So it took me a while but here it is, my final last blog! Writing from home after being around for a week now feels bizarre. Still a tiny bit surreal, thinking back on how many times I sat down in those horrific Internet cafes in Iquitos to sweat it out and write down all my kiddy filled adventures for the past year. Our actual journey home was pretty smooth, apart from nearly loosing Hannah to Peruvian Police Immigration and initial panic we all made it safe and sound back to English soil.
I've been completely utterly fine the whole month we were travelling but the minute I got on the plane and the realisation of what I was leaving behind me hit me I got really emotional. I think the two Peruvians sat next to me got way more than they bargained for with my mini breakdown, even before take off! I honestly had no idea that it was going to be such a huge shock for me, considering we'd already said the hardest goodbyes back in July when we left the Aldea, it was still pretty difficult. The really nice friendly Peruvian lady sat next me managed to cheer me up, by spending nearly the whole 5 hour flight telling me all about her grandchildren she was going over to visit in Miami and teach them Spanish and then making me promise that I would reinforce at least one foreign language with all my children. She was also adamant I had to have them quite soon to make sure I didn't forget any of my Spanish skills!
So landing in Miami, seriously sleep deprived in a massive, humongous airport, bit culture shocked by the automatically flushing toilets, hot water in the sinks and the fact that all the toilets have toilet seats, and no toilet paper bins by the side! It really is the little things that make the difference. I then somehow managed to end up going through every form of security checking possible, the naked x ray scanner, having my bags checked once at security and then again, getting to skip bag check in to go through some special queue and ending up having to empty out ALL my stuff all over the table whilst some security guard inspected everything, especially my shoebox full of standard tourist presents which he seemed to find super interesting! After all that crazy excitement we all made it safe and sound onto our Londres bound plane ride. Got to sit next to Frances, another Project Truster and wasted away the 8 hours with the surprisingly yummy plane food and 7 months worth of catch up chat.
Then London, man that was bizarre, hearing English EVERYWHERE and all 11 of us getting way too hyper and excited about the arrival lounge waiting for the bags. Aah it's too hard to try and describe how absolutely incredible it was to see my family waiting for me outside those doors. Even now the fact that they're all just here, a few rooms away all the time is awesome, you know they really truly love you when they put up with you and your seriously smelly socks in the car journey home without kicking up a fuss. How easy it been to slip back into the family routine and how they just accept all my stupid Peruvian slip ups and the fact that I'm finding it impossible to stop saying gracias to everyone-they must have really missed this.
Finally caught up with everyone as well, my first weekend back home in Manchester and I had the most incredible welcome home-surprised by aunties and friends and family friends and we all sat out in the garden, in the sunshine retelling all my Peru stories and just seeing all my family around me, it feels great to have them all here and that everyone was around so quickly to welcome me back. I reckon they'll be getting tired of my 'gap year stories' pretty soon, so I'm stretching them out as much as possible before everyone around me has had enough.
Tambien, I just want to say a massive, giant thank you to every single one of you who helped me get there, through the fund raising, putting up with all my attempts at Peruvian cooking or cake sales or just the begs and pleads. Truly, honestly from the bottom of my heart, THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!
All of you made this year by helping me get there in the first place, because without that I wouldn't have had these experiences and become the person I now am. I got the chance to have the most amazingly, incredible, beautiful opportunity, meet some incredible people and form some unforgettable bonds with my babies, my tías, my friends and of course my Alexita who I would never have been able to get through this whole year without.
Until the start of my next travels...Hasta Pronto!!
Thursday, 23 August 2012
Saturday, 14 July 2012
LEAVING
So this week as you all know already from my pictures and my rambling about leaving, was my last week in the aldea, with my babies. Honest to god this week was the fastest week of life, it went past in a blink of an eye and it still feels completely and utterly surreal. I cannot comprehend that I've spent 11 months living,eating, sleeping and playing with my babies and now that's all over and I will never get to see them again. BUT this week was awesome, full of happy happy memories that I will have forever.
We had our leaving party on Tuesday, which is where that beautiful and ridiculously yummy cake picture came from. We got to give out all our regalos to each house, spoil all the kiddies with too many crisps and then we'd organised some party games for them. I never realised running around popping party balloons could be so much fun, they went crazy for it.Also musical bumps-totally underestimated party game, they would have played that all afternoon I swear!
