So I know it's only been a week but it feels like last weekend (our weekend of freedom) was so long ago! We had an awesome time, made some traveller friends in our two hostels, I started to get slightly jealous of all their exciting adventures when all our stories involved children! After being woken up on Sunday morning in our first hostel to be told that the builders had cut off the water and it would probably be off all week, we had to change hostels. We ended up in a super nice one for our last night, where we got breakfast and wifi AND a balcony with hammocks to chill out on,which was lovely, we even got actual mattresses!! An absolute luxury seeing as all we have in the aldea are foam mattresses which get pretty flat very quickly.
As much as I arrived at the Aldea on Monday full of determination this week has been quite lazy! We celebrated one of the older girls birthday's on Tuesday and bought her some sweeties, nail varnish and I made her a little thread bracelet. I'm getting pretty good, finally found a use for the hundreds of threads I bought out with me. I'm planning on learning lots of different styles to impress all the kids and hopefully leave them with something they can pass on to the next volunteers.
We had a trip into town on Friday afternoon, and realised we've been into the post office so much that there is now a lady there who we get our stamps off who recognises us-not sure if that's a good thing or not, but I guess she could be classed as a friend? I've had quite a lot of casa sitting this week too, mainly with the same casa! On Thursday when Alex had her first trip taking the kids to their therapy I was casa sitting for 3 hours, in without question one of the liveliest, busiest casa's so it felt like just as much work as her therapy trip. There have also been a few tías off work this week which means all the casa's have been pretty full, meaning that casa sitting is even harder work! At one point, the casa next to us had 15 kids in it!
One of the kids who had previously been taken back to his family, arrived in the Aldea on Friday night looking really really ill and thin-he's only been away a month! So the tías have been taking it in turns to stay with him at the hospital, our casa sleep overs have started up again. Alex did the first one on Friday night, then I was left to look after one from half 7 in the morning till half 2! Unbelievably tiring, although it was great spending so much time with the kids, they seriously just drain me of energy. We watched Beauty and the Beast in Spanish though, I was impressed how good the songs still sounded even in spanish! Haha. An afternoon of rest, only to be told at tea time on Saturday I was sleeping in the boys casa! Only had 5 to deal with which wasn't too bad, and I think I've even mastered the knack of sleeping without a net when we have to-it just means trying to cover up every exposed inch of skin and cover yourself in sticky mosquito repellent!
I went to church this morning too, something I've been meaning to do for ages but have been unintentionally putting off. It was quite an experience! Something completly different to anything like a church service I've ever seen in England, probably didn't help that I really didn't understand much but overall the service seemed a lot more friendly. At one point everyone was hugging all the people around them, we all gathered hands in lines along the church to sing a prayer and then everyone around me dropped to their knees to pray. Took me a while to work out what I was supposed to be doing, the silly gringa standing up staring at everyone praying! I think though, that even though it was definitely a different, almost bizarre experience I quite enjoyed it, I feel a lot more relaxed about things, and sort of more at peace :)
After a week of barely any rain last week, we had a massive storm on Thursday..finally! It started at tea time, when everyone was in the comedor and I ended up running back and forth sin my flip flops carrying all the younger kids back to the casa's, under the table cloths-the only sort of cover we had for them. The rain here is just insane, when it rains it properly rains-comes down in sheets and the pavements are ankle deep within minutes, so when I finally got them all inside I looked like I'd had a shower in clothes and the path was like a paddling pool of water-halfway up my leg! To top it all off we then lost the electricity which resulted in Alex and I playing cards by candlelight, quite fun, even if it was slightly dangerous!
This week Alex hasn't been too well, so it's been pretty hard trying to keep her spirits up and not to get sucked into just spending all day in our casa. It's definitely made me realise how much I rely on her liveliness and energy, as much around the kids as to keep me going too, we really have become a proper little partnership! Hopefully she's got all that behind her now so we can have a livelier week, it makes me feel pretty helpless sometimes like there is nothing I can really do. But, fingers crossed we'll be happy and jolly all week :)
Off to our hotel with a pool AGAIN later, quickly becoming one of my favourite places to chill out! So hasta luego todos.
aneesha x
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