Easter adventures

Apologies in advance for the lack of blogs but I always seem to have a mountain of stuff to do. Plus seeing as 6 days from now my parents will be out you might not be getting one for a while but it will be full of exciting holiday stuff!

Probably the most exciting thing that's happened recently is that we have two new Spanish volunteers with us. Completely unexpected, they arrived on Thursday and we got told on Thursday morning-standard Peruvian ways. It feels very strange having new people living with us again but they are both really nice and one of the girls is actually English, so we've got another English voice around which is awesome! They're here with the same thing as the Limeños so will only be staying with us at the weekends and working in Milagros-the school in the jungle during the week. It's also seriously bizarre hearing actual Spanish accents and not Latin American ones, not only the different words but I swear they talk about 5 time faster than anyone here which makes it even harder to understand what they're saying and makes me worry what I'll be like the next time i attempt Spanish in Spain...

Yesterday was our slightly eager Easter egg hunt, we'll both be away with our parents over the actual Easter week so forward thinking we did it in advance. For the past few weeks we've been going papier mache crazy
and making them all look pretty-I'll try and show some photos next week. We hid them round the Aldea on Friday night when all the kids were asleep which I sort of enjoyed more than the actual searching because that was all the kids. Apart from the sneaky kids sniffing a few out before breakfast (which means they must have been out looking about half 5/6 in the morning!) it all went really well and Alex hid our golden egg which looked awesome and all the kids were twice as excited when they found out we had an extra prize.

Last weekend we had an exciting adventure, we got a phone call from tías who was at home on her day off, asked us to come and help her daughter with her english homework. It's an awesome house right on the edge of the river which we found out has been in her family for about 5 generations! Her daughter Ana Ewa, is 9 and her homework was matching up words that sounded phonetically similar to certain colours!!! like Cry and White for example...it was crazy, I  was amazed how good she was, she can't have been learning it for more then 2 years but she was very very clever.  Here you can really see the difference between state schools and private schools, not to mention the kids at private schools have a longer school day every day by 2 hours! We got lunch there, a ridiculously yummy chicken soup and then Magdalena and Ana Eva took us down to the river where we walked down amongst the floating houses along these wooden floaty bridges it was AWESOME! A lovely morning, and she's invited us back there to bring our own  food she said she would teach us how to make some standard peruvian dishes! So watch out, I'm going to come back with all these new talents. 

We had a bit of a poorly Alex the beginning of  this week too, which made it so much quieter and left me dealing with the daily tarea all alone without my partner to rant at. Especially when so many of the kids who do go to school can't actually read! I had a seriously stressful session with Fran on Wednesday, all we had to do was practice saying words by splitting them up into syllables but for some bizarre reason he just couldn't say 'crocdrilo' crocodile or 'pueblo' town so I was sat there in the comedor getting more and more annoyed and ended up screaming out these words-we had to go and have an ice cream across the road to calm down!
Although, since the kids have started back at school we've got into more of a routine which I'm really enjoying and I also think we really needed. Because so many kids are at school we walk around 21 kids down to school in the mornings (quarter to 7) then back down again at half 12 to pick them up, whilst also taking the 16 afternoon school kids down with us, then back down AGAIN at 6 to pick them up. It took a lot of juggling but we've sort of got it sorted out now although I'm sure all the other parents around by school must think we are both insane standing there yelling at all of them. We had a few stressful days at the start when we arrived in the afternoon before they'd opened the gates so having to keep an eye on 16-18 really excitably kids, keep them all together, in the shade and try to keep them from running around in the massive slimy, sandy mud that the road turns into after it's rained. Jorge, a 7year old who has been in theAldea from a baby, has downs and up till December was at a special school, also started school in the afternoons along with Cristina who is deaf which obviously makes it even harder to keep an eye on her from running around in the mud outside school.
      So imagine how stressful all this is, then add to that the fact that every evening without fail when we go to get him one of us has to go in to look for Jorge because he is never in his salon, he never Aldea are still, still co ordinating over the problems they are having with Jorge. Although it's obvious to both of us that he at least needs an assistant in the class to focus on him, if not a complete change and to be back in a special school all this seems have to slipped the minds of any of the staff at the school and instead they've decided to throw the blame on us saying that we shouldn't be bringing him here; however the Aldea can't do anything about changing his school until they receive the report from this school- so we're basically sat waiting for the school to get their act together, but seeing as we're in Peru we could be waiting for quite a while!

I still can't believe how fast time is going, that we've been living in Peru for 7 months just doesn't seem to compute in my head. It feels like everything we do here is flying past even though I'm doing everything I can to remember every second of it I know I'll be home before I know it!
Love to everyone
Tía Aneesha!

