With the realisation of only having 5 weeks left of working here I have been thinking about all of the things that I am going to miss from Peru.
- speaking Spanish: I´m not particularly looking forward to being back where everyone speaks English and pretty much no-one speaks Spanish. Just the fact that my Spanish has improved so much this year and the thought of not speaking it every day is quite sad. I´m trying to persuade the tutors here to get skype so we can talk and I can keep practicing.
- teaching my cheeky little Sonrisa boys pointless things like making a duck noise with a piece of grass, pretending to cut off half their thumb, trying and failing to whistle with their fingers, getting a good towel whipping motion, etc. Then seeing their faces when they manage to achieve it.
- watching Andrew, Alex and Jhover's faces in church as they sing along to the songs. Never before have I seen such effort. I´m talking red faces, furrowed brows and bulging veins in the neck.
- watching Doris (hermana from San Antonio) and Eliza (hermana from Niño Jesús) in church. Never before have I seen such bad co-ordination. It´s bloody hilarious.
- the bus system: Having men dangling out of the door/window of a bus shouting out where it´s going and trying to persuade you to get on. Being able to get on wherever you are in the street and having the guy come to collect money off you once you´re sat down. I have a feeling when I get back I´ll be trying to wave down buses in the street and just go sit down and forget to pay the driver.
- taxis: as dangerous as some of them can be, it's great just walking down a street and being able to flag one down. Having to pre-call a taxi sounds ridiculous right now.
- milk: It comes in a bag and doesn´t need to be refrigerated. Amazing.
- how friendly everyone is: Probably down to the fact that we´re gringas (white foreign girls) so everybody wants to practice their limited English on us, but still.
- that a weekend trip can be a 9 hour bus journey somewhere: It only costs around 15 pounds and you can just hop on most buses without pre-planning.
- food and drink: specifically- pisco, maracuya juice (passion fruit juice, so not the same in England), piscinas (giant blue fish bowls with vodka, rum, gin, pisco and a couple of non alcoholic drinks. Sounds nasty but tastes good), pollo a la brasa (basically chicken and chips but you don't get it like this in the UK), ceviche (raw fish marinated in lime and chilli with onions and sweet potato. I didn't like it at first but i've grown to like it).
- surprisingly, the religion: It has been a struggle this year but now that we´re finally settled into the routine of praying before and after every meal, going to church every day and doing God knows (lol) how many Padre Nuestros (Our Fathers) and Hail Marys, I have a feeling I´m going to miss it. Especially seeing nuns and monks wandering around. Nun punch wont be half as fun to play at home.
- general cheapness: The fact that a taxi to Miraflores (40 minutes away) costs about 3 pounds, whereas a taxi from my House to Huddersfield (5 minutes drive) costs 4 pounds. That a kilo of mandarins costs 50p, avocados cost 25p and ciabatta bread costs 5p.
- my night time walks: The only alone time I can really have here. As long as I go out after curfew at 9pm, Ciudad is all mine to wander.
- mototaxis: These little death contraptions definately need to be brought into the UK. Basically a motorbike with a little hut over it which can take up to 3 people (4 if you lie across everyone). So cheap and can weave in and out of cars and down little back streets.
- meeting people: I´ve met some amazing people from all over the world being here. America, Australia, Ireland, France, Brazil, Argentina, Germany, etc. Most people are either travelling or working abroad so there are so many interesting stories to hear.
- small moments with the boys: just when you're watching a film with a boy on your knee and they cling onto your arm, or when they run from one end of the street to the other just to give you a hug, or making sure they get their kiss before bed. Little things like that really make my day.
It's really starting to sink in now how little time I have left here and how different it's going to be when I get home. I feel like I'm sort of ready to finish working at Ciudad (although I probably wont be thinking the same in my last week when I have to start saying my goodbyes) as we have worked so hard here and I really feel like we need a good break and a long rest. Even starting work at 8am when I get home and finishing at 5pm would count as a long rest for me. Just not getting up at 5.15am and finishing at 8pm anymore would be amazing.