On Wednesday we were treated to a surprise party by all the older girls.They had all got together to organise a little surprise show for us, some dancing and modelling and they made us both little 'recuerdos' like letters and messages and memories. It was so unbelievably amazing to see them make that effort for us, it really really showed me how much we meant to them and that they have appreciated our year here more than I realised. I know that the memories I've got not just from the Aldea but this week will stay with me for the rest of my life, but that however much I think about it, those kids have still made a massive impression on me that I will never forget.
que mas? well Alex and I being the super organised people that we are,left all our packing to Thursday,which was also the day we were giving out all the clothes and little presents to the kids AND the night we decided to have all the tias over for a little leaving get together. basically to cut a long long day short,we were both up until quarter to 12 sorting out our rucksacks..BUT despite the disbelief of the tias, we did it! My mother would be proud of that packing. So we left the Aldea Friday morning, had our last ever school run and a beyond emotional despedida to all the other tias and children. But despite how sad it was,I feel so proud of all that we've achieved and that I've been able to leave my babies with some incredible memories and made some friends within the tias for life. I've already decided to start saving up as soon as humanly possible to get back to Iquitos,not just to see how much it will have changed but also I hope to be able to see how much the situation within the aldea has improved.
hasta pronto! Only one month more...
We had our leaving party on Tuesday, which is where that beautiful and ridiculously yummy cake picture came from. We got to give out all our regalos to each house, spoil all the kiddies with too many crisps and then we'd organised some party games for them. I never realised running around popping party balloons could be so much fun, they went crazy for it.Also musical bumps-totally underestimated party game, they would have played that all afternoon I swear!
On Wednesday we were treated to a surprise party by all the older girls.They had all got together to organise a little surprise show for us, some dancing and modelling and they made us both little 'recuerdos' like letters and messages and memories. It was so unbelievably amazing to see them make that effort for us, it really really showed me how much we meant to them and that they have appreciated our year here more than I realised. I know that the memories I've got not just from the Aldea but this week will stay with me for the rest of my life, but that however much I think about it, those kids have still made a massive impression on me that I will never forget.
que mas? well Alex and I being the super organised people that we are,left all our packing to Thursday,which was also the day we were giving out all the clothes and little presents to the kids AND the night we decided to have all the tias over for a little leaving get together. basically to cut a long long day short,we were both up until quarter to 12 sorting out our rucksacks..BUT despite the disbelief of the tias, we did it! My mother would be proud of that packing. So we left the Aldea Friday morning, had our last ever school run and a beyond emotional despedida to all the other tias and children. But despite how sad it was,I feel so proud of all that we've achieved and that I've been able to leave my babies with some incredible memories and made some friends within the tias for life. I've already decided to start saving up as soon as humanly possible to get back to Iquitos,not just to see how much it will have changed but also I hope to be able to see how much the situation within the aldea has improved.
hasta pronto! Only one month more...
my last week in pictures
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| right before we took down all the artwork from this year in iquitos |
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| on our souvenir shopping trip with Alex's nottinham visitor Tom:) |
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| one of our leaving presents for the director |
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| Baby Muaricio,who arrived at the aldea 25 days old and is now growing teeth and practically walking! Very bizarre |
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| last ever iquitos picture |
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| our leaving cake,might have to turn your heads i can't work out how to rotate! |
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| a visit to one of the tias houses, trying out the traditinal cumbia dancing |
Monday, 9 July 2012
ultima semana
So apologies for the lack of blogs recently but i don't know where the time goes, we constantly have stuff to do leading up to leaving here.
Yesterday we were here there and everywhere, ordering a cake for our leaving party (tomorrow) buying souvenir presents-because we standardly left them to the last minute, rushing round trying to get to our favourite little restaurant in time to watch an amazing sunset only to be surrounded by massive grey moody storm clouds on our last Sunday tea EVER in Iquitos.
