that I just need to say and I can go take a break. They´re definately a lot easier to talk to than the others. I´m now working with Hannah too which was PT´s plan from the start!

On other news, our new (or 1 month old) Project Trust foursome partnership is going swimmingly. I just don´t think PT really thought too well about the fact that there are now 3 Yorkshire girls together and when you add a Scot and an American into the mix, things get messy. We´re all loving it though. To say that before Christmas we´d only been out about 3x, we´re definately making up for it now. Every week we go through the whole ´I´m not going out this week´ malarky, just to find ourselves getting dolled up (putting mascara and jeans on) and heading out. I´m really not looking forward to going out when I get home as it will involve spending more than 10 minutes getting ready just to go out and listen to only english music in the clubs. I´m going to miss a good bit of reggaeton!

So in general, things are on the up. I look forward to work again, have a social life and have realised that I don´t actually hate kids. Always a good thing!

Also, crazy thought. 3 months today we´ll be setting off to Bolivia and 4 months today I will be flying home! Don´t quite know how to feel about that.