But over all as much as I want to see everyone at home and experience British life again, I still don't feel ready to leave Peru. I feel like this is my second country, my second home and I have a very large extended family here. I'm trying to keep my mind off leaving for now and juse enjoy the rest of my days here and the people that I'm spending them with, then think about travelling in Bolivia after. At least we've got that to look forward to so it's a step-by-step process. First is to leave the kids and the people but not South America, then 3 weeks later leave South America. Honestly, I'm shitting myself about leaving knowing that I'm most likely not going to see any of the people again that I've spent my whole year with. I'm definately going to keep a list of my boys names then in 10 years time stalk them all on facebook to see who's about and what they've turned out like. If I remember anyway.
Mucho amor,
Eviecita
Monday, 28 May 2012
Thursday, 10 May 2012
A Firing and a Traditional Easter
Good stuff and bad stuff in this one. Times are looking up for Niño Jesús and in general but other shit is going doooown.
More Big Changes
I have never really written about the full goings on abuse wise that happened whilst I was working in Sonrisa. I guess it was because this blog is public and I didn´t want the wrong people reading it and problems to come from that. But the problem has finally been taken care of so I feel like I can finally talk about it openly.
From the first week I was working in Sonrisa in September, one of the hermanas would pull the kids ears, cheeks, necks, any open skin area, hit them across the face, hit them with books, bags, belts and just generally use physical punishment rather than anything that would actually work and not just make the kids cry and want to punch the hermana but then go punch another kid to let it out. This was one of the reasons that I left Sonrisa as it was awful being there when for example the boys were being smacked round the head with their school bags (everyone knows how heavy they can be), and the worst things would happen when the other hermanas weren´t there to see and it was just me and her.
So 2 weeks ago all the volunteers and I had a meeting with Hugo to discuss a few topics such as our new oven, homework time and then treatment of the kids in the houses. We were quite vague about it as we didn´t want to name names and get anyone fired. We were just hoping to let him know that there is a general problem of discipline in the houses (I.e. Sonrisa but again we didn´t want to name names) and that maybe there could be some more training on how to discipline the kids in other ways or just raise the issue with the tutors to let them know that it isn´t acceptable. So in the next tutor meeting Hugo mentioned it to the tutors as right now the laws are changing in Peru to make it illegal to take forceful measure against children (about time) and that they need to be aware of this and what it could mean for them if they contine. So we thought that this was successful as it had been brought up infront of her and the other hermanas. However, even though she apparently improved a bit over the next couple of weeks, last Thursday she took it waaaay too far.
One of the 7yr old boys had pooed his pants so she decided as a punishment it would be good to take his shitty underwear and rub it all over his face, then in the faces of 4 other boys who had gotten bad grades in their exams in school. Bearing in mind these are 7-9 year old boys who have come from families of abuse and are here to get away from it all. I don´t think I´ve ever been so angry in my life. My heart was beating way over the limit, I was shaking and eventually burst into tears from anger. Rosanna and Harriet had to literally yell after me after I´d started marching off to go and 'talk' to her. So instead, all 4 of us Project Trust girls went to talk to Hugo, the director here about it and just told him direct what has been happening. He asked me and Rosanna to write down a list of everything that we´ve seen her do to the kids, we gave it him and by Monday, she had been fired and there is now a new hermana working in Sonrisa who used to work in San Jose 3 years ago.
That whole weekend was such a stressful one for all of the volunteers as we all had such strong views and opinions on what had happened. It also made it worse that on Saturday, Rosanna went to ask Hugo what was happening and he said that if Flor (head hermana who has been working here 15 years and Hugo thinks she can 'control' her) accepted her, she was possibly going to just be moved up a house to San Antonio. Hearing this, Laura who works in San Antonio went to talk to Flor to give her a heads up and let her know the real situation (as Hugo didn´t tell her the real reason why she was being made to leave Sonrisa) which lead to Flor giving Hugo a downright no, that she didn´t want to work with her. So thanks to Laura, and also Elsa who had been to talk to Flor too, she no longer works here. It´s such a relief though and I feel like the kids are so much better off not having to be flinching every time she walks past etc. I do feel a bit sorry for her though. She had plenty of warnings about it, decided not to change her behaviour and now she has lost her job, 6 months into being pregnant. I just hope that for her sake she decides to get some help as no-one can treat kids as she does without having had her own problems.
Anyway, on to better news and happier times.