Last week we had our paseo with all the kids to the laguna, the same laguna which we went to in March but it was SO much better this time. I got to take my favouritest baby, Maria Isabelle for a splashy paddle in the water, which she absolutly loved. Maria is 2 and a half and has downs, she's starting to walk at the moment, or has been going to therapy for the last 10 months and we're trying everything we can to get her to practice but from her point of view why would she walk when now she gets a free ride everywhere! So that's an uphill struggle that leaves her behind all the other kids of her age, but in the water she was loving it. whenever I give her a wash in the sink in the Aldea she's splashing around trying to drink the water straight from the tap so it made me so unbelievabley happy to see her in her absolutle element splashing all the other more terrified kids. One of my best memories for sure! I also half taught one of the older to girls to swim/doggy paddle, wasn't fantastic but she'd lost all her fear by the end of the day and was jumping off all the pontoons which was awesome.
I got to take Maria Isabelle (aka Chao Bella) on a last therapy trip on Thursday, seeing my last jungley centre with it's therapy pool surrounded by coconut trees-something I am definitely going to miss. The fact that here I can just casually buy coconuts for 1 sol!!! from the market down the road, or greet everyone on the way down to school who just know us as those gringitas from the Aldea.
We've had a visit from one of Alex's Nottingham neighbours this past week, who brought out an awesome package of well needed chocolate which we've devoured already! It's been really awesome having another person around, having someone else to speak English to and show off all our babies too, as if we haven't done that enough already. Showing them some Iquitos daily life, yesterday and impressing him with our Spanish skills. I still can't believe we're up to this point already, all those people in the Aldea asking us about that day sometime in the near future when we'll be leaving has actually arrived.
On Tuesday we're having our leaving party at the Aldea, so not only has that been a crazy Peruvian nightmare to arrange but it means we get to give out our leaving presents to each house. We've made some really beautiful little collages for them and I'm really super excited to give them out because we've spent so much time on them. We're going to whip out some traditional party games for the kids as well, and even got permission for the kids in the afternoon school to go, meaning they get a day off school and get to play games and eat cake instead so they're buzzing!
Todo for now, off to actually make a start at all the packing we still have to do!
besitos :)
Yesterday we were here there and everywhere, ordering a cake for our leaving party (tomorrow) buying souvenir presents-because we standardly left them to the last minute, rushing round trying to get to our favourite little restaurant in time to watch an amazing sunset only to be surrounded by massive grey moody storm clouds on our last Sunday tea EVER in Iquitos.
Last week we had our paseo with all the kids to the laguna, the same laguna which we went to in March but it was SO much better this time. I got to take my favouritest baby, Maria Isabelle for a splashy paddle in the water, which she absolutly loved. Maria is 2 and a half and has downs, she's starting to walk at the moment, or has been going to therapy for the last 10 months and we're trying everything we can to get her to practice but from her point of view why would she walk when now she gets a free ride everywhere! So that's an uphill struggle that leaves her behind all the other kids of her age, but in the water she was loving it. whenever I give her a wash in the sink in the Aldea she's splashing around trying to drink the water straight from the tap so it made me so unbelievabley happy to see her in her absolutle element splashing all the other more terrified kids. One of my best memories for sure! I also half taught one of the older to girls to swim/doggy paddle, wasn't fantastic but she'd lost all her fear by the end of the day and was jumping off all the pontoons which was awesome.
I got to take Maria Isabelle (aka Chao Bella) on a last therapy trip on Thursday, seeing my last jungley centre with it's therapy pool surrounded by coconut trees-something I am definitely going to miss. The fact that here I can just casually buy coconuts for 1 sol!!! from the market down the road, or greet everyone on the way down to school who just know us as those gringitas from the Aldea.
We've had a visit from one of Alex's Nottingham neighbours this past week, who brought out an awesome package of well needed chocolate which we've devoured already! It's been really awesome having another person around, having someone else to speak English to and show off all our babies too, as if we haven't done that enough already. Showing them some Iquitos daily life, yesterday and impressing him with our Spanish skills. I still can't believe we're up to this point already, all those people in the Aldea asking us about that day sometime in the near future when we'll be leaving has actually arrived.
On Tuesday we're having our leaving party at the Aldea, so not only has that been a crazy Peruvian nightmare to arrange but it means we get to give out our leaving presents to each house. We've made some really beautiful little collages for them and I'm really super excited to give them out because we've spent so much time on them. We're going to whip out some traditional party games for the kids as well, and even got permission for the kids in the afternoon school to go, meaning they get a day off school and get to play games and eat cake instead so they're buzzing!