March. Damaris Thais

As if it's March already, I cannot believe that it's come round so fast. Everytime I think about it, it just makes me more aware of the fact that I'll be leaving here soon :(

Firstly for people who are reading Alex's blog too you'll already know, but for everyone else I want to tell you about Damaris Thais one of our babies in the Aldea. She was one and a half, last week she went into hospital because she was having trouble breathing, Thais was in hospital straight after christmas, when she arrived in the Aldea suffering from malnutrition but we both thought she was improving-albeit pretty slowly. All the tías were really worried about her and by Sunday she was still in emergency care with pneumonia, we found out on Monday morning that she'd died that night at 3 o'clock. It was a massive shock to both of us, in fact to the whole Aldea and even now I can't believe it actually happened. Earlier in the week we'd both been looking after her casa and helping to feed her, play with her and change her, then suddenly she's just not there anymore. We had a belario ceremony in the Aldea all day Monday, which is where the coffin is brought back to the aldea and everyone sits round to make sure her soul is accompanied until the funeral and she passes onto heaven.
 It was an eyeopener in so many ways, mainly for me I think, because the younger kids just accepted that she wasn't there any more, they didn't ask any questions  but just seemed to accept that because she was no longer with us, that must mean that she's in the sky with God. But also having them around made the whole situation so much easier because they are just so full of life and love and make you feel better without even realising it. The funeral was held on Tuesday and was  pretty intense, I think the whole thing was so much harder because Thais was a baby we actually knew and had got to see develop and because of that it's going to take a lot longer for everyone here in the Aldea to get back to normal. This whole thing has made me think more about the way they deal with life here and it's made me really keen todo something in the Aldea to ensure that she won't be forgotten.

As if that wasn't enough drama for one week, on Wednesday morning I wasn't feeling to well, after a pretty scary moment in the Aldea when I apparently went a funky green one of the tías decided it would be best to take me down to the hospital. Alex and the Aldea nurse came with me and after waiting in the dirtiest reception of a hospital ever, we then had to PAY just to get seen by the nurse. Which literally meant him taking my temperature, my blood pressure and weighing me!? Very bizarre process not helped by the fact that the whole time, I could see him eyeing up his snack of chocolate milk sat in the corner and the he was so blatantly going as fast as possible with the least amount of effort just so that when he was done he went and sat down to have his chocolate milk, ignoring all the other patients! The doctor diagnosed me with stomach bug and gave me an injection in my hand, which hurt like hell-later found out from Alex that the needle was insanely big, and all I can say is that I'm pretty glad I was in no state to notice it otherwise there is no way it would have been anywhere near me. After a day sleeping I was fine again, it was lovely seeing all the kids on Thursday when I ventured out the house and seeing how much attention I'd caused (not boosting up my ego AT all!)

On Thursday morning we said bye to the Lima volunteers who've been with us every fin de semana for the past 5 weeks. Really really sad, although I'm even more excited now to spend time with them in Lima when we leave the Aldea to start our travels-they've promised to show us all their favourite spots. It's been ridiculously quiet without them, especially without all the extra attraction they bring from all the kids coming down to our house and they really will be sorely missed, especially their crazy saturday nights.  However it means we got our first Sunday morning lie in since they got here because they haven't been dragging us out at 8 every Sunday for breakfast. AND we got to nick their mattresses which they had from the school they were working in in the jungle and we've had so much better nights  sleep-instead of our pieces of foam!

THEN just to make this week even more fun packed, on Friday we had our first paseo with the kids, the whole Aldea went down to this laguna in two collectivos (iquitos version of a bus, made of wood and only one floor) absolutly packed, they were so full you literally couldn't move. There were about 4kids and an adult on every seat, but it was hilarious and it was also amazing being outside with the kids  and not just in the same Aldea environment. The laguna was beautiful, with these little pontoony things in the middle and hammocks everywhere which the tías had brought with them for the babies-organisation or what! Slight scary moment when one of the little boys Alex slipped off the walkway into the water (only like knee deep) but I completly didn't realise he couldn't swim until he didn't come straight back up again! He was FINE, swallowed quite a bit of water but all good! We got treated to a little presentation from all the kids,like a summary of all their summer classes which was really cute. Although now they've finished their classes and only the private school kids start back next week it doesn mean we're going to have lots of kids to entertain until they start back-which I don't think is until April!
So if anyone has any ideas of arty crafty things, outside games or just general playing activites they would be seriously appreciated!!