Pascua / Easter
Easter here was a lot different from any other Easter that I have experienced. We actually celebrated the real reason for it. I.e. Jesus dying and resurrecting. I never really knew much about the Easter story apart from what we learnt about in Primary school which I had forgotten most of. I knew it would be a big deal here as it´s obviously a Catholic organisation and everything they do it about Jesus/God. It first got mentioned around 3 weeks before Easter during a tutors meeting when everyone was deciding how we were going to organise everything over the 4 days (Holy Thursday, Holy Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday). That was when I realised we wouldn´t just be eating chocolate eggs and slobbing about all day. As Jackie, the main woman that runs things in the office here, knew that us 4 Project Trust girls aren´t Catholic she kindly printed us off a sheet giving us, in English, the basic details of what Easter is so that if the boys asked us any questions we would know how to answer. So, as it was such a big deal to them, we did some more homework beginning with watching 'The Passion of the Christ' which was gruesome but we learnt quite a bit from that. Surprisingly it quite interested me and I wanted to learn a bit more about it so Laura showed me the part of the Bible which talks about Easter and everything that happened so I read 4 whole pages of the Bible! Crazy I know. And before you all get worried, I´m not converting, it was just really interesting to learn about what they actually believe in here.
So actual Easter turned out to be a very long process. The Sunday a week before Easter Sunday was Palm Sunday and as it was Niño Jesus' turn to run alabanza, we had all of the boys up by the front waving palm leaves around whilst singing. This Holy Thursday and Friday the boys had off school which meant working 14 hour days again. However, for me there was a very Christmassy feel to it all as everyone was feeling festive and in a good mood. Eliza even brought us Pisco Sour´s whilst we were watching the kids play which was nice and bien rico. The first Eastery thing that we did was Mass at 7pm on Thurday which was for 1.5 hours, then from then until 10pm everyone sat in the church in absolute silence with a few songs inbetween to break up the silence. This was painful. Sitting in silence for an hour and a half is hard enough for me, never mind 26 3-6yr olds. By 9.30pm ish even though they´d had a 2 hour nap during the day, the majority of the little ones were fast asleep or crying because they weren´t allowed to sleep, so luckily Hugo just came over and told us we could take them back early (win win).
Friday was a day of 'silence' or more like 'attempted silence' as it was the day of Jesus' death. Each house had a half hour time slot in the morning to go and sit in the church in silence and pray to God. Then at 3pm we had another Mass, 1.5 hours again, then at 5pm was the 'Stations of the Cross'. This was a re-enactment of what happened the night that Jesus died. It was re-enacted within a rope made into a square so that no-one apart from the actors could enter, then everyone else followed behind to watch the action performed by Familia San Francisco. It started at the entrance to Ciudad and went around all of Ciudad passing by each station which had been set up by each house. At each station they stopped, acted out what happened then someone read a prayer and we did a 'Padre Nuestro' (I.e. said the Our Father prayer). In the part where Jesus is getting whipping whilst carrying his cross the boys didn´t let up on the whipping, they were full on whipping the poor boy acting as Jesus with a giant rope. Everyone was wincing a bit at the sound of the thwacks! Hannah, Amy and I also had to do some acting as we were given the roles of crying women so had to enter the acting circle at one point!
Saturday was our free day so we were off until Mass again at 6.30pm. This one was actually a really nice service. It started with a bonfire outside San Francisco, then everyone lit their candles that they had been given and we walked into the church which had all the lights turned off. As everyone entered more and more light obviously came in which was to signify light coming back into Jesus' life as he resurrected. It was a little bit of a tricky situation as 3yr olds with candles isn´t too safe but overall it went fine. Minus our youngest, Jossepf, trying to lick the candle like a lolly which I quickly had to blow out. After that it was just a lovely service, they had the same choir and band in that they had for Christmas with amazing singers. They made the hymns that we sing every day with the boys actually sound really nice rather than kids just shouting the words.