Todo for now, off to actually make a start at all the packing we still have to do!
besitos :)
Sunday, 24 June 2012
3rd ever weekend in Iquitos
So this
week’s blog is more of a week in pictures, although even the pictures don’t sum
up how much we’ve done. We’ve finally booked our flights out of Iquitos, on
Friday 13th July which gives us 2 more weekends here and pretty much
no time with our babies. I can’t believe that I'm already at this point of going
home, getting ready and having to say all my good byes so soon. But we’re both
really really determined to make these last few weeks full of stuff and time
with the kids and are throwing ourselves into it 150 %.
One of the
girls who’s been with us since the start left this week for adoption to Italy,
they arrived on Monday and she had a week of seeing them during the day,
sleeping in the Aldea and getting to
used to them before they finally got to take her back to their hotel on Friday.
Maria’s 6 she can’t read and barely knows her letters so this whole time we’ve
been waiting for her parents to arrive as been so hopeful because I know that
at least one of the kids here will finally be given the opportunities and
education that they need. On the second day they had already bought her an Italian
alphabet book! So that was pretty awesome, seeing how quickly she adapted to
them and was so so happy.
We’ve had a
few new addictions this week to Aldea life, more older girls which is a relief
because I was starting to feel a bit baby claustrophobic! All this week the
kids at school have been going on trips and celebrating in school the festival
of San Juan.
San Juan is
the area of Iquitos where the Aldea is situated and for some reason, no idea why but 24th June
is the day they celebrate their queen who apparently ordered a traitor of their
jungle village to be caught and ordered her men to chop off his head. The
biggest part of this festival is where everyone gets together to eat Juanes,
which is basically just rice and chicken (standard Peruvian diet) but wrapped
and cooked in banana leaves because when it’s finished it sort of looks like
the shape of a head…if you squint at it! So yesterday me and Alex got invited
by one of the Tia's to help her sister make up the Juanes for her family. We turned
up with our contribution of 24 eggs and she pretty much put us straight to
work. It was awesome I had such a great time, we wrote it all down as well so
we can attempt it again back home. I had no idea how much went into it, even
just the rice had loads of spices and bits and bobs we had to fry, chop, sizzle
it was crazy. Sylvia taught us all these
funky knots and how to keep everything together once it’s been put into the
leaves so that nothing falls out when you are boiling them. Took us nearly 5
hours but we did it. Alex and I actually made our own Juanes-probably around 40
of them and got to take some back for our own aldea Juane celebration today. So be prepared for Aneesha’s Juane making
craze once I get home I’ll be impressing you all!
Tambien on
Friday tia Magdalena took us down the road to see another Aldea which work with
our aldea sometimes, the only difference being that ArcoIris is privately owned
and ours is funded by the government. It was amazing seeing this whole other
place and means of working/living for the kids of Iquitos. It was smaller, they
only receive around 30 kids and all are between 5 and 12 years old, they
categorically don’t receive babies. Apart from that, the difference and seeing
the support available for the kids there was absolutely mind boggling. I know that it’s obviously a hundred times
easier when you have all the money available to you but some of the differences
between our aldea and Arco Iris showed the gaping holes in the system of our
Aldea. Simple things like all the beds had mosquito nets, even when malaria and
dengue aren’t problems within ArcoIris,
and the fact that numerous children in
our aldea over the years have been in hospital for Dengue doesn’t seem to
change the fact that there is still
not enough money to replace all the holey mosquito's nets that are sporadically
placed throughout the modulos. They had teachers who worked in partnerships
with ArcoIris and a local school who came over every afternoon for 2 hours to do extra tarea with the kids who
need it. There were set hours for the children over the weekends to work in the
vegetable gardens with the gardeners and any produce that they made they were
allowed to sell in the local farmers markets every weekend. It was crazy, I mean not only does that feed
back into the Aldea more money, but it gives the kids who don’t go to school
something to work towards. It made me really annoyed that our kids don’t and
can’t have these kind of opportunities because there simply ‘isn’t the money
from the government funds’ to provide them. It makes me so angry that my kids have to
suffer, that they will go through life without ever learning to read because they
didn’t go to school and there is nobody to pay for an extra teacher in the
Aldea or that they will never learn another task as a way of earning a living
when they leave the Aldea so will probably end up cleaning the streets.