Sunday started with Mass at 6am which was just a normal style Mass and like the ending to Easter. This was followed by a big breakfast of Spaghetti Soup, a boiled egg, a chicken leg, canchitos, a bread roll and coffee. A bit weird for a breakfast but it´s what we had on Christmas and one of the ´Day of the Saints´ so it felt special. Plus the section where Niño Jesus eats is normally closed off from the rest of the comedor but for the day it got opened so we were technically sat with everyone which was nice. After that we had a few photos of the familia Niño Jesus and then the boys had an easter egg hunt. All very festive and it was such a lovely last couple of days. I have to admit that with over 11 hours of Mass and churchy things over the space of 4 days it was nice once it was all over but I´m definately glad that I have experienced a real Easter and actually understand it now.
General Ciudad Stuff
- I find alabanza quite funny these days as a lot of the boys in Niño Jesus either don´t know how to dance, stand there looking really dazed, or they full on go for it with a really angry face which is hilarious to watch. It´s either that or they are asleep which can also be slightly funny. The other day Enrique was asleep and somehow managed to fall off the bench and crack his head on the floor (not a funny bit) during a silent moment prompting everyone in the church to turn around and stare. Jossepf also managed to smack his face on the bench infront when asleep. I also got one of the other 3yr olds, Angel, mid-prayer saying outloud "Hermana Evie, vamos a comer?" (Sister Evie, are we going to eat?) which again prompted a lot of stares and dirty looks my way. All fun though.
- A few weeks ago we put on a bit of a puppet show for the boys. I was sapito (little frog), Hannah was azulito (little blue), Anita was chanchito (little pig) and Elisa was tigre (tiger). It was a little show about tigre stealing toys off us and how we should share toys etc. The boys loved it, cheering outloud and shouting YES and NO when we asked questions. There was even a charge at the stage at one point! After that when we were putting the boys to bed one boy, Abram, came up to me and gave me a ´blessing´ where he drew a cross on my head and said something about Maria and Jesus Amen. Then loads of boys came up to me asking me to give them a blessing so I had to kind of make something up whilst drawing a cross on their head, saying Amen and giving them a goodnight kiss. I don´t think I did it right but they seemed to be happy enough with it.
- The other week I witnessed one of my favourite punishments since being in Ciudad. Elisa, an absolutely hilarious woman who I work with, decided that the kids who wouldn´t get into bed would go and sit in the roperia (clothes room). This is a normal punishment for 1 or 2 kids but after she´d sent around 10 kids there, there was no other thing to do than to put the radio on and have them all dancing the night away until they wore themselves out enough to fall straight into bed.
- Once the workers had finished the patio roof, me and Hannah had to clean the patio outside Niño Jesus as it was disgusing. We did it during alabanza and teatime so there was no-one else around so we blasted 107.7 musica ingles, got a hose out and blasted out our amazing singing voices to Adele whilst spraying water and soap around. It was bien divertido. Due to the nun convent being right next to Niño Jesus the nuns came out at one point and I thought that they were telling Hannah to turn the music off but apparently they told us to keep singing as they were enjoying listening! Haha.
2nd Gap Year
Recently, a lot of my plans have changed with regards to what I´ll be doing when I get back from Peru. I´ve had to start thinking about it a lot more as scarily I only have 7 more weeks working here and 11 until i´m back home! So to update everyone or any family that still haven´t been informed, I have deferred my entry to University by another year and have decided to take another Gap Year. I am planning to go to Canada to do a ski season from November until April/May time. Then after that depending on the money situation I might stay out seen as though my visa would last until November, or maybe travel a bit of Canada/America. That´s all depending on me being able to get my visa anyway. It has been a long and complicated process and depending on whether there are any remaining spaces for UK citizens, I should be good. But that´s the plan and it gives me something very exciting to look forward to when I get home. I found out last week that one of the jobs that I applied to has accepted so even though it´s not definately the job that I´ll take it´s just exciting to know that I´ll have one and don´t have to search when I arrive. It´s with Affirmity Rentals which is the rental shop at the bottom of the mountain where everyone rents their boards and skis. Sounds awesome.
All this has made me realise though how little time I have left here! Only 7 more weeks of work and 11 weeks until I´ll be back in the UK. I´m quite nervous about being home as I know how different it´s going to be compared to here. Just simple things like seeing so many white people again. I kind of understand why Peruvians stare at us now as there as so few white people that if we see another white person, we stare too. I am looking forward to starting a whole new adventure though but hating the thought of leaving everyone here behind. The hermanos/tutores, the boys, the Americans, Christoph and just in general Peru. It has definately become my home away from home and adjusting back will be difficult but I guess I´ll pull through. Cannot wait to see all the family though for Katy´s wedding 2 days after I´m home and then back to Yorkshire to see everyone!
Hasta muy pronto!
Evie x
More Big Changes
I have never really written about the full goings on abuse wise that happened whilst I was working in Sonrisa. I guess it was because this blog is public and I didn´t want the wrong people reading it and problems to come from that. But the problem has finally been taken care of so I feel like I can finally talk about it openly.
From the first week I was working in Sonrisa in September, one of the hermanas would pull the kids ears, cheeks, necks, any open skin area, hit them across the face, hit them with books, bags, belts and just generally use physical punishment rather than anything that would actually work and not just make the kids cry and want to punch the hermana but then go punch another kid to let it out. This was one of the reasons that I left Sonrisa as it was awful being there when for example the boys were being smacked round the head with their school bags (everyone knows how heavy they can be), and the worst things would happen when the other hermanas weren´t there to see and it was just me and her.
So 2 weeks ago all the volunteers and I had a meeting with Hugo to discuss a few topics such as our new oven, homework time and then treatment of the kids in the houses. We were quite vague about it as we didn´t want to name names and get anyone fired. We were just hoping to let him know that there is a general problem of discipline in the houses (I.e. Sonrisa but again we didn´t want to name names) and that maybe there could be some more training on how to discipline the kids in other ways or just raise the issue with the tutors to let them know that it isn´t acceptable. So in the next tutor meeting Hugo mentioned it to the tutors as right now the laws are changing in Peru to make it illegal to take forceful measure against children (about time) and that they need to be aware of this and what it could mean for them if they contine. So we thought that this was successful as it had been brought up infront of her and the other hermanas. However, even though she apparently improved a bit over the next couple of weeks, last Thursday she took it waaaay too far.
One of the 7yr old boys had pooed his pants so she decided as a punishment it would be good to take his shitty underwear and rub it all over his face, then in the faces of 4 other boys who had gotten bad grades in their exams in school. Bearing in mind these are 7-9 year old boys who have come from families of abuse and are here to get away from it all. I don´t think I´ve ever been so angry in my life. My heart was beating way over the limit, I was shaking and eventually burst into tears from anger. Rosanna and Harriet had to literally yell after me after I´d started marching off to go and 'talk' to her. So instead, all 4 of us Project Trust girls went to talk to Hugo, the director here about it and just told him direct what has been happening. He asked me and Rosanna to write down a list of everything that we´ve seen her do to the kids, we gave it him and by Monday, she had been fired and there is now a new hermana working in Sonrisa who used to work in San Jose 3 years ago.
That whole weekend was such a stressful one for all of the volunteers as we all had such strong views and opinions on what had happened. It also made it worse that on Saturday, Rosanna went to ask Hugo what was happening and he said that if Flor (head hermana who has been working here 15 years and Hugo thinks she can 'control' her) accepted her, she was possibly going to just be moved up a house to San Antonio. Hearing this, Laura who works in San Antonio went to talk to Flor to give her a heads up and let her know the real situation (as Hugo didn´t tell her the real reason why she was being made to leave Sonrisa) which lead to Flor giving Hugo a downright no, that she didn´t want to work with her. So thanks to Laura, and also Elsa who had been to talk to Flor too, she no longer works here. It´s such a relief though and I feel like the kids are so much better off not having to be flinching every time she walks past etc. I do feel a bit sorry for her though. She had plenty of warnings about it, decided not to change her behaviour and now she has lost her job, 6 months into being pregnant. I just hope that for her sake she decides to get some help as no-one can treat kids as she does without having had her own problems.
Anyway, on to better news and happier times.