I don’t
want this to sound like an angry ramble but I just want to make everyone aware
that there are still so many things lacking here for the kids. Even if they do have
the safeness of the Aldea, clean clothes, food and water every day, other
children to interact with there are still a million and one things that they
lack. And you know what, it just makes
me a hundred percent more determined to continue with my fund raising when I get
home to ensure that these kids, my babies will be able to get all the things
and education that they deserve!
Sunday, 10 June 2012
Jubilee party
So this week's has been quite hard work, our first full week back in the Aldea since our visa run and for one reason or another it's all been quite full on. On the upp side though one of the tías lent us her TV on Saturday and we just conveniently kept forgetting to give it back so we've had a Harry Potter filled week-making the most of the TV and Alex's new Harry Potter disco, I've now seen every single film in the space of the week that's got to be some sort of achievement!
Other news two of our kiddies have left this week to go back to their family which I surprisingly managed to cope with without crying. My little baby Eveyln who has been here since we arrived here in August left on Thursday so it feels seriously bizarre without her running round, although her grandma works by school so hopefully we'll see her chubby little face on the school run. The other girl Milagros, is 11 and arrived after December but her liveliness has been a massive part of our time in the aldea and they will both be seriously missed but it's amazing to know that two of our kids are back safe and sound with their families, because I guess that's the most important part of this!
Iquitos has been sufferring some crazy cold spell at the moment, for us it's a nice break but it's been pretty funny seeing all the kids all wrapped in their chompas even though it's only about 15 degrees outside. This morning at breakfast a little girl walked past me wearing a big puffy coat, her wooly hat and gloves-definitely wasn't that cold!
Yesterday we took advantage of the break in sweaty sweaty hot weather to hold our slightly belated jubilee party. Alex had loads of bunting and paper chains and all things cheesy english style which we decorated the Ludoteca with, gave out fizzy drinks and left over bread from breakfast-that's our equivalent to snacks and nibbles when you live in a carbohydrate crazy country. It was awesome though, the kids loved looking through this little magazine we had full of pictures of the Royal family, doing their own versions of the Queen which were hilarious and drawing the flag which they kept comparing to the Peruvian flag (red, white, red) and saying how much cooler it was! First time we've done something like that for ages and I'd forgotten how absolutly crazy the kids can go, they were jumping all over me grabbing balloons and pan off me-like they hadn't eaten in days!
Photo's of the jubilee party coming soon, as soon as i can get to a normally functioning computer te prometo!
Other news two of our kiddies have left this week to go back to their family which I surprisingly managed to cope with without crying. My little baby Eveyln who has been here since we arrived here in August left on Thursday so it feels seriously bizarre without her running round, although her grandma works by school so hopefully we'll see her chubby little face on the school run. The other girl Milagros, is 11 and arrived after December but her liveliness has been a massive part of our time in the aldea and they will both be seriously missed but it's amazing to know that two of our kids are back safe and sound with their families, because I guess that's the most important part of this!
Iquitos has been sufferring some crazy cold spell at the moment, for us it's a nice break but it's been pretty funny seeing all the kids all wrapped in their chompas even though it's only about 15 degrees outside. This morning at breakfast a little girl walked past me wearing a big puffy coat, her wooly hat and gloves-definitely wasn't that cold!
Yesterday we took advantage of the break in sweaty sweaty hot weather to hold our slightly belated jubilee party. Alex had loads of bunting and paper chains and all things cheesy english style which we decorated the Ludoteca with, gave out fizzy drinks and left over bread from breakfast-that's our equivalent to snacks and nibbles when you live in a carbohydrate crazy country. It was awesome though, the kids loved looking through this little magazine we had full of pictures of the Royal family, doing their own versions of the Queen which were hilarious and drawing the flag which they kept comparing to the Peruvian flag (red, white, red) and saying how much cooler it was! First time we've done something like that for ages and I'd forgotten how absolutly crazy the kids can go, they were jumping all over me grabbing balloons and pan off me-like they hadn't eaten in days!
Photo's of the jubilee party coming soon, as soon as i can get to a normally functioning computer te prometo!
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