Pascua / Easter
Easter here was a lot different from any other Easter that I have experienced. We actually celebrated the real reason for it. I.e. Jesus dying and resurrecting. I never really knew much about the Easter story apart from what we learnt about in Primary school which I had forgotten most of. I knew it would be a big deal here as it´s obviously a Catholic organisation and everything they do it about Jesus/God. It first got mentioned around 3 weeks before Easter during a tutors meeting when everyone was deciding how we were going to organise everything over the 4 days (Holy Thursday, Holy Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday). That was when I realised we wouldn´t just be eating chocolate eggs and slobbing about all day. As Jackie, the main woman that runs things in the office here, knew that us 4 Project Trust girls aren´t Catholic she kindly printed us off a sheet giving us, in English, the basic details of what Easter is so that if the boys asked us any questions we would know how to answer. So, as it was such a big deal to them, we did some more homework beginning with watching 'The Passion of the Christ' which was gruesome but we learnt quite a bit from that. Surprisingly it quite interested me and I wanted to learn a bit more about it so Laura showed me the part of the Bible which talks about Easter and everything that happened so I read 4 whole pages of the Bible! Crazy I know. And before you all get worried, I´m not converting, it was just really interesting to learn about what they actually believe in here.
So actual Easter turned out to be a very long process. The Sunday a week before Easter Sunday was Palm Sunday and as it was Niño Jesus' turn to run alabanza, we had all of the boys up by the front waving palm leaves around whilst singing. This Holy Thursday and Friday the boys had off school which meant working 14 hour days again. However, for me there was a very Christmassy feel to it all as everyone was feeling festive and in a good mood. Eliza even brought us Pisco Sour´s whilst we were watching the kids play which was nice and bien rico. The first Eastery thing that we did was Mass at 7pm on Thurday which was for 1.5 hours, then from then until 10pm everyone sat in the church in absolute silence with a few songs inbetween to break up the silence. This was painful. Sitting in silence for an hour and a half is hard enough for me, never mind 26 3-6yr olds. By 9.30pm ish even though they´d had a 2 hour nap during the day, the majority of the little ones were fast asleep or crying because they weren´t allowed to sleep, so luckily Hugo just came over and told us we could take them back early (win win).
Friday was a day of 'silence' or more like 'attempted silence' as it was the day of Jesus' death. Each house had a half hour time slot in the morning to go and sit in the church in silence and pray to God. Then at 3pm we had another Mass, 1.5 hours again, then at 5pm was the 'Stations of the Cross'. This was a re-enactment of what happened the night that Jesus died. It was re-enacted within a rope made into a square so that no-one apart from the actors could enter, then everyone else followed behind to watch the action performed by Familia San Francisco. It started at the entrance to Ciudad and went around all of Ciudad passing by each station which had been set up by each house. At each station they stopped, acted out what happened then someone read a prayer and we did a 'Padre Nuestro' (I.e. said the Our Father prayer). In the part where Jesus is getting whipping whilst carrying his cross the boys didn´t let up on the whipping, they were full on whipping the poor boy acting as Jesus with a giant rope. Everyone was wincing a bit at the sound of the thwacks! Hannah, Amy and I also had to do some acting as we were given the roles of crying women so had to enter the acting circle at one point!
 |
| Jesus Dying on the Cross |
Saturday was our free day so we were off until Mass again at 6.30pm. This one was actually a really nice service. It started with a bonfire outside San Francisco, then everyone lit their candles that they had been given and we walked into the church which had all the lights turned off. As everyone entered more and more light obviously came in which was to signify light coming back into Jesus' life as he resurrected. It was a little bit of a tricky situation as 3yr olds with candles isn´t too safe but overall it went fine. Minus our youngest, Jossepf, trying to lick the candle like a lolly which I quickly had to blow out. After that it was just a lovely service, they had the same choir and band in that they had for Christmas with amazing singers. They made the hymns that we sing every day with the boys actually sound really nice rather than kids just shouting the words.
 |
| The boys with their Candles |
Sunday started with Mass at 6am which was just a normal style Mass and like the ending to Easter. This was followed by a big breakfast of Spaghetti Soup, a boiled egg, a chicken leg, canchitos, a bread roll and coffee. A bit weird for a breakfast but it´s what we had on Christmas and one of the ´Day of the Saints´ so it felt special. Plus the section where Niño Jesus eats is normally closed off from the rest of the comedor but for the day it got opened so we were technically sat with everyone which was nice. After that we had a few photos of the familia Niño Jesus and then the boys had an easter egg hunt. All very festive and it was such a lovely last couple of days. I have to admit that with over 11 hours of Mass and churchy things over the space of 4 days it was nice once it was all over but I´m definately glad that I have experienced a real Easter and actually understand it now.
 |
| The boys with their Easter Eggs. |
General Ciudad Stuff
- I find alabanza quite funny these days as a lot of the boys in Niño Jesus either don´t know how to dance, stand there looking really dazed, or they full on go for it with a really angry face which is hilarious to watch. It´s either that or they are asleep which can also be slightly funny. The other day Enrique was asleep and somehow managed to fall off the bench and crack his head on the floor (not a funny bit) during a silent moment prompting everyone in the church to turn around and stare. Jossepf also managed to smack his face on the bench infront when asleep. I also got one of the other 3yr olds, Angel, mid-prayer saying outloud "Hermana Evie, vamos a comer?" (Sister Evie, are we going to eat?) which again prompted a lot of stares and dirty looks my way. All fun though.
 |
| Angel all dressed up during Easter, the cutie. |
- A few weeks ago we put on a bit of a puppet show for the boys. I was sapito (little frog), Hannah was azulito (little blue), Anita was chanchito (little pig) and Elisa was tigre (tiger). It was a little show about tigre stealing toys off us and how we should share toys etc. The boys loved it, cheering outloud and shouting YES and NO when we asked questions. There was even a charge at the stage at one point! After that when we were putting the boys to bed one boy, Abram, came up to me and gave me a ´blessing´ where he drew a cross on my head and said something about Maria and Jesus Amen. Then loads of boys came up to me asking me to give them a blessing so I had to kind of make something up whilst drawing a cross on their head, saying Amen and giving them a goodnight kiss. I don´t think I did it right but they seemed to be happy enough with it.
- The other week I witnessed one of my favourite punishments since being in Ciudad. Elisa, an absolutely hilarious woman who I work with, decided that the kids who wouldn´t get into bed would go and sit in the roperia (clothes room). This is a normal punishment for 1 or 2 kids but after she´d sent around 10 kids there, there was no other thing to do than to put the radio on and have them all dancing the night away until they wore themselves out enough to fall straight into bed.
- Once the workers had finished the patio roof, me and Hannah had to clean the patio outside Niño Jesus as it was disgusing. We did it during alabanza and teatime so there was no-one else around so we blasted 107.7 musica ingles, got a hose out and blasted out our amazing singing voices to Adele whilst spraying water and soap around. It was bien divertido. Due to the nun convent being right next to Niño Jesus the nuns came out at one point and I thought that they were telling Hannah to turn the music off but apparently they told us to keep singing as they were enjoying listening! Haha.
2nd Gap Year
Recently, a lot of my plans have changed with regards to what I´ll be doing when I get back from Peru. I´ve had to start thinking about it a lot more as scarily I only have 7 more weeks working here and 11 until i´m back home! So to update everyone or any family that still haven´t been informed, I have deferred my entry to University by another year and have decided to take another Gap Year. I am planning to go to Canada to do a ski season from November until April/May time. Then after that depending on the money situation I might stay out seen as though my visa would last until November, or maybe travel a bit of Canada/America. That´s all depending on me being able to get my visa anyway. It has been a long and complicated process and depending on whether there are any remaining spaces for UK citizens, I should be good. But that´s the plan and it gives me something very exciting to look forward to when I get home. I found out last week that one of the jobs that I applied to has accepted so even though it´s not definately the job that I´ll take it´s just exciting to know that I´ll have one and don´t have to search when I arrive. It´s with Affirmity Rentals which is the rental shop at the bottom of the mountain where everyone rents their boards and skis. Sounds awesome.
All this has made me realise though how little time I have left here! Only 7 more weeks of work and 11 weeks until I´ll be back in the UK. I´m quite nervous about being home as I know how different it´s going to be compared to here. Just simple things like seeing so many white people again. I kind of understand why Peruvians stare at us now as there as so few white people that if we see another white person, we stare too. I am looking forward to starting a whole new adventure though but hating the thought of leaving everyone here behind. The hermanos/tutores, the boys, the Americans, Christoph and just in general Peru. It has definately become my home away from home and adjusting back will be difficult but I guess I´ll pull through. Cannot wait to see all the family though for Katy´s wedding 2 days after I´m home and then back to Yorkshire to see everyone!
Hasta muy pronto!
Evie